(Bancroft Ubngg AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. T he outlines of...)
Bancroft Ubngg AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. T he outlines of the life of the lately deceased Thomas H. Benton, which are contained in the following pages, were prepared by the author and subject of them whilst he was suffering excruciating pain from the disease that, a few weeks later, closed his earthly career. They were not intended for aB iography, properly so called, but rather to present some salient points of character and some chief incidents of life, and in respect of them, at least, to govern subsequent Biographies. THOMAS HART BEXTON, known as a senator for thirty years inC ongress, and as the author of several works, was born in Orange County, near Hillsborough, North Carolina, March 14th, 1782; and was the son of Col. Jesse Benton, an able lawyer of thatS tate, and of A nn Gooch, of Hanover county, Virginia, of the family of the Gooches of colonial residence in thatS tate. By this descent, on the mothers side, he took his name from the head of the Hart family (C ol. Thomas Hart, of Lexington, Kentucky), his mothers maternal uncle; and so became related to the numerous Hart family. He was cousin toM rs. Clay, born Lucretia Hart, the wife of Henry Clay; and, by an easy mistake, was often quoted during his public life as the relative of Mr. Clay himself. He lost his father before he was eight years of age, and fell under the care of a mother still young, and charged with a numerous family, all of tender age and devoting herself to them. She was a woman of reading and observation solid reading, and observation of the men of the Revolution, brought together by course of hospitality of that time, in which the houses of friends, and not taverns, were the universal stopping places. Thomas was the oldest son, and at the age of ten and twelve was reading solid books with his mother, and studying the great examples of history, and receiving encouragement to
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Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856. From Gales and Seatons' Annals of Congress; from their Register of debates; and from the official reported debates, by John C. Rives
(Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856....)
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856. From Gales and Seatons' Annals of Congress; from their Register of debates; and from the official reported debates, by John C. Rives. 774 Pages.
Biography of Martin Van Buren, president of the United States: with an appendix containing selections from his writings ... with other valuable documents ... the convention of the state of Mississippi
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Thomas Hart Benton was an American lawyer and politician. He served as editor of the Missouri Enquirer.
Background
Thomas Benton was born on March 14, 1782, at Hillsboro, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of Jesse Benton, a Loyalist, who had been secretary to Gov. Tryon, and of Ann (Gooch) Benton, of excellent Virginia stock. Upon the death of his father, Thomas became at the age of eight the head of the family.
Education
After some preliminary study with a friend of his father, a short term in grammar school, and a partial course at the University of North Carolina, Thomas undertook the supervision of the "Widow Benton's Settlement, " a farm of 3, 000 acres with a claim to some 40, 000 acres near Nashville, Tennessee.
Career
Benton was a state senator in Tennessee in 1809, and took much interest in land tenure, and the rights of slaves in capital trials. He was admitted to the bar in 1811. Benton won the permanent friendship of Sam Houston, and the temporary enmity of Andrew Jackson. The trouble with the latter grew out of a tavern brawl in which Thomas supported his brother Jesse in a mêlée of knives, pistols, and clubs. Jackson long carried a bullet fired by Jesse or perhaps by Thomas. Notwithstanding his excellent prospects in Tennessee at the close of the war, Benton removed in 1815 to St. Louis, where, as editor of the Missouri Enquirer and in the enjoyment of a lucrative law practise, he speedily identified himself with his adopted state.
Nominated by the son of Daniel Boone, and with the support of David Barton, his co-senator, Benton was first elected to the United States Senate in 1820, and took his seat in 1821. In the Senate he became involved almost immediately in his lifelong legislative interest, the defense of sound money. He favored settlers and discouraged land speculators. He deplored the sacrifice of Texas in 1819, and lauded to an uncomprehending public the significance of Oregon. He brought salt within the reach of western farmers, and in the interest of Missourians, defended a tariff upon lead. He promoted the navigation of the Mississippi, and advocated a national highway to New Mexico. In the election of 1824, Benton originally favored Henry Clay. He afterward opposed John Quincy Adams, though he did not believe in the "corrupt bargain" with Clay. Long estranged from Jackson, he now renewed his friendship with him. In the debate on the Panama Congress, he held that the Monroe Doctrine applied solely to the defense of our own territories.
