Book Review

Book Review

Introduction

William McCash has utilized the rich collection of surviving manuscripts from the Cobb family to reconstruct the career of Thomas R. R. Cobb, an important figure in Georgia's ante- bellum history. He was especially significant for his legal and constitutional writings. His work on Georgia's law reports, digest of statutes, and law codes built a solid reputation for him among the state's lawyers and judges before the Civil War. His legal defense of slavery, An Inquiry into the Law of Slavery ..., and his numerous speeches in favor of secession put him in the forefront of Georgia's Confederate leaders. He played an impor- tant role in writing constitutions for both Georgia and the Con- federacy. Ultimately he became a Confederate Army brigadier general and died in action at the age of thirty-nine. McCash's narrative shows the lawyer-statesman in the con- text of the Cobb family as a whole with special attention to his brother, United States Congressman and Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb. Thomas Cobb's interest in education and his vigorous evangelistic activities following his personal con- version experience in 1848 are studied closely.



Discussion

In the mid-1840s TI homas Reade Rootes Cobb (1823-62) was a well-known lawyer in Athens, Georgia. Eased into lucrative appointive offices with help from his more famous brother, Howell Cobb, and his father-in-law, Judge Joseph Henry Lump- kin of the Georgia Supreme Court, Thomas Cobb became prosperous and his influence grew. He worked hard at his calling, indulging a scholarly bent to produce an authoritative digest of Georgia's laws in 1851, a comprehensive codification of the state's statutes in 186i1, and-in the interim-his learned and often-quoted defense of slavery, An Inqui7y into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States (1858). Cobb campaigned for secession, played a leading role in Georgia's ...