Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/269

Rh and Mr. Benton was made auditor of the canal department. He immediately secured the passage of certain legislative enactments increasing the duties as well as the power of the office, and effecting radical changes and improvements. When the "American party" died„ Mr. Benton allied his fortunes with the republicans, but retained his office of auditor until 1868.

BENTON, Thomas Hart, statesman, b. near Hillsborough, Orange co., N. C., 14 March, 1782; d. in Washington, 10 April, 1858. He was the son of Col. Jesse Benton, lawyer, of North Carolina, who was private secretary to Gov. Tryon, the last of the royal governors of North Carolina. His mother was Ann Gooch, of the Gooch family of Virginia. He was a cousin of the wife of Henry Clay, and was consequently often quoted during his public life as a relative of the great statesman himself. He lost his father before he was eight years of age, and was left with a large family of brothers and sisters, all of tender age, to the care of his mother. As Thomas was the eldest, his opportunities for study were few. He was for some time at a grammar-school, and afterward at the university of North Carolina, but did not complete a course of study there, as his mother removed to Tennessee to occupy a tract of 40,000 acres that had been acquired by his father. The family settled twenty-five miles south of Nashville, where for several years the main work was the opening a farm in the wilderness. The place, a tract of 3,000 acres, was known as &ldquo;The Widow Benton's Settlement,&rdquo; and was on the extreme verge of civilization. The great war-trail of the southern tribes led through the estate. Settlers gradually came, and with them a better assured protection. The place was called Bentontown, and the name is retained to this day. Thomas studied law with St. George Tucker, entered the U. S. army in 1810, and was admitted to the bar in Nashville in 1811 under the patronage of Andrew Jackson, at that time a judge of the supreme court, and one of his warmest friends. He was elected to the legislature, where he obtained the passage of a law for the reform of the judicial system of the state, and another by which the right of trial by jury was given to slaves. In the war of 1812 he was Jackson's aide-de-camp, and he also raised a regiment of volunteers. Owing to a quarrel in which his brother Jesse and William (afterward Gen.) Carroll became involved, he and his long-time friend Gen. Jackson became bitterly estranged for many years. A duel had been arranged between Jesse Benton and Carroll, and Gen. Jackson was Carroll's second. Jesse sent an offensive account of the matter to Thomas, who was then serving under Gen. Jackson in his military capacity. On 4 Sept., 1813, Jackson with some friends happened to meet the Benton brothers in the streets of Nashville. Jackson advanced upon Col. Benton and struck him with a horse-whip; a mêlée followed, and pistols and knives were freely used, and Jackson received a ball in his left shoulder, while Jesse Benton received severe dirk-wounds and thrusts from a sword-cane. The president appointed Col. Benton, in 1813, a lieutenant-colonel in the U. S. army, and he set out to serve in Canada, but peace having been declared, he returned and resigned his commission. In 1815 he took up his residence in St. Louis, and resumed the practice of law. He established a newspaper, the &ldquo;Missouri Inquirer,&rdquo; by which he became involved in several duels, and in one of them killed his opponent, a Mr. Lucas. He deeply regretted the event, and carefully destroyed all the private papers connected with the matter. His journal took a

stand in favor of the admission of Missouri to the union, notwithstanding her slavery constitution, and at the end of the controversy he was rewarded for his efforts by being chosen, in 1820, one of the senators from the new state. For a year he devoted himself to a close study of the Spanish language, in order to accomplish his work more thoroughly. Possessed of a commanding intellect and liberal culture, an assiduous student, resolute, temperate, industrious, and endowed with a memory whose tenacity was marvellous, he soon placed himself among the leaders in the national councils. One of his earliest efforts was to secure a reform in the disposition of the government lands to settlers. A pioneer himself, he sympathized with the demands of the pioneer, and in 1824, 1826, and 1828 advocated new land laws. The general distress that prevailed thnnighout the country, and bore with especial hardship on the land-purchasers of the west, forced attention to this subject. Col. Benton demanded: 1, a pre-emptive right to all actual settlers; 2, a periodic reduction according to the time the land had been in the market, so as to make the prices correspond to the quality; 3, the donation of homesteads to impoverished but industrious persons, who would cultivate the land for a given period of years. He presented a bill embracing these features, and renewed it every year until it took hold upon the public mind, and was at length substantially embodied in one of President Jackson's messages, which secured its final adoption. By his earnestness in advocating this bill and securing its final adoption, he gained the lasting friendship of every pioneer and settler in the great west. His position in the senate, and his firmness as a supporter of Jackson's administration, gave him great influence with the democratic party, and he impressed his views upon the president on every occasion.

Col. Benton also caused the adoption of a bill throwing the saline and mineral lands of Missouri, which belonged to the United States, open for occupancy. There was at this time a certain tribute levied on the people of the Mississippi valley, which proved in many cases a most unequal burden and was frequently oppressive. One part, which met with more hostility than any other, was known as the salt-tax. Benton took up the matter, and in the session of 1829-'30 delivered such elaborate arguments against the tax, and followed them up with such success, that it was repealed. He was one of the earliest advocates of a railroad to the Pacific, and was prominent in directing adventure to explorations in the far west, in encouraging overland transit to the Pacific, and in working for the occupancy of the mouth of the Columbia. As early as 1819 he had written largely on these subjects, and on his entry into congress renewed his efforts to engage the nation in these great enterprises. He first elaborated the project of overland connection, listened to the reports of trappers and voyageurs, and as science expanded, and knowledge of the great wilderness toward the mountains became more definite, his views took form in the proposals that culminated in the opening of the great central Pacific railway. He also favored the opening up and protection of the trade with New Mexico; encouraged the establishment of military stations on the Missouri, and throughout the interior; and urged the cultivation of amicable relations with the Indian tribes, and the fostering of the commerce of our inland seas. He turned his attention to the marking out of the great system of post-roads, and providing for their permanent maintenance.