Robert Toombs (2 July 1810-15 December 1885) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-GA) 8) from 4 March 1845 to 3 March 1853 (preceding Alexander H. Stephens), a US Senator from 4 March 1853 to 4 February 1861 (succeeding Robert Charlton and preceding Homer V.M. Miller), and the Confederate Secretary of State from 25 February to 25 July 1861 (preceding Robert M.T. Hunter).
Biography[]
Robert Toombs was born in Washington, Georgia in 1810, and he was admitted to the bar in 1830. He served in the state legislature before serving in the US House of Representatives from 1845 to 1853 and in the US Senate from 1853 to 1861, and he became close friends with Alexander H. Stephens. Toombs was a states' rights partisan and a national Whig, and he aided in the creation of the Constitutional Union Party in 1851 before joining the Democrats in 1853. He opposed the annexation of Texas in 1845 but vowed to defend the new state, and he opposed the Mexican-American War, President James K. Polk's Oregon policy, the Walker Tariff of 1846, and the Wilmot Proviso. He defended the Compromise of 1850 against Southerners who promoted secession, denounced the secessionist Nashville Convention, favored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and supported the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution.
American Civil War[]
However, Toombs wanted no "negro equality" under President Abraham Lincoln, and he fought for Georgia's secession in 1861. Toombs was not chosen as President of the Confederate States due to his drinking problem, instead serving as Secretary of State. On 25 July 1861, he resigned from this post to accept the rank of Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army, commanding a brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Days Battles, and the Battle of Antietam. In one of the last battles of the American Civil War, at Columbus, Georgia in 1865, Toombs attempted to defend a bridge from James H. Wilson's Union forces. When the war ended, he went into exile in Cuba and then in Paris. He returned to Georgia in 1867, and refused to request a pardon, sacrificing his political future. He died in 1885.