Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/301

 BENTON.

BERDAN.

east, and there is India,'" men thought nim crazy, but a bronze statue of the senator was erected on an eminence in Lafayette Park, St. Louis, Mo., on whose high jsedestal is inscribed those prophetic words. Benton became during Jackson's administration one of the most conspicu- ous pubUc men in the country. Dviring the politi- cal agitation caused by President Jackson's de- termination to overthrow the United States bank. Senator Benton was one of the strongest and most persistent defenders of the measure for placing the currency of the country on a metallic basis, and from the financial jsolicy enunciated in his speeches at the time he received his sobriquet of "Old Bullion." Speaking on the transfer of the government from the hands of the old Federal or revolutionary leaders and the pla- cing it in the hands of the plain people, Benton characterized it, as " saving the country from the deplorable conditions in which the enlightened classes had sunk it." He opposed Senator Samuel A. Footers resolution to limit the sales of public lands to such lands as were in the market, which he claimed brought the east against the west. This debate gave rise to the nullification announcement by Senator Hayne of South Caro- lina and the reply of Daniel Webster. He moved the famous " expunging resolutions," by which the vote of censure against General Jackson was struck from the journal of the senate, and opposed the spoils system born of the Jackson administra- tion. He participated in the discussion over the Oregon boundary, the annexation of Texas, and other important matters which came before the country. Upon the bill for the settlement of the Oregon boundary he said: "I grant that she (England) will take offence, but that is not the question with me. Has she a right to take offence? That is my question! And this being decided in the negative, I neither fear nor calcu- late consequences. ' ' When Calhoun proposed the division of the treasury surplus between the states, Senator Benton opposed the measure and defeated it. He caused the removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia and Alabama to the Indian territory in 1836, and supported the petition offered by the Quakers for the aboUtion of slavery in the District of Columbia. Colonel Benton was responsible for President Polk's acceptance of latitude 49° north as the Oregon line, instead of latitude 54° 40', and thus the United States relinquished territory which would now make its Pacific coast possessions continuous to Alaska. He prevailed upon President Polk to vigorously prosecute the Mexican war, and the president proposed to make him Heutenant- general of the army to carry out the policy he advocated, but subsequently relinquished the idea. He labored for the maintaining of the

Union from the beginning to the end of his career. Not his southern birth, nor his repre- sentation of a southern state, nor his slave-holding interests jjrevailed to carry him into the secession current. He opposed the state-rights coterie from nullification days down to the compromise of 1850, and it was his opposition to Calhoun's resolutions that cost him his seat in the senate. Benton and Calhoun were the bitterest of enemies after the nullification episode. Calhoun, on one occasion when Benton had violently opposed him, remarked that he had expected Benton's support " as a representative of a slave-holding state. ' ' Benton replied that he " had no right to expect any such thing." '"Then," said Mr. Callaoun, '• I shall know where to find that gentleman hereafter." To which Mr. Benton replied: "I shall be found in the right place, on the side of my country and the Union." In 1852 he was elected a representative to the 33d U. S. Congress, where he at first supported the administration of President Pierce ; but, when the Calhoun party obtained the ascendency he withdrew his support, and made a memorable speech in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. In 1854 he was again a candidate for Congress, but failed of an election, and in 1856 he was defeated in the race for the governorship of Missouri. In the presidential election of 1856 he opposed the candidacy of his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, and supported Buchanan, fearing the election of Fremont would be fatal to the permanence of the Union. In 1856 he retired to private life, and devoted himself to literary work. He completed his " Thirty Years' View ; or, a History of the Workings of the Ameri- can Government from 1830 to 1850," the first vol- ume of wliich had been published in 1854. Hav- ing finished this work, he commenced abridging and revising the debates in Congress from the foundation of the government up to the year 1856. He lived long enough to finish the work as far as to the conclusion of the great compromise debate of 1850, in which he, with Clay, Calhoun, Webster and Seward, had taken a conspicuous part. The last pages were dictated in whispers after he had lost the power of speaking aloud, and the work was published in fifteen volimies. He was the author of "An Examination of the Dred Scott Case." He died in Washington, D. C, April 10, 1858.

BERDAN, Hiram, inventor, was born at Ply- mouth, Mich., in 1823. His father was an exten- sive landowner and stock raiser near Rochester, N. Y., who sent him to Hobart college, where he made remarkable progress in mathematics and spent his leisure time in the construction of in- genious machinery. He entered a machine shop in Rochester as an apprentice. His creative power here displayed itself, and before he was