Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/300

 BENTON.

BENTON.



for ten years. Meanwhile he was elected county judge and secretary of state. In 18")6 he was made auditor of the canal department, liolding the jKisition until 1868, and while in the office introduced many needed reforms. He died in Little Kails. N. Y.. June '29. 18G9.

BENTO.N, Thomas Hart, statesman, was born near HillslKirough. N. C, March 14, 1782: son of Jesse and Anne (Go<;>ch) Benton. His father was a lawyer and private secretary of Governor Tryon. Thomas obtained a good education, and when he was sixteen years of age his mother, a widow, moved to Tennessee and took possession of forty thousand acres of land near Nash- ville, which was part of her hus- band's estate. With his three brothers he en- gaged in cotton planting, but their first crop was ruined by a heavy frost, and Thomas abandoned i)lant- ing to take up the study of law and was admitted to the Tennessee bar. He sat for one term in the state legislature, where he secured 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. During the war of 1812 he served as an aide-de-camp to Andrew Jackson, then major- general of the Tennessee militia, and marched with the Tennessee troops to the defence of the Lower Mississippi. "While serving under General Jackson the friendly relations which had so long existed between them suffered a severe strain, which la.sted for a number of years. William Carroll and Jesse Benton, a brother of Thomas, became involved in a dispute, and a duel was fought in which Jackson was Carroll's second. Jes.se sent an offensive account of the affair to Thomas, and on Sept. 4, 1813, Jack.son, with some friends, chanced to meet the Bentons in the streets of Nashville. Jack.son struck Thomas Ben- ton with a horsewhip; knives and pLstols were then freely used, and Jack.son received a ball in his left shoulder, while Jes.se Benton was cut severely with a dirk and a sword cane.

Mr. Benton earned his colonelcy in Jackson's army by raising a regiment of volunteers, and in 1813 President Madi.son appointed him lieu- tenant colonel in the U. S. army and sent him to Canada on his first duty. His observation while

there of the antagonistic relations l^etween the Frencli and English residents, added to his in- terest in the French settlers, who by the " Louisi- ana purchase " liad found themselves so sum- marily transferred to the dominion of their tradi- tional enemies, the English. At the close of the war Colonel Benton resigned his commission and removed to Missouri, which at that time was a frontier territory and the only ground held by the whites west of the Mississippi. At St. Louis he established the Missouri Inquirer, a pro-slavery journal, which he made so effective an agent in the bringmg about the famous Mis.souri compro- mise, that when the state was admitted to the Union, in 1821, he was sent to Congress as her first senator, and for thirty consecutive years he held his seat in that body. As editor of the In- quirer he was involved in several duels, in one of which he killed his opponent, a Mr. Lucas. It is said that he " looked the man to death before he killed him,"' but it is certain that he regretted the affair very deeply afterwards, as he destroyed all letters and papers referring to it. As a United States senator he made it his first business to study the Spanish language, .so as to deal fairly with the matter of the acquired territory. Among the many measures advocated by him while in Congress were the granting of pre- emptive rights to actual settlers: a periodic re- duction of the price of public land projwrtioned to the length of time it had been on the market; a donation of homesteads to certain persons; the opening to occupancy of the mineral and saline lands of Missouri: the repeal of the salt tax; the establisliment of post -roads and military stations from Missouri through the Indian territory to New Mexico; the opening to navigation of west- ern rivers and lakes, and the cultivation of ami- cable, treaty-keeping relations with the Indians and their removal to reservations as civilization crowded upon them. He voted for Clay's protec- tion tariff during Monroe's second administration and opposed internal improvements when di- rected by the national government to the benefit of favored states, and was ever a zealous advocate of state rights. He was at this time a Jacksonian Democrat, his political opponents being known as National Republicans and afterwards as Whigs. He was the friend of the pioneer, knowing his needs, sympafliizing with his liardships, and working valiantly to help him. He was promi- nent in the regulation of the affairs of the far west, and when his daughter Jessie married John Charles Fremont he had in him a most efficient ally. Colonel Benton was one of the first advo- cates of a railroad to the Pacific. He saw that the way to India lay not across the Atlantic, but across the Pacific, and when pointing westward he made his famous declaration, "There is the