Benton County, Indiana
Thomas Hart Benton Biography
Thomas Hart Benton
Early life
Benton was born in Harts
Mill, North Carolina, near the present-day town of Hillsborough. His
father, a wealthy lawyer and landowner, died in 1790. Benton also
studied law at the University of North Carolina where he was a member
of the Philanthropic Society, but in 1799 left school to manage the
family estate.
Attracted by the
opportunities in the West, the young Benton moved the family to a
40,000 acre (160 km²) holding near Nashville, Tennessee. Here he
established a plantation with accompanying schools, churches, and
mills. His experience as a pioneer instilled a devotion to Jeffersonian
democracy which continued through his political career.
He continued his legal
education and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1805, and in 1809
served a term as state senator. He attracted the attention of
Tennessee's "first citizen" Andrew Jackson, under whose tutelage he
remained during the Tennessee years.
At the outbreak of the
War of 1812, Jackson made Benton his aide-de-camp, with a commission as
a lieutenant colonel. Benton was assigned to represent Jackson's
interests to military officials in Washington D.C.; he chafed under the
position, which denied him combat experience. When, in 1813, he heard
of insults Jackson had made against his brother Jesse, Benton
physically assaulted Jackson in a Nashville hotel. Violence erupted
between the two men's entourages, and Jackson narrowly escaped death
from being shot in the left arm and shoulder. Jackson and Benton became
bitter personal enemies thereafter.
United
States Senate career
After the war, in 1815,
Benton moved his estate to the newly-opened Missouri Territory. As a
Tennessean, he was under Jackson's shadow; in Missouri, he could be a
big fish in the as yet small pond. He settled in St. Louis, where he
practiced law and edited the Missouri Enquirer, the second major
newspaper west of the Mississippi River.
In 1817 during a court
case he and opposing attorney Charles Lucas (Missouri) accused each
other of lying. When Lucas ran into him at the voting polls he accused
Benton of being delinquent in paying his taxes and thus should not be
allowed to vote. Benton accused Lucas of being a "puppy" and Lucas
challenged Benton to a duel. They had a duel on Bloody Island with
Lucas being shot through the throat and Benton grazed in the knee.
Benton released Lucas from completing the duel. However rumors
circulated that Benton, a better shot, had made the rules of 30 feet
apart to favor him. Benton challenged Lucas to rematch on Bloody Island
with shots fired from nine feet. Lucas was shot close to the heart and
before dying told Benton "I forgive you."[1]
The Missouri Compromise
of 1820 made the territory into a state, and Benton was elected as one
of its first senators.
After the presidential
election of 1824, in which candidate Andrew Jackson received a
plurality but not a majority of votes and lost to John Quincy Adams in
the House of Representatives, Benton and Jackson put their personal
differences behind them and joined forces. Benton became the senatorial
leader for the Democratic-Republican Party, and as such argued
vigorously against the Bank of the United States. When Jackson was
censured by the Senate in 1834 for canceling the Bank's charter, Benton
led an "expungement campaign" to remove the motion from the official
record.
Benton was an unflagging
advocate for "hard money", that is gold coin (specie) or bullion as
money - as opposed to paper money "backed" by gold as in a "gold
standard". "Soft" (i.e. paper or credit) currency, in his opinion,
favored rich urban Easterners at the expense of the small farmers and
tradespeople of the West. He proposed a law requiring payment for
federal land in hard currency only, which was defeated in Congress but
later enshrined in an executive order, the Specie Circular, by Jackson
(1836). His position on currency earned him the nickname Old Bullion.
Senator Benton's greatest
concern, however, was the territorial expansion of the United States to
meet its "manifest destiny" as a continental power. He originally
considered the natural border of the US to be the Rocky Mountains, but
expanded his view to encompass the Pacific coast. He considered
unsettled land to be insecure, and tirelessly worked for settlement.
His efforts against soft money were mostly to discourage land
speculation, and thus encourage settlement.
Benton was instrumental
in the sole administration of the Oregon Territory. Since the
Anglo-American Convention of 1818, Oregon had been jointly occupied by
both the United States and United Kingdom. Benton pushed for a
settlement on Oregon and the Canadian border favorable to the United
States. The current border at the 49th parallel set by the Oregon
Treaty in 1846 was his choice; he was opposed to the extremism of the
"Fifty-four forty or fight" movement during the Oregon boundary dispute.
