Long-simmering divisions in America were heating up in the years preceding the American Civil War. In early 1860, Georgia’s Robert Toombs spoke to the Senate chamber in Washington in a speech that became known as Invasion of States.
In a 2017 doctoral program dissertation, Antislavery Violence and Secession, October 1859 –April 1861, David Jonathan White writes concerning Toombs speech:
“On January 24, 1860, Georgia Senator Robert Toombs delivered a speech that helped set the tone for the coming presidential election and the secession crisis that followed. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Toombs “Invasion of States” speech because the Georgian, on this occasion, first laid out ideas that he would revisit in a speech urging his state to hold a secession convention as well as in Georgia’ssecession declaration.
“Toombs offered a strong condemnation of the Republican Party as an implicit and often explicit danger to southern security. First, Toombs condemned Republicans for their constitutional infidelity, particularly for their failure to comply with the “fugitives from labor” provision. Toombs asserted that whenever anyone tried to enforce that law in the North, Republicans winked at antislavery violence and sometimes were active participants. If Republicans assured white southerners they would suppress antislavery violence, said Toombs, they could not be trusted to honor their word. They “mock at constitutional obligations, [and] jeer at oaths. They have lost their shame [along] with their virtue.” Toombs charged that Republicans were saying to southerners, “let us be, brothers, or we will cut your throats—that is, if we can get your negroes to do it.”