Robert Toombs

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Robert Augustus Toombs (July 2, 1810 – December 15, 1885) was an American politician from Georgia, who was an important figure in the formation of the Confederacy. From a privileged background as a wealthy planter and slaveholder, Toombs embarked on a political career marked by effective oratory, although he also acquired a reputation for hard living, disheveled appearance, and irascibility. He was identified with Alexander H. Stephens's libertarian wing of secessionist opinion, and in contradiction to the nationalist Jefferson Davis, Toombs believed a civil war to be neither inevitable nor winnable by the South. Appointed as Secretary of State of the Confederacy (which lacked political parties), Toombs was against the decision to attack Fort Sumter, and resigned from Davis's cabinet. He was commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army and was wounded at the Battle of Antietam, where he performed creditably. During the 1865 Battle of Columbus, Toombs's reluctance to use...

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