In 1856, Mr. Toombs visited Boston, and delivered a lecture upon slavery. It was a bold move, and many of his friends advised against it. They did not see what good would come from the appearance of an extreme Southern man in the heart of abolitionism, carrying his doctrines to the very citadel of antislavery. But Toombs, with dramatic determination, decided to accept. Several Southern statesmen had been invited to appear before Boston audiences, but prudence had kept them from complying.

On the evening of the 24th of January, Mr. Toombs ascended the stage at Tremont Temple. A large audience greeted him. There was great curiosity to see the Southern leader. They admired the splendid audacity of this man in coming to the place where Garrison had inveighed against slavery and had denounced the Constitution as a “league with Hell and a covenant with the Devil”; where Wendell Phillips had exerted his matchless oratory, and where Charles Sumner had built up his reputation as an unflagging enemy of Southern propagandism. Mr. Toombs was in good trim for this supreme effort. Inspired by the significance of his mission, he seemed possessed of unusual strength. His fine eye lighted with his theme, and his brow seemed stamped with confidence rather than defiance. His long, black hair was brushed from his forehead, and his deep voice filled the historic hall. He was indeed a fine specimen of a man a Saul among his fellows. Possibly he was moved by the thought that he stood where Webster had pleaded for the Union, for concession, and for harmony six years before, when the people for the first time had turned from him and when Fanueil Hall had been closed against him.

Senator Toombs was attended upon the stage by William and Nathan Appleton, whose guest he was. Their presence was a guarantee that the speaker should receive a respectful hearing. It was noticed at the outset that he had abandoned his fervid style of speaking. He delivered his address from notes in a calm and deliberate manner. He never prepared a speech with so much care. His discourse was so logical and profound, his bearing so dignified and impressive, that his hearers were reminded of Webster.

It was evident early in the evening that his lecture would produce a powerful effect. To many of his hearers his views were novel and fresh, as they had never heard the Southern side of this great question. “With the exception of Sam Houston,” said a New York paper, “Mr. Toombs is the only Southern man who has had the pluck to go into the antislavery camp and talk aloud of the Constitution. Other Southern men, not afraid to face Boston, have been afraid to face opinion at home.”

In referring to the clause of the Constitution providing for the return of fugitive slaves, Mr. Toombs was greeted by a hiss. The speaker turned in the direction of the noise and said, “I did not put that clause there. I am only giving the history of the action of your own John Adams; of your fathers and mine. You may hiss them if you choose.” The effect was electrical. The hiss was drowned in a storm of applause. The readiness and good-nature of the retort swept Boston off her feet, and for one moment prejudice was forgotten.

The New York Express declared that the speaker was earnest and deliberate, presenting his argument with great power, and his lecture of an hour and a half was, for the most part, listened to with respect and attention. There was some conduct in the audience at the close which the Boston Journal was forced to denounce as “ungentlemanly.” Three cheers, not unmixed with dissent, were given to the distinguished speaker. Someone called out, “When will Charles Sumner be allowed to speak in the South?”

The New York Express declared that “if Toombs and other hotheads would lecture in Syracuse, Oswego, Ashtabula, and other points of ‘Africa,’ they would do a good deal of good in educating the innocents and becoming themselves educated and freed from fire, froth, fury, and folly.”

This lecture of Mr. Toombs at Boston will live as the most lucid defense of slavery in law and in practice ever delivered. Slavery has fallen and mankind has made up its verdict; but this address will still be read with interest.

He did not hesitate to say that Congress had no right to limit, restrain, or impair slavery; but, on the contrary, was bound to protect it. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, slavery was a fact. The Declaration did not emancipate a single slave; neither did the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution recognized slavery. Every clause relative to slavery was intended to strengthen and protect it. Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories. The clause giving Congress power to make regulations for the Territories did not confer general jurisdiction. It was not proper nor just to prohibit slavery in the Territories. Penning the negro up in the old States would only make him wretched and miserable, and would not strike a single fetter from his limbs. Mr. Toombs simply asked that the common territory be left open to the common enjoyment of all the people of the United States; that they should be protected in their persons and property by the general government, until its authority be superseded by a State constitution, when the character of their democratic institutions was to be determined by the freemen thereof. “This,” he said, “is justice. This is constitutional equity.” Mr. Toombs contended that the compromise measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 were made to conform to this policy. “I trust I believe,” he continued, “that when the transient passions of the day shall have subsided, and reason shall have resumed her dominion, it will be approved, even applauded, by the collective body of the people.”

