. Frank Hardeman, Solicitor-General of the
Northern Circuit, was one of the lawyers who examined Toombs for
admission to the bar. He afterward declared that Robert Toombs, during
the first four or five years of his practice, did not give high promise.
His work in his office was spasmodic, and his style in court was too
vehement and disconnected to make marked impression. But the exuberance
or redundancy of youth soon passed, and he afterward reached a height in
his profession never attained by a lawyer in Georgia.

His work during the first seven years of his practice did not vary in
emolument or incident from the routine of a country lawyer. In those
days the bulk of legal business lay in the country, and the most
prominent men of the profession made the circuit with their saddle-bags,
and put up during court week at the village taverns. Slaves and land
furnished the basis of litigation. Cities had not reached their size and
importance, corporations had not grown to present magnitude, and the
wealth and brains of the land were found in the rural districts. "The
young lawyers of to-day," says Judge Reese of Georgia, "are far in
advance of those during the days of Toombs, owing to the fact that
questions and principles then in doubt, and which the lawyers had to dig
out, have been long ago decided, nor were there any Supreme Court
reports to render stable the body of our jurisprudence."

The counties in which Robert Toombs practiced were Wilkes, Columbia,
Oglethorpe, Elbert, Franklin, and Greene. The bar of the Northern
Circuit was full of eminent men. Crawford presided over the courts and a
delegation of rare strength pleaded before him. There were Charles J.
Jenkins, Andrew J. Miller, and George W. Crawford of Richmond County;
from Oglethorpe were George R. Gilmer and Joseph Henry Lumpkin; from
Elbert, Thomas W. Thomas and Robert McMillan; from Greene, William C.
Dawson, Francis H. Cone; from Clarke, Howell Cobb; from Taliaferro,
Alexander H. Stephens. Across the river in Carolina dwelt Calhoun and
McDuffie. As a prominent actor in those days remarked: "Giants seem to
grow in groups. There are seed plats which foster them like the big
trees of California, and they nourish and develop one another, and seem
to put men on their mettle." Such a seed plat we notice within a radius
of fifty miles of Washington, Ga., where lived a galaxy of men,
illustrious in State and national affairs.

In 1837 the great panic which swept