Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

“ [224] the philosophy of the armed men that have sprung up in this country, and I had rather see the population of my own, my native land beneath the sod, than that they should support for one hour such a Government.”

Toombs further demanded that offenders against Slave codes in one State, fleeing into another, should be delivered up for punishment; that the Fugitive Slave Law should be rigidly enforced, and that no State should pass Personal Liberty Acts. He denounced the National Constitution as having been made by the fathers for the purpose of getting “at the pockets of the people.” With a wicked perversion of history, he declared that a “large portion of the best men of the Revolution voted against it,” and that it was “carried in some of the States by treachery.” He sneered at the venerable Senator from Kentucky (who had fought for his country when this traitor was yet an infant, and had entered Congress as a member when this conspirator was a schoolboy), because of his attachment to that Constitution, and his denial of the constitutional right of a State to secede. “Perhaps he will find out after a while,” said Toombs, “that it is a fact accomplished. You have got it in the South pretty much in both ways. South Carolina has given it to you regularly, according to the approved plan. You are getting it just below there [in Georgia], I believe, irregularly, outside of law, without regular action. You can take it either way. You will find armed men to defend both.... We are willing to defend our rights with the halter around our necks, and to meet these Black Republicans, their myrmidons and allies, whenever they choose to come on.” The career of this Senator during the war that ensued was a biting commentary upon these high words before there was any personal danger to the speaker, and illustrated the truth of Spenser's lines in the Fairy Queen:--

For highest looks have not the highest mind,
     Nor haughty words most full of highest thought;
But are like bladders blown up with the wind,
     That being pricked evanish out of sight.

Toombs concluded his harangue by a summing up of charges not unfavorable to the Government against which he was rebelling, but against the political party that had outvoted his own party at the late election, and was about to assume the conduct of that Government. “Am I a freeman?” he asked. “Is my State a free State, to lie down and submit, because political fossils [referring to the venerable Crittenden] raise the cry of ‘ the glorious Union?’ Too long, already, have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws, and has determined to exclude four thousand millions of our property [slaves] from the common Territories.” He then said:--“They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Federal power, and,” he added truly, “the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own defense. All these charges I have proven by the record.” He then said, with gross perversion of the truth, that they had appealed in vain for the exercise of their constitutional rights. Restore them and there would be peace. “Refuse them,” he said, “and what then? We shall ”