The Northern radicals were wont to say, "Let the South go," the more profane among them interjecting "to hell!" The Secessionists liked to prod the New Englanders with what the South was going to do when they got to Boston.

None of them really meant it--not even Toombs when he talked about calling the muster roll of his slaves beneath Bunker Hill Monument; nor Hammond, the son of a New England schoolmaster, when he spoke of the "mudsills of the North," meaning to illustrate what he was saying by the underpinning of a house built on marshy ground, and not the Northern work people.
Toombs, who was a rich man, not quite impoverished by the war, banished himself in Europe for a number of years.

At length he came home, and passing the White House at Washington he called and sent his card to the President.

General Grant, the most genial and generous of men, had him come directly up.
[Illustration: W.P.Hardee, Lieutenant General C.S.A.] "Mr.President," said Toombs, "in my European migrations I have made it a rule when arriving in a city to call first and pay my respects to the Chief of Police." The result was a most agreeable hour and an invitation to dinner.

Not long after this at the hospitable board of a Confederate general, then an American senator, Toombs began to prod Lamar about his speech in the House upon the occasion of the death of Charles Sumner.