THOMAS HART BENTON. (1)

Character sketches can accomplish little or no good except as they mark and illustrate the historical events of the period in which the subject lived.

I have selected the name of one of the first United States Senators of Missouri as the subject of this paper.

In making this choice I have not been prompted either by any personal predilections or partisan feeling. According to my understanding of his character he was a great man, and justice to his memory as well as a true history of the times in which he lived demand a true and impartial history of his life and public services.

I am not aware that the term "great man " has ever been defined. Emerson says: "I count that man great who inhabits a higher sphere of thought into which other men enter with labor and difficulty." I accept this definition and applying it to the subject of this sketch, I must say emphatically that Colonel Benton was a great man.

Of his early life it is sufficient to say that he was born in the state of South Carolina on the 14th day of March, 1782. That his father, a lawyer of some local prominence, died during the minority of the subject of this sketch, possessed of about forty thousand acres of land in the state of Tennessee, and that the widow in a short time afterwards removed to the latter state, taking her entire family with her.

Just when he studied law or commenced the practice of his profession I do not know. In 1846, after he had taken his "appeal to the people" from the instructions contained in what was known as the "Jackson Resolutions," he was in the town of Bowling Green, Pike County, for the purpose of making one of his characteristic speeches of that campaign. I was present

1. A paper read before the State Historical Society of Missouri at its fourth annual meeting, December 10, 1904.

as he entered the Court House and met an old gentleman who reminded him that he had met him in Tennessee and was a member of the jury in Benton's first case after he commenced practicing law. The suit involved the title to some personal property, the chief item being a lot of pumpkins. Benton said he remembered it well, shaking the old man's hand most cordially he said:"I was right then, wasn't I?" "Yes," the old line Whig said, "but I'll be d— if you haven't been wrong ever since." With a look of intense disgust he turned upon his heel exclaiming in his own emphatic way, "the h-ll you say!"

Benton's Military Record.

Of his life in Tennessee very little seems to be known. In the early part of the war of 1812 this was also true. It is said that for a time he acted as aid-de-camp to General Jackson and subsequently went to work to organize a regiment of volunteers for Jackson's army, but this was not completed before the battle of New Orleans, and his troops were disbanded. Soon after this he was made a lieutenant-colonel in the regular service, but he only retained his office a short time. He resigned and then returned to the state of Tennessee.

In referring to his military record, I am reminded of what was said to me by a gentleman of intelligence and observation. This gentleman saw much of the enlisting and mustering in of the troops that were gathered in by General Jackson for the defense of New Orleans. He saw Benton in a colonel's uniform and mounted upon an elegant horse.

In describing his dress and general appearance he said to me, "he was the finest looking man on the continent."

Benton saw at once that at the conclusion of the war with England and the title of the French to the valleys of the two great rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi, the most fertile and extensive country on the globe would be thrown open for settlement and cultivation. There was an anxious and enterprising populace extending from the Carolinas to New England watching eagerly for the moment to arrive when they could

give up their homes in the east and find more fertile lands and larger possessions in the Great West.

Benton saw all this and judged correctly that St. Louis was to be the commercial center of this vast region, and he determined to give up his position in the army, abandon his home in Tennessee and locate permanently at this great central point.

He came to St. Louis ostensibly for the purpose of practicing law, but it is more than likely that he then had a thirst for political life and that he was prompted largely by the desire for political preferment and the honors of official position.

He must have come to St. Louis in the summer or fall of 1815. He there established a law office and became interested in a newspaper, the Missouri Inquirer, a journal that occasioned for him a number of duels, in one of which he killed his opponent, Lucas. He was a genuine American in sentiment and feeling and most profoundly impressed with the great importance of the future trade and commerce of the west and its ultimate influence and control in the policies of the Government. He was a strong supporter of western interest.

Benton and the Missouri Compromise.

Two of the great political questions that had been agitated from the beginning of the Government's existence were settled by the Congressional enactments of 1816. The surveys of the public domain in the then Territory of Missouri had been so far completed that it was determined to put up these lands at public auction, as required by the laws of Congress.

Benton advocated the pre-emption of the public lands. He saw the intense interest manifested by the crowds in attendance upon that sale, and the speedy increase in the settlement and development of the territory, and he at once agitated the question of commencing the work of forming a state government. He was active in having the Territorial Legislature to take the first step in that direction by memorializing congress to pass an enabling act authorizing the holding of a convention to form a constitution upon which Missouri could ask for admission into the Union. The memorial was presented at the session of

1819-20, and the first great war of opinion on the subject of slavery was precipitated upon the country. It was so fierce and so bitter in its character as to threaten a dissolution of the Union as it then existed. Fortunately it resulted in what has been known ever since as "the Missouri Compromise."

Upon

Briefly, the terms upon which the people of the territory might apply for admission as a state, were, that it should come into the Union as a slave state, but as to all of the remainder of the territory belonging to the United States "slavery or involuntary servitude should be forever prohibited north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north latitude." Benton advocated the admission of Missouri as a slave state. this compromise the people of the territory elected delegates to a constitutional convention in the month of June following. The convention met in July 1820, and formed a constitution recognizing the existence of slaves as property, and containing a provision which required the Legislative Assembly, when assembled, to pass a law prohibiting free persons of color from entering into and becoming residents of the state. An election. for state officers and members of the legislature was held in the month of August following. The legislature met in the month of November, 1820, and David Barton and Thomas H. Benton were elected to the United States Senate.

Benton and Other Public Questions.

It has been commonly said that Col. Benton was opposed to slavery in the abstract. I have no sufficient evidence of that fact in his own declaration or in the political history of the country to prove it. In this connection it should be said to the credit of Col. Benton and for the purpose of fixing his status upon the slave question, that he was an active participant in the work of procuring the act of congress authorizing the voters of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution recognizing the existence of slavery, that the members of the constitutional convention from St. Louis county were unanimously in favor of making Missouri a slave-state. The provision prohibiting fre persons of color from other states from entering or remaining in this state was his own work, written with his own hand.

This seems to me to be quite sufficient to disprove the above statement.

The members elected to the Legislature in August, 1820, at least a majority of them, were decidedly in favor of slavery, and they elected Benton to the Senate of the United States at a time when the existence of slavery was the all-absorbing and controlling question in every election. This it seems to me ought to settle the question beyond a reasonable doubt, that Benton was not at heart an anti-slavery man at that time.

No subsequent event in his political career since that time can be shown to prove that he had changed his position on that subject. And the satement I think stands unproved.

On March 4th, 1821, when Benton became a member of the United States Senate, three of the most important questions that had agitated the people and the halls of legislation in the country had been settled. These were (1) the charter of the United States Bank, (2) a protective tariff and (3) slavery.

The question of the power of Congress to charter such an institution as the bank had been bitterly contested by the strict constructionists of the constitution, from the beginning of its existence in 1791. It was always admitted that there was no direct or especial grant of power to Congress to charter such an institution, but that its existence depended entirely upon an im plied power under the word necessary. The charter of 1791 expired in 1811. It was chartered in 1816 to run for another period of twenty years. It rested again entirely upon the implied power under the word necessary in the Constitution.

The financial condition of the country at the end of the war of 1812 being such as in the opinion of many of the strict constructionists to justify their votes in its favor. The bank, however, did not meet the expectations of its friends in the regulating and preserving the monetary affairs of the country so as to prevent the terrible state of things which existed in 1819-20 and for some time afterwards.

Benton's Defense of Clay.

Missouri was finally admitted into the Union as a state a few hours before the commencement of James Monroe's second term, March 4th, 1821, as President. The eight years (from