Upon the second branch of his theme, Mr. Toombs contended that so long as the African and Caucasian races co-exist in the same society, the subordination of the African is the normal and proper condition, the one which promotes the highest interests and greatest happiness of both races. The superiority of the white man over the black, he argued, was not transient or artificial. The Crown had introduced slavery among the American colonists. The question was not whether it was just to tear the African away from bondage in his own country and place him here. England had settled that for us. When the colonies became free they found seven hundred thousand slaves among them. Our fathers had to accept the conditions and frame governments to cover it. They incorporated no Utopian theories in their system. They did not so much concern themselves about what rights man might possibly have in a state of nature, as what rights he ought to have in a state of society. The lecturer maintained that under this system, the African in the slaveholding States is found in a better position than he has ever attained in any other age or country, whether in bondage or freedom. The great body of this race had been slaves in foreign lands and slaves in their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. “Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race.” The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of the race is admitted everywhere in our country.

“Our political system gives the slave great and valuable rights. His life is protected; his person secured from assault against all others except his master, and his master’s power in this respect is placed under salutary legal restriction.” He gets a home, ample clothing and food, and is exempted from excessive labor. When no longer capable of labor, from age or disease, he is a legal charge upon his master. The Southern slave, he said, is a larger consumer of animal food than any population in Europe, and larger than any laboring population in the United States, and their natural increase is equal to that of any other people. Interest and humanity cooperate in harmony for the well-being of slave labor. Labor is not deprived of its wages. Free labor is paid in money, the representative of products; slave labor in the products themselves. The agricultural and unskilled laborers of England fail to earn the comforts of the Southern slave. The compensation of labor in the Old World has been reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the continuation of the race.

“One-half the lands of the cotton States is annually planted in food crops. This half is consumed by the laborers and animals. The tenant in the North does not realize so much.”

Mr. Toombs believed that the Southern men were awakening to the conviction that the slave should be taught to read and write, as being of more use to himself, his master, and society. He realized that the laws should protect marriage and other domestic ties, forbidding the separation of families, and stated that some of the slaveholding States had already adopted partial legislation for the removal of these evils. But the necessities of life and the roving spirit of the white people produced an infinitely greater amount of separation in families than ever happened to the colored race. “The injustice and despotism of England toward Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families and sundered more domestic ties within the last ten years than African slavery has effected since its introduction into the United States.” England keeps 100,000 soldiers, a large navy, and innumerable police to secure obedience to her social institutions, and physical force is the only guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her gigantic empire. The laws restrain the abuses and punish the crimes of the slave system. Slavery is impossible in England and Europe, because wages have gone down to a point where they are barely sufficient to support the laborer and his family. Capital could not afford to own labor. Slavery ceased in England in obedience to this law, and not from any regard to liberty and humanity.

Senator Toombs declared that the condition of the African might not be permanent among us. He might find his exodus in the unvarying law of population. Increase of population may supply to slavery its euthanasia in the general prostration of all labor. The emancipation of the negro in the West Indies had not made him a more useful or productive member of society. The slave States, with one-half the white population, and between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 slaves, furnish three-fifths of the annual product of the republic. In this relation, the labor of the country is united with and protected by its capital, directed by the educated and intelligent.

Senator Toombs combated the idea that slavery debased and enervated the white man. To the Hebrew race were committed the orders of the Most High. Slaveholding priests ministered at their altars. Greece and Rome afforded the highest forms of civilization. Domestic slavery neither enfeebles nor deteriorates a race. Burke had declared that the people of the Southern colonies of America were much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty that those to the Northward. Such were our Gothic ancestors; such were the Poles; such will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines itself with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

Senator Toombs declared that, in the great agitation which for thirty years had shaken the national government to its foundation and burst the bonds of Christian unity among the churches, the slaveholding States have scarcely felt the shock. Stability, progress, order, peace, content, prosperity reign through our borders. Not a single soldier is to be found in our domain to overawe or protect society. Mr. Toombs pictured the progress of the Southern churches, schools and colleges multiplying. None of these improvements had been aided by the Federal Government. “We have neither sought from it protection for our private interests nor appropriations for our public improvements. They have been effected by the unaided individual efforts of an enlightened, moral, and energetic people. Such is our social system and such our condition under it. We submit it to the judgment of mankind, with the firm conviction that the adoption of no other, under such circumstances, would have exhibited the individual man, bond or free, in a higher development or society in a happier civilization.”

Mr. Toombs carried his principles into practice. He owned and operated several large plantations in Georgia, and managed others as agent or executor. He had the care of, possibly, a thousand slaves. His old family servants idolized him. Freedom did not alter the tender bond of affection. They clung to him, and many of them remained with him and ministered to his family to the day of his death. The old plantation negroes never failed to receive his bounty or good will. During the sale of a plantation of an insolvent estate Mr. Toombs, who was executor, wrote to his wife, “The slaves sold well. There were few instances of the separation of families.” He looked after the welfare of all his dependents. While he was in the army, his faithful servants took care of his wife and little grandchildren, and during his long exile from his native land they looked after his interests and watched for his return.