stic affliction. His youngest daughter died in February
of that year. This occurrence brought him to decide upon a trip abroad,
which he had long anticipated, but which his busy and eventful life had
not allowed him to enjoy.

In April, 1855, he wrote his wife:

I feel more and more anxious to get abroad and out of this
country; to be relieved of the thousand harassments of
business, and look for a great deal of pleasure in our
quiet and uninterrupted strolling over the hills and plains
of Europe, where nobody knows us and nobody can harass me
with business or their troubles. I wish I could, like our
darling child, thank God there was rest in Heaven.

Just before he left the State, he attended the Supreme Court of Georgia,
at Milledgeville. At that time he wrote his wife:

I have had a hard, close week's work. The lawyers very
kindly gave way and allowed my cases to come this week,
which brought them very close together, and, as I am but
ill prepared for them, not having given them any attention
last winter, and but little this spring, I have been pretty
much speaking all day and studying all night--and that
without the benefit of "specks," which I am beginning to
need.

All the old Whigs here have joined the Know-nothings, and
keep very shy of me, as I have spoken not softly of the
miserable wretches who expect to govern a great country
like this with imbecility, if they can only cover it with
secrecy. I have been greatly beset not to go to Europe this
summer, as the political campaign is likely to be hot. I
shall go, and the rather that I may avoid such an event,
and take that leisure and repose with my family in foreign
countries which I seem to be totally incapable of getting
at home.

Mr. Toombs left no doubt as to how he regarded the American party. In a
speech on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he had declared that the country
could assimilate the foreigners from Europe and the Chinamen from Asia,
and gather under the ample folds of the American flag every nation on
earth.

It is related that in the early part of Mr. Toombs' political career he
was accused of having subscribed to build a Catholic church in Georgia.
The charge was repeated secretly from ear to ear until it came to his
friends. It was on the eve of an election in Wilkes County, and a
delegation,