Toombs, Robert Augustus

Life Span
to
Full name
Robert Augustus Toombs
Place of Birth
Burial Place
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
South
Origins
Slave State
No. of Spouses
1
No. of Children
3
Family
Robert Toombs (father), Catharine Huling (mother), Julia Ann DuBose (wife, 1830),
Education
University of Virginia
Other
Other Education
University of Georgia at Athens; Union College, NY
Occupation
Politician
Attorney or Judge
Political Parties
Democratic
Whig
Government
Confederate government (1861-65)
Diplomat
US Senate
State legislature
Military
US military (Pre-Civil War)
Confederate Army

Robert Augustus Toombs (American National Biography)

Scholarship
Ranking with the most important members of the Senate in the 1850s, Toombs contributed little of a positive nature to the South or the Georgia he loved so well in the Confederacy's struggle for nationhood. An army friend, Major Raphael J. Moses, recalled that his "impulses were generous and noble, his faults were bluster and a vivid imagination not always hampered by facts." Howell Cobb thought he had the finest mind of his generation "but lacked balance." According to T. C. De Leon, a government wit claimed that Toombs "disagrees with himself between meals." Fiery, erratic, and impulsive, he professed in the 1850s to love the Union but sometimes spoke like a fire-eater. He had "basically . . . conservative instincts," as befit his social class, but was a man who could "explode in any direction" in a crisis (Thompson, p. 66). This fatal flaw, a "tendency" under stress "to slide into the role of extremist" (Thompson, p. 146), denied him greatness. Toombs was one of the last of a generation of southern mavericks.
Michael Chesson, "Toombs, Robert Augustus," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00991.html.

Robert Augustus Toombs (Congressional Biographical Directory)

Reference
TOOMBS, Robert Augustus, a Representative and a Senator from Georgia; born in Wilkes County, Ga., July 2, 1810; attended the University of Georgia at Athens and graduated from Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., in 1828; studied law at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Washington, Wilkes County, Ga., in 1830; commanded a company in the Creek War in 1836; member, State house of representatives 1837-1840, 1841-1843; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1845-March 3, 1853); elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1852; reelected in 1858 and served from March 4, 1853, to February 4, 1861, when he withdrew in support of the Confederacy; member of the State sovereignty convention at Milledgeville, Ga., in 1861; during the Civil War served in the Confederate Provisional Congress; Secretary of State of the Confederate States; brigadier general in the Confederate Army; in order to avoid arrest at the end of the Civil War, fled to Havana and then to London; returned to his home in Washington, Ga., in 1867; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1877; died in Washington, Ga., December 15, 1885; interment in Rest Haven Cemetery.
“Toombs, Robert Augustus,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000313.
Chicago Style Entry Link
Davis, William C. The Union that Shaped the Confederacy: Robert Toombs & Alexander H. Stephens. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. view record
Stegmaier, Mark J. “Zachary Taylor Versus The South.” Civil War History 33, no. 3 (1987): 219-241. view record
Thompson, William Y. Robert Toombs of Georgia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966. view record
How to Cite This Page: "Toombs, Robert Augustus," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/8962.