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THOMAS H. BENTON

(1782-1858)

N JANUARY 19th, 1830, when Mr. Foot's innocent resolution to inquire into the sales of public lands was before the United States Senate, Thomas H. Benton turned several of his stately periods by an attack on Massachusetts, which precipitated one of the greatest parliamentary debates of modern times—that in which Hayne and Webster were pitted against each other on the right of a State to declare null a Federal statute.

Benton himself believed in what he called "the Virginia idea» of Nullification—which, as he defined it, was that an unconstitutional act is "null and void, as being against the Constitution, but is to be obeyed while it remains unrepealed and that its repeal is to be effected constitutionally."

Though he never succeeded in making this definition part of the creed of any political party, Benton held it himself to the end of his life, and after agreeing with Jackson that Calhoun was guilty of treason, he opposed Fremont, his own son-in-law, for the presidency, and so maintained his consistency to the last.

With Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, he stands as one of the most remarkable group of statesmen and orators of modern times. It happened more than once that he was opposed on questions of vital public policy to all three of the others of the great quartet and that he won against them as he did on what was once the burning question of the removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi.

Differing from each other in so many other respects, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun occupied common ground in their dissent from Benton's theory that the "better element" of the community is apt to give the worst results when it is trusted to govern the rest. This theory was involved in Jefferson's teachings, but it did not come into actual and rude collision with the stately patriotism of the gentlemen of the colonial and revolutionary period until such of them as survived in 1828 saw Jackson with Benton at his back ready to force issues in its behalf as they had never been forced before in any English-speaking country. The shock produced was so profound that, becoming cumulative from year to year, it resulted finally in the great panic and prostration of business under Van Buren. In his war against the United States Bank, in his detestation of Calhoun and Nullification, in his long fight for vindication under the "Expunging

resolution," Jackson had Benton for his real prime minister and parliamentary leader. Among the American statesmen of the nineteenth century, only Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Lincoln can be conceded to have influenced the history of their country more deeply than did the great Missourian. What his intellect lacked in flexibility it gained in force. The country can never produce his like again. Men may be greater in other ways hereafter, but no one else will ever be great in Benton's way. Such desperate brawls as that in which he and his brother Jesse worsted Jackson's superior forces in Nashville were common enough in 1813, but it is characteristic of Benton, and only of Benton, that the incident was merely an incident with him. He had somehow got into a world which required, or seemed to require, of him to hold his own life and that of others cheap where the alternative was retreat or surrender. But that, after the Nashville fight, he should have been Jackson's lifelong and strongest friend,—that is so much a part of the individuality peculiar to two men, each of whom was in his own way unique, that it is useless to try to explain it.

Benton was born in Hillsborough, North Carolina, March 14th, 1782. The removal of his family to Tennessee interrupted his studies at the University of North Carolina, but in one way and another he managed to continue them though life; and, as his speeches show, he had at his command such a stock of information on public affairs as few other statesmen of his time possessed. After his quarrel with Jackson who had been his friend and patron in Tennessee, he removed to St. Louis where for a time he edited the Missouri Enquirer. According to one version of the Lucas duel, he was involved in that tragedy by an article which appeared in the Enquirer while it was under his charge. He was elected Senator from Missouri in 1820 and held the place for thirty years. After his defeat for the Senate he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1852. In 1856 he ran for governor of the State to vindicate the democracy of Andrew Jackson's time against the school of Calhoun, but he was defeated. In the presidential campaign of 1856 he supported Buchanan and opposed Fremont, who as the nominee of the Republican party stood for constitutional views to which Benton was not less opposed than to those of Calhoun. He died April 10th, 1858, at Washington.

It is a noteworthy fact that Benton's influence survives the struggle over slavery and the Civil War to a much greater extent than does that of any other statesman of his time, Clay only excepted. As "Old Bullion," and the stalwart advocate of a currency of the precious metals issued only by the government, he is identified with a permanent question of public policy much as Clay by his advocacy of the "American System" is with that of indirect taxation.

411

THE

THE POLITICAL CAREER OF ANDREW JACKSON

(United States Senate, January 12th, 1837)

HE Expunging resolution and preamble having been read, Mr. Benton said: Mr. President, it is now near three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate, which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal. At the moment that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to move to expunge it, and then expressed my confident belief that the motion would eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition of vanity, nor a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, nor an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the justice of the American people. I felt that the President had been wronged, and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed. The event proves that I was not mistaken. The question of expunging this resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has been had upon it. They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us in a great variety of ways. A great number of States have expressly instructed their Senators to vote for this expurgation. A very great majority of the States have elected Senators and Representatives to Congress, upon the express ground of favoring this expurgation. The Bank of the United. States, which took the initiative in the accusation against the President, and furnished the material and worked the machinery which was used against him, and which was then so powerful on this floor, has become more and more odious to the public mind, and musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the two houses of Congress. The late presidential election furnishes additional evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the friend of President Jackson, the supporter of his administration, and the avowed advocate for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of his sentiments on this precise point. The evidence of the public will, exhibited in all these forms, is too manifest to be mistaken, too explicit to require illustration, and too imperative to be disregarded. Omitting

details and specific enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own files for the instructions to expunge-to the complexion of the two houses for the temper of the people—to the denationalized condition of the Bank of the United States for the fate of the imperious accuser—and to the issue of the presidential election for the answer of the Union. All these are pregnant proofs of the public will; and the last pre-eminently so, because both the question of the expurgation and the form of the process were directly put in issue upon it. A representative of the people from the State of Kentucky formally interrogated a prominent candidate for the presidency on these points, and required from him a public answer, for the information of the public mind. The answer was given, and published, and read by all the voters before the election; and I deem it right to refer to that answer in this place, not only as evidence of the points put in issue, but also for the purpose of doing more ample justice to President Jackson, by incorporating into the legislative history of this case the high and honorable testimony in his favor of the eminent citizen who has just been exalted to the lofty honors of the American presidency:

"Your last question seeks to know 'my' opinion as to the constitutional power of the Senate or House of Representatives to expunge or obliterate from the journals the proceedings of a previous session.

"You will, I am sure, be satisfied, upon further consideration, that there are but few questions of a political character less connected with the duties of the office of President of the United States, or that might not with equal propriety be put by an elector to a candidate for that station, than this. With the journals of neither house of Congress can he properly have anything to do. But as your question has doubtless been induced by the pendency of Colonel Benton's resolutions to expunge from the journals of the Senate certain other resolutions touching the official conduct of President Jackson, I prefer to say that I regard the passage of Colonel Benton's preamble and resolutions to be an act of justice to a faithful and greatly injured public servant, not only constitutional in itself but imperiously demanded by a proper respect for the well-known will of the people."

I do not propose, sir, to draw violent, unwarranted, or strained inferences. I do not assume to say that the question of this expurgation was a leading or controlling point in the issue of this election. I do not assume to say or insinuate that every individual and every voter delivered his suffrage with reference to

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