g in this, they must move away, as he
had the power to put them out, and would certainly use it. There was a
good deal of murmuring and caucussing among the men, but they concluded
that there was a man named Toombs, and that he meant what he said. The
matter was settled in a business way, and Senator Toombs rode back over
the prairies, richer by a hundred thousand dollars. These lands were
immensely valuable during the latter part of his life. They formed the
bulk of his fortune when the war closed; and during his stay in Paris,
an exile from his country, in 1866, he used to say that he consumed, in
his personal expenses, an acre of dirt a day. The land was then worth
about five dollars an acre.

It was while he was returning home from his Texas trip that the postman
met him on the plains and delivered a letter from Georgia. This was in
July, 1857. The letter announced that the Democratic State Convention in
Georgia had adjourned, after nominating for Governor Joseph E. Brown.
Senator Toombs read the letter and, looking up in a dazed way, asked,
"And who in the devil is Joe Brown?"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856.

There was a good deal of significance in the inquiry. There was a hot
campaign ahead. The opposition party, made up of Know-nothings and
old-line Whigs, had nominated Benjamin H. Hill for Governor. Senator
Toombs knew that it would require a strong man to beat him. Besides the
Governor, a legislature was to be chosen which was to elect a successor
to Senator Toombs in the Senate. He was personally interested in seeing
that the Democratic party, with which he had been in full accord since
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, had a strong leader in the
State. All the way home he was puzzling in his brain about "Joe Brown."

About the time that he returned, he was informed that Hill and Brown had
met at Glen Spring, near Athens. A large crowd had attended the opening
discussion. Howell Cobb wrote to Senator Toombs that he had better take
charge of the campaign himself, as he doubted the ability of Judge Brown
to handle "Hill of Troup."

Joseph E. Brown had come up from the people. He was a native of Pickens,
S. C., of old Scotch-Irish stock that had produced Calhoun and Andrew
Jackson. The late Henry W. Grady, in a bright fancy sketch, once
declared that the ancestors of Joseph E. Brown lived in Ireland, and
that "For seven generations, the ancestors of Joe Brown have been
restless, aggres