It was about this time that Robert Toombs was fitted out for Franklin
College--now the State University--located in Athens, Ga., forty miles
from Washington.

This institution, to which he was devotedly attached and of whose
governing board he was a member at the time of his death, was chartered
in 1785 by the State of Georgia. It was the early recipient of the deed
of western lands, which the State subsequently purchased, assuming the
perpetual endowment of the college. It has been to Georgia what
Jefferson's school has proved to Virginia, the nursery of scholars and
statesmen. Governor John Milledge had given the institution a home upon
a beautiful hill overlooking the Oconee River, and this lovely spot they
had named Athens. Here in 1824 young Robert Toombs repaired, animated
with the feelings which move a college boy, except that his mother went
with him and relieved him of the usual sense of loneliness which
overtakes the student. Major Robert Toombs, his father, who was an
indigo and tobacco planter, was reputed to be a wealthy man for those
times, but it was the comfort of the early settler who had earned his
demesne from the government rather than the wealth of the capitalist. He
had enough to support his family in comfort. He died when Robert was
five years old, and the latter selected as his guardian Thomas W. Cobb,
of Greene County, a cousin of Governor Howell Cobb, a member of Congress
himself and a man of high legal attainment.

When Robert Toombs entered college that institution was under the
Presidency of Moses Waddell, a born educator and strict disciplinarian.
Three generations of this family have served the State as preceptors in
Franklin College.

It may well be imagined that the college had not at that time reached
the dignity of a university, for an entry in President Waddell's diary
was this: "Caught Jones chewing tobacco: whipped him for it." Those were
the old days when boys were boys until they were twenty-one. There is no
record to show that Robert Toombs in college was a close scholar. Later
in life he became a hard student and laborious worker. But if these
industrious habits were born to him in Athens there is no trace of them.
That he was a reader of Shakespeare and history he gave ample evidence
in his long career, but if the legends of his college town are to be
trusted, he was more noted for outbreaks of mischief than for close
application. Full of life and spirits, a healthy, impetuou