cept my throat. I shall have a
long and lonesome voyage, with not much else to cheer me
but that I shall find you and our dear little ones at the
end of my journey. If I am permitted to find you all well,
I shall be compensated for its fatigues and dangers. God
grant that we may all meet once more in this world in
health!

Yours truly and affectionately, as ever,
TOOMBS.

General Toombs returned to America and after a short residence in Canada
went to Washington, where he had a long interview with his old
senatorial colleague, President Andrew Johnson. He went home from
Washington and was never again molested. He made no petition for relief
of political disabilities. He was never restored to citizenship. When
Honorable Samuel J. Randall proposed his General Amnesty Act in 1875,
Mr. Blaine and other Republicans desired to exclude from its provisions
the names of Davis and Toombs. The Democrats would not accept this
amendment, and the bill was never passed. Once, when Senator Oliver P.
Morton asked General Toombs why he did not petition Congress for pardon,
Toombs quietly answered, "Pardon for what? I have not pardoned you all
yet."

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMMENCING LIFE ANEW.

When General Toombs finally returned to Georgia it was with a great part
of his fortune gone, his political career cut off by hopeless
disability, and his household desolate. These were serious calamities
for a man fifty-seven years of age. He found himself forced under new
and unfavorable conditions to build all over again, but he set about it
in a vigorous and heroic way. His health was good. He was a splendid
specimen of manhood. His once raven locks were gray, and his beard,
which grew out from his throat, gave him a grizzly appearance. His dark
eye was full of fire and his mind responded with vigor to its new work.

When General Toombs arrived at Washington, Ga., he consulted some of his
friends over the advisability of returning to the practice of law, which
he had left twenty-five years before. Their advice was against it.
Things were in chaos; the people were impoverished, and the custodians
of the courts were the creatures of a hostile government. But Robert
Toombs was made of different stuff. Associating himself in the practice
of his profession with General Dudley M. DuBose, who had been his chief
of staff, and was his son-in-law, an able and popul