Pleasant A. Stovall

Robert Toombs (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) Pleasant A. Stovall Illustrated edition

Robert Augustus Toombs (1810-1885) was an American political leader, Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a Confederate general in the Civil War. He was admitted to the bar in 1830, and served in the Georgia House of Representatives (1838, 1840-1841, and 1843- 1844). On the wave of his growing popularity, he won a seat to the United States House of Representatives (1844-1853), then served in the United States Senate (1853-1861). He had ambitions to become the president of the new Confederate nation, but selection of Jefferson Davis not only dashed Toombs's hopes but also turned him into one of the most outspoken critics of the Confederate government and its policies. He joined the Confederate States Army and received a commission as a brigadier general in 1861. When the Confederacy finally collapsed in 1865, Toombs barely escaped arrest by Union troops and went into hiding, fleeing to Cuba, London and then Paris. He returned to the United States via Canada in 1867. Because he refused to request a pardon from Congress, he never regained his American citizenship.