evere, was free from malice or envy.

General Toombs was a man of tender sympathies. Distress of his friends
moved him to prompt relief. In 1855 a friend and kinsman, Mr. Pope, died
in Alabama. He had been a railroad contractor and his affairs were much
involved. General Toombs promptly went to his place, bought in his
property for the family, and left the place for the wife and children,
just as it stood. From Mobile he writes a grief-stricken letter to his
wife, December 28, 1855:

I feel that I must pour out my sorrows to someone, and whom
else can I look to but to one who, ever faithful and true,
has had my whole heart from my youth till now? This has
been one of the dark and sad days of my life. The remains
of my lost friend Mr. Pope came down on the cars this
morning. I met them alone at the depot, except Gus. Baldwin
and the hired hands. This evening I accompanied the remains
to the boat. Oh, it was so sad to see one whom so many
people professed to love, in a strange place, conveyed by
hirelings and deposited like merchandise among the freight
of a steamboat on the way to his long home. I can scarcely
write now, at the thought, through the blindness of my own
tears. As I saw him placed in the appointed spot among the
strangers and bustle of a departing boat, careless of who
or what he was, I stole away to the most retired part of
the boat, to conceal the weakness of friendship and relieve
my overburdened heart with a flood of tears. I felt it
would be a profanation of friendship even to be seen to
feel in such a crowd. But for my overwhelming duty to the
living I would have taken the boat and gone on with his
remains. This is the end of the just in this world. He was
a good and an upright man; never gave offense to a human
being. His family are ruined, but his only fault was want
of judgment, and too great confidence in his kind. He could
not make money, and it really seemed that his every effort
to do so plunged him deeper into debt. His great fault was
a concealment of his own difficulties and trials. I would
have done anything to have relieved them upon a full
disclosure. He was idolized at home, and I have wept at the
sorrows of the poor people in his employment, upon the very
mention of his death. I know I cannot control