Robert Toombs Quotes
I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings.
Toombs, Robert. Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs, Delivered in Milledgeville, on Tuesday Evening, November 13, 1860, Before the Legislature of Georgia. Boughton, Nisbet & Barnes, State Printers, 1860.
Livingston could not stop the process, which had built up a momentum of its own among most Republicans. The debate went on, and, despite public opinion favoring the President, on a highly partisan party line vote Clinton was impeached by the house. The impeachment, only the second in U. S. history, then failed in the Senate.
Ford went on to itemize some of the major problems then facing the nation. This is one of the very few times that an American President was so candid and did not try to minimize the extent of the difficulties. This might have been the result of Ford’s character which tended to be very straightforward and without guile. At the same time, the problems were not the result of his policies but those of Richard M. Nixon who had been forced to resign under disgrace and had few followers who would be insulted.
Robert Augustus Toombs was an American lawyer, planter, and national politician from Georgia who became one of the organizers of the Confederacy and served as its first Secretary of State under President Jefferson Davis. He also served in the Confederate States Army, but later became one of Davis' critics. After the Confederate defeat, Toombs fled the United States. He did not return until 1867, after his daughter's death. He regained political power in Georgia as Congressional Reconstruction ended in 1877.