Success achieved, Benton became the administration spokesman in the Senate. His views on slavery now materially changed. While in 1820 he had opposed all slavery restriction in Missouri, by 1828 he had come to favor gradual abolition. Slavery was apparently hindering settlement - which to a westerner and expansionist was a serious indictment. Even when a discussion on Foot's resolution restricting land sales widened into the celebrated Webster-Hayne debate, Benton did not immediately perceive the issue between Union and Disunion. To defeat the Foot Resolution, he attacked the Webster speech in words he afterward regretted. Convinced at last of Calhoun's secession plans, he henceforth fought for Jackson and the Union. On the rejection by the Senate of Van Buren's nomination as minister to England, Benton actively championed the former secretary, and urged him to stand for nomination as vice-president on the Jackson ticket in 1832. In the nullification crisis, he favored a repeal of the offensive tariffs of 1828 and 1832, but disliked the compromise tariff of 1833, desiring to keep the issue more clearcut between nullification and submission.
Benton was the Senate floor leader in the war upon the National Bank. Always a "hard money" man, he favored a gold and silver coinage, but no bank of issue with its paper currency. In February 1831 he introduced a resolution opposing the re-charter five years later of the National Bank. His anti-Bank speeches, then and later, won a popular support which enabled Jackson finally to veto the re-charter. Benton thoroughly indorsed removal of the government deposits, prior even to the expiration of the charter. When hard times followed, he insisted that they were artificially created by the Bank. A resolution of censure against Jackson he capitalized into a contest for expunging. Just before the administration closed, he won his point, January 16, 1837. His method of holding his followers together by culinary and bibulous inducements has often been described. Excitement ran so high that it was feared his life was in danger from toughs who were said to have been hired by the Bank. Jackson's debt to Benton was immense, and the influence of the latter was now at its maximum.
In his attack upon the Bank, Benton was destructive; in championing "hard money, " he worked creatively. His first move was to change the ratio between gold and silver from 15 to 1, as established by Jefferson, to the more accurate 16 to 1. Gold coins, dubbed "Benton's mint drops, " returned to circulation. Further impetus was lent by the "specie circular" of Jackson, stipulating that public lands be paid for in hard money, an action sponsored by Benton and carried through by Jackson against the unanimous opposition of his cabinet. The most constructive financial legislation of that generation grew out of Benton's struggle for "hard money. " On this issue the Democratic party divided into "Hards" and "Softs, " and Benton was nicknamed in derision "Old Bullion, " a name which stuck, and gave him satisfaction. Such profound changes in the financial structure nevertheless hastened the panic of 1837, which Benton attributed to the machinations of the Bank, a malicious explanation unworthy of his better judgment. Meanwhile, the country marched steadily toward a specie basis along the line of Benton's policy.
Another economic issue on which Benton held strong views was the distribution of the public lands, a vital concern in the days when the Government was doing a "land office" business. On this question, as on that of the Bank, Benton's position was democratic. He favored reduction in the cash price for land, and advocated the grant of free homesteads of 160 acres based on five years' settlement and improvement. As a Democrat, Benton was naturally a Van Buren man in 1840. Again as a Democrat, he instinctively took sides with Tyler in the latter's conflict with the Whigs. But when his ancient enemy, Calhoun, received the State portfolio, and the acquisition of Texas became an avowed policy, Benton was opposed. He seems honestly to have felt that the time for Texan annexation had been in 1819, and that the Spanish treaty of that year sacrificed the interests of the West. But having done so, it was, in Benton's estimation, a fact accomplished, and he viewed the absorption of Texas at this late date as an unwarranted affront to Mexico.
In 1845, annexation being finally determined by joint resolution, Benton sought to conciliate Mexico by treating the boundary as still a subject for negotiation. He was angered when Tyler anticipated the Polk Administration by sending a single commissioner to adjust the issue, without regard to varying shades of opinion within the United States. Benton's attitude toward Oregon, the exploration of which owed much to Frémont, his own son-in-law, paralleled his attitude toward Texas. Always a Westerner, and one of the first to call his countrymen's attention to the territory, when the issue reached a climax he preferred compromise to war. In 1842 he criticized the Webster-Ashburton Treaty for its failure to include a settlement as to Oregon. But in 1844 he had no fondness for the campaign slogan, and he counseled Polk against adhering to it afterward. The 49th parallel was the boundary he wished, and the boundary secured. Never was Benton more bitterly assailed. His pioneering to arouse opinion, and then refusing to follow that opinion into extremes, seemed utterly inconsistent to the frontier mind, in other words, to Benton's own constituents in Missouri.
