Robert Toombs

<p> Robert Toombs of Georgia stands as one of the most fiery and influential politicians of the nineteenth century. Sarcastic charming egotistical and gracious he rose quickly from state office to congressman to senator in the decades before the Civil War. Though he sought sectional reconciliation throughout the 1840s and 1850s he eventually became one of the South's most ardent secessionists.</p><p> This thorough biography chronicles his days as a student and young lawyer in Georgia his boisterous political career his appointment as the Confederacy's first Secretary of State his unsuccessful stint as a Confederate general and his role as a proud unreconstructed rebel after the war. An exploration of Toombs' career reveals the political forces and missteps that drove him--and people like him--to want to secede from the United States.</p>