Benton was the author of
the first Homestead Acts, which encouraged settlement by giving land
grants to anyone willing to work the soil. He pushed for greater
exploration of the West, including support for his son-in-law John C.
Frémont's numerous treks. He pushed hard for public support of
the intercontinental railway and advocated greater use of the telegraph
for long-distance communication. He was also a staunch advocate of the
disenfranchisement and displacement of Native Americans in favor of
European settlers.
He was an orator and
leader of the first class, able to stand his own with or against fellow
senators Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Although an
expansionist, his personal morals made him opposed to greedy or
underhanded behavior -- thus his opposition to Fifty-Four Forty. Benton
advocated the annexation of Texas and argued for abrogation of the 1819
Adams-Onís Treaty in which the United States relinquished claims
to that territory, but he was opposed to the machinations that led to
its annexation in 1845 and the Mexican-American War. He believed that
expansion was for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of
powerful individuals.
On February 28, 1844,
Benton was present at the USS Princeton explosion when a cannon
misfired on deck while giving a tour of the Potomac River. The incident
killed more than seven people, including United States Secretary of
State Abel P. Upshur and United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas W.
Gilmer, and wounded over twenty. Benton was one of the injured, but his
injury was not serious and he did not miss one day from the Senate.
His loyalty to the
Democratic Party was legendary. Benton was the legislative
right-hand-man for Andrew Jackson, and continued this role for Martin
Van Buren. With the election of James K. Polk, however, his power began
to ebb, and his views diverged from the party's. His career took a
distinct downturn with the issue of slavery. Benton, a southerner and
slave owner, became increasingly uncomfortable with the topic. He was
also at odds with fellow Democrats such as John C. Calhoun, who he
thought put their opinions ahead of the Union to a treasonous degree.
With troubled conscience, in 1849 he declared himself "against the
institution of slavery," putting him against his party and popular
opinion in his state. In April 1850, during heated Senate floor debates
over the proposed Compromise of 1850, Benton was nearly shot by
pistol-wielding Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote, who had taken
umbrage to Benton's vitriolic sparring with Vice-President Millard
Fillmore. Foote was wrestled to the floor where he was disarmed.
He is one of the 8
senators profiled in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
Later life
Statue of Benton by
Harriet Hosmer erected in 1868 in St. Louis at Lafayette Park.
In 1851, Benton was
denied a sixth term by the Missouri electorate; the polarization of the
slavery issue made it impossible for a moderate and unionist to hold
that state's senatorial seat. In 1852 he successfully ran for the
United States House of Representatives, but his opposition to the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise led to his defeat in 1854. He ran for
Governor of Missouri in 1856, but lost to Trusten Polk. The same year
his son-in-law, John C. Frémont, ran for President on the
Republican Party ticket, but Benton was a party loyalist to the end,
and voted Democratic, the Democratic candidate that year being James
Buchanan.
He published his
autobiography, Thirty Years' View, in 1854, and died in Washington D.C.
two years later. His descendants have continued to be prominent in
Missouri life; his great-nephew, also Thomas Hart Benton, was a
20th-century painter.
Family
connections
Benton was related by
marriage or blood to a number of 19th Century luminaries. Two of his
nephews - Confederate General Samuel Benton of Mississippi and Union
Brigadier General Thomas H. Benton, Jr. - fought on opposite sides
during the Civil War. He was brother-in-law of Senator/Governor James
McDowell of Virginia; father-in-law of explorer, Union General and
presidential candidate John C. Fremont; and cousin-in-law of Senators
Henry Clay and James Brown whom both married cousins of Benton. His
grand nephew was painter Thomas Hart Benton.
Quotations
*
"Nobody opposes Benton, sir, nobody but a few black-jack prairie
lawyers. These are the only opponents of Benton. Benton and the people,
Benton and Democracy are one and the same sir, synonymous terms, sir,
synonymous terms."
* "I
never quarrel, sir, but I do fight, sir, and when I fight, sir, a
funeral follows, sir."
*
"General Jackson was a very great man, sir. I shot him, sir." (When
asked if he knew Andrew Jackson)
*
"When Andrew Jackson starts talking about hanging, men begin looking
for ropes." (During the Nullification Crisis)
Source: (From Wikipedia)