page_title: Robert Toombs
section_title: Secession
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Toombs / Secession
caption_attribution_description: Robert Toombs House — 1797 house in Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia. Image: HABS—Historic American Buildings Survey of Georgia, (cropped).
context_page_description: Robert Augustus Toombs was an American lawyer, planter, and politician from Georgia who became one of the organizers of the Confederacy and served as its first Secretary of State. He served in Jefferson Davis' cabinet as well as in the Confederate States Army, but later became one of Davis' critics. He fled the United States after the Confederate defeat, returning in 1867 after his daughter's death. He regained political power in Georgia as Congressional Reconstruction ended.
  A lawyer by training, Toombs gained renown in the antebellum years as an orator in the U.S. House of Representatives, and later in the U.S. Senate. A slaveholder, he found common ground with fellow-Georgian Alexander H. Stephens and advocated states' rights and the extension of slavery to western territories. Toombs supported the Compromise of 1850, but later advocated secession. Toombs had emotive oratory and a strong physical presence, but his intemperate habits and volatile personality limited his career. In the newly formed Confederate Government, Toombs was appointed Secretary of State.
context_section_description: In the presidential campaign of 1860, Toombs supported John C. Breckinridge. On December 22, soon after the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, Toombs sent a telegram to Georgia that asserted that "secession by 4 March next should be thundered forth from the ballot-box by the united voice of Georgia." He delivered a farewell address in the US Senate (January 7, 1861) in which he said: "We want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no negro race to degrade our own; and as one man [we] would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other." He returned to Georgia, and with Governor Joseph E. Brown led the fight for secession against Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson (1812–80). His influence was a powerful factor in inducing the "old-line Whigs" to support immediate secession.
  Unlike the crises of 1850, these events galvanized Toombs and energized his ambitions for becoming the president of the new Confederate nation.
caption: Toombs' house in Washington, Georgia, 1934.
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