his
attainments. One of the most rabid and uncompromising of secession
leaders, and bigoted in his hatred of the North, he was yet, in private,
a courteous and hospitable gentleman, and, apparently at least, frank in
the expression of opinion. Probably he had as little principle in
political and social life as most of his associates in treason; while
his great self-reliance, activity, and mental ability gave him a very
high position in their confidence. He was tall and stout, though not
corpulent; and was very negligent of his toilet and dress. Self-conceit
was written on his countenance, and displayed itself in his arrogant
assumptions of superiority. But his method of dealing with his Northern
opponents was open and bold, although insolent and overbearing, and not
like Hunter, Davis, and Benjamin, using ingenious sophistry and hidden
sarcasm, cautiously smoothing over their real purpose, by rhetoric and
elegant sentiment. Mr. Toombs became early an object of peculiar dislike
to Northern men, by the rude ingenuousness with which he announced the
last conclusions of his political creed, and the intolerable insolence
with which, not heeding the admonitions of his more cautious
confederates, he thundered out his anathemas of hatred and vengeance on
what he was pleased to call 'Northern tyranny.' It was only when the
crisis came, that others unfolded together their base character and
their hypocrisy. Davis, who had been fondled by New-Englanders but a
year or two since, and Hunter, who had cried for peace and compromise,
standing forth at last in the true light of traitors, and thereby
proclaiming their past life a game of hypocrisy. Toombs, therefore, who
was an original fire-eater, and hence could not be called a hypocrite,
has become less an object of hatred to us of the loyal States, than
those who, while they sat at the cabinet councils, or were admitted to
the confidence of the Executive, or were sent to foreign courts, or
presided over the Upper House, were using the power of such high trusts
for the consummation of a conspiracy against their country, yet
retaining the cant of patriotism and feigning a devotion to the Union.
We have dwelt almost exclusively, in the present chapter, upon Senators
whose highest honors have been tarnished or obliterated by the gravest
of crimes, that of treason toward a vast community. But it has been
with the idea that the least should be presented first, and that the
greater should cl