Yet when the Texan issue really led to war, Benton not only upheld the Government, but even sought a high command. Polk was willing to name him general, a sort of chief of staff to determine military policy, but Buchanan and other Democrats opposed. Though Benton finally declined a major-generalship, his military ambitions were achieved vicariously through the work of Frémont in taking California previously to the actual declaration of war. This intellectual detachment of Benton's, curious in a man personally so dynamic, dictated his attitude toward slavery. Here again, as has been noted in connection with his earlier legislative attitudes, Benton was essentially a moderate. As abolitionism gained converts in the North, and as Calhounism threatened secession in the South, Benton's moderate position grew increasingly difficult of maintenance. But moderate he was, and moderate he remained. Extension and agitation he equally opposed; abolitionists he scorned. His cry was peace, peace, when there was no peace.
Notwithstanding abolitionists and their wiles, Benton's belief in the essential fairness of the North was confirmed by his success in gaining an extension of Missouri on the northwest by an area equal to Delaware, wrested from free territory without any Northern protest. But whatever good-will Benton may have felt for slavery was entirely subordinate to his loyalty to the Union. In 1847, notwithstanding specific instructions from the Missouri legislature, he refused to uphold the Calhoun Resolutions in the Senate, because he regarded them as subversive of the Union. In the great debates on the Compromise of 1850, he maintained consistently his opposition to what he deemed too generous a concession to secessionists.
Benton desired the admission of California as a free state. He objected to the scheme of Calhoun's followers to divide California by the Missouri Compromise line extended. He believed that secessionists could not be satisfied with any solution short of complete control of the Government, and hence he deemed the Compromise a hollow sham. During the debate, Senator Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Benton - the greatest indignity the Senate had ever suffered. Throughout the session Benton found himself in active opposition to his colleague, Atchison. His opposition to the Compromise was his last important act as senator. In the breach within the Democratic ranks in 1848, caused by the decision of Van Buren to run as an independent against Lewis Cass, the party's nominee, he had avoided taking sides--a fatal error.
Henceforth Benton was a man without a party, and his political career was doomed. When in 1850 he opposed the Compromise, he offended his constituents past all forgiveness. Notwithstanding his championship of essential Western interests, such as the pony express, the telegraph, and the railroad, of which latter Benton was an early and influential spokesman, advocating federal aid by means of land grants for a transcontinental line with its terminus at St. Louis, Missourians could not forgive their senator's defection on the major issue, slavery. In 1850 a Whig senator was chosen from Missouri. Undiscouraged, Benton secured election to the House of Representatives, where he vainly fought the Missouri Compromise repeal. He now lost his seat in Congress, and in 1856 failed of election as governor.
Though his political career was over, a test of party allegiance remained in his support in 1856 of Buchanan as against Frémont. Indeed on this as on other issues, Benton displayed remarkable consistency. To quit the forum he so long had graced was a heavy blow. Indeed, his death from cancer in 1858 was probably hastened by his political dethronement; possibly, also, by the burning of his house and papers while he was in the midst of preparing his memoirs. For in his retirement, Benton composed at top speed, made possible by his remarkable memory, the elaborate Thirty Years' View (1854 - 1856), in which he surveyed the whole course of politics as he had seen it intimately from 1820 to 1850 - one of the outstanding autobiographies of politics. Side by side with this book, he completed another monumental work, Abridgement of the Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1856 (1857 - 1861).
Thomas Benton was a member of the Democratic party; the Tennessee Senate (1809–1811); the U. S. House of Representatives from Missouri's 1st district (1853-1855).
Membership
Thomas Benton was a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Connections
In 1821, Thomas Benton married Elizabeth McDowell, of a prominent Virginia family.