Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/637

Rh yielding up his convictions. His release by parole occurred in October, 1865, and on the following February the Georgia legislature elected him United States senator, but Congress was now treating Georgia as a State out of the Union, in subversion of the Presidential proclamation of restoration and he was therefore refused a seat. Later, when the reconstruction era was happily ended, he was elected representative to Congress, in which he took his seat and served with unimpaired ability. In the year 1882 he was elected governor of Georgia, and during his term was taken sick at Savannah, where he died March 4, 1883. Extraordinary funeral honors were paid him at the capital and in the State generally, and his memory is cherished warmly as one of the great men of his times.

Robert Toombs, first secretary of state of the Confederate States, was born in Wilkes county, Ga., July 2, 1810. His grandfather fought with Braddock, and his father commanded a Virginia regiment under Washington. He was a student in Franklin college, Georgia, and was graduated at Union college, New York, in 1828, studied law at the university of Virginia, and was admitted to the bar in 1830. In 1837 he was a captain of militia in the Creek war, and on his return home was elected to the legislature by the Whigs, of whom he became a leader. He was returned in 1839, l8 4&amp;gt; ^42 and 1843. In 1844 he was elected to Congress, where he served eight years in the lower house. Becoming an ardent advocate of the compromise measure of 1850, he was elected by the Constitutional Union party in 1851 to the United States Senate. In this body he remained, strenuously defending State rights, until he left Congress in 1861. He earnestly advocated disunion after the election of Lincoln, and was elected by the Georgia convention to the Congress of the Southern States at Montgomery. He accepted the portfolio of State under President Davis, on the organization of the Provisional govern-