TOOMBS, ROBERT ( 8io—i 885) , American political leader, was born near Washington, Wilkes county, Ga., on July 2, 181o. He was educated at Franklin college (University of Geor gia), at Union college, Schenectady (N.Y.), from which he gradu ated in 1828, and at the law school of the University of Virginia. He was admitted to the bar in 1830, served in the Georgia House of Representatives (1838, 1840-41 and 1843-44), in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the United States Senate (1853-61). He supported the Compromise Measures of 1850, denounced the Nashville Convention, opposed the secession ists in Georgia, and helped frame the Georgia platform (1850). He and the Southern Unionists thought secession not wrong but in expedient. When the Whig party dissolved, Toombs went over to the Democrats. He favoured the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the ad mission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, the English Bill (1858), and June 24, 1856, introduced in the Senate the Toombs Bill, which proposed a constitutional convention in Kan sas under conditions, acknowledged by anti-slavery leaders as fair and marking the greatest concessions by the pro-slavery senators during the Kansas struggle. The failure of the bill to provide for the submission of the constitution to popular vote was the crux of the Lecompton struggle (see KANSAS). On December 22nd after the election of Lincoln, he sent a telegram to Georgia which urged "secession by the 4th of March next."
With Governor Joseph E. Brown he led the fight for secession against Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson (1812-80). His in fluence induced the "old-line Whigs" to support immediate seces sion. He was secretary of State in President Davis' cabinet, and then entered the army (July 21, 1861), served as a brigadier general in the army of Northern Virginia, after 1863 as adju tant and inspector-general of General G. W. Smith's division of Georgia militia. After two years in exile in Cuba, France and England, he returned to Georgia, 1867, and practised law. He died in Washington (Georgia), on December 15, 1885.
See Pleasant A. Stovall, Robert Toombs, Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage (New York, 1892) ; "Robert Toombs," Watson's Jeffersonian Mag. (1912) ; Gamaliel Bradford, "Confederate Portraits," Atlantic Monthly (1913) ; U. B. Phillips, Life of Robert Toombs; "Robert Toombs," a review, Nation, vol. 54 ; Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1913 ; American Hist. Rev., June 1914 ; W. P. Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime; James U. Vincent, A Pen-picture of G. R. Toombs; A. H. Stephens and H. Cobb, Correspondence of Robert Toombs; B. J. Kendric, "Toombs and Stevens," Pol. Sci. Quarterly, Sept.