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
