The wonderful hardihood and daring shown in the various expeditions against Mexico, especially in those whereby her northwest territory was wrested from her, naturally called forth all Benton's sympathy; and one of his best speeches was that made to welcome Doniphan's victorious volunteers after their return home from their famous march to Chihuahua.
Hardly was Polk elected before it became evident to Benton and the other Jacksonians that the days of the old Union or Nationalist Democracy were over, and that the separatist and disunion elements within the party had obtained the upper hand. The first sign of the new order of things was the displacement of Blair, editor of the "Globe," the Democratic newspaper organ. Blair was a strong Unionist, and had been bitterly hostile to Calhoun and the Nullifiers. He had also opposed Tyler, the representative of those states-rights and separatist Democrats, who by their hostility to Jackson had been temporarily driven into the Whig camp, and who, finding themselves in very uncongenial society, and seeing, moreover, that their own principles were gradually coming to the front in the old party, had begun drifting back again into it. Polk's chances of election were so precarious that he was most anxious to conciliate the Separatists; besides which he atheart sympathized with their views, and had himself been brought forward in the Democratic convention to beat the National candidate, Van Buren. Moreover, Tyler withdrew from the contest in his favor; in part payment for which help, soon after the election, Blair was turned out, and Ritchie of Virginia, a man whose views suited the new Democratic leaders, was put in his place; to the indignation not only of Benton, but also of Jackson himself, then almost on his death-bed. Of course the break between the two wings was as yet by no means complete. Polk needed the Union Democrats, and the latter were still in good party standing. Benton himself, as has been seen, was offered the command of all the forces in Mexico, but the governmental policy, and the attitude of the party in Congress after 1844, were widely different from what they had been while Jackson's influence was supreme, or while the power he left behind him was wielded by a knot of Union men.
From this time the slavery question dwarfed all others, and was the one with which Benton, as well as other statesmen, had mainly to deal. He had been very loath to acknowledge that it was ever to become of such overshadowing importance; until late in his life he had not realized that, interwoven with the disunionistmovement, it had grown so as to become in reality the one and only question before the people; but, this once thoroughly understood, he henceforth devoted his tremendous energies to the struggle with it. He possessed such phenomenal power of application and of study, and his capacity for and his delight in work were so extraordinary, that he was able at the same time to grapple with many other subjects of importance, and to present them in a way that showed he had thoroughly mastered them both in principle and detail,—as witness his speech in favor of giving the control of the coast survey to the navy; but henceforth the importance of his actions lay in their relation to the slavery extension movements.
He had now entered on what may fairly be called the heroic part of his career; for it would be difficult to choose any other word to express our admiration for the unflinching and defiant courage with which, supported only by conscience and by his loving loyalty to the Union, he battled for the losing side, although by so doing he jeopardized and eventually ruined his political prospects, being finally, as punishment for his boldness in opposing the dominant faction of the Missouri Democracy, turned out of the Senate, wherein he had passed nearly half his life. Indeed, his was one of those natures thatshow better in defeat than in victory. In his career there were many actions that must command our unqualified admiration; such were his hostility to the Nullifiers, wherein, taking into account his geographical location and his refusal to compromise, he did better than any other public man, not even excepting Jackson and Webster; his belief in honest money; and his attitude towards all questions involving the honor or the maintenance and extension of the Union. But in all these matters he was backed more or less heartily by his state, and he had served four terms in the federal Senate as the leading champion and representative, not alone of Missouri, but also of the entire West. When, however, the slavery question began to enter upon its final stage, Benton soon found himself opposed to a large and growing faction of the Missouri Democracy, which increased so rapidly that it soon became dominant. But he never for an instant yielded his convictions, even when he saw the ground being thus cut from under his feet, fighting for the right as sturdily as ever, facing his fate fearlessly, and going down without a murmur. The contrast between the conduct towards the slavery disunionists of this Democrat from a slave-holding state, with a hostile majority at home against him, and the conduct of Webster, a Whig, enthusiasticallybacked by his own free state, in the same issue, is a painful one for the latter. Indeed, on any moral point, Benton need have no cause to fear comparison with any of his great rivals in the political arena. During his career, the United States Senate was perhaps the most influential, and certainly the ablest legislative body in the world; and after Jackson's presidency came to an end the really great statesmen and political leaders of the country were to be found in it, and not in the executive chair. The period during which the great Missourian was so prominent a figure in our politics, and which lasted up to the time of the Civil War, might very appropriately be known in our history as the time of the supremacy of the Senate. Such senators as Benton, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, and later on Douglas, Seward, and Sumner, fairly towered above presidents like the obscure Southerners, Tyler and Polk, or the truckling, timeserving Northern politicians, Pierce and Buchanan. During the long interval coming between the two heroic ages of American history,—the age of Washington and Franklin, and the age of Lincoln and Grant,—it was but rarely that the nation gave its greatest gift to its best or its greatest son.
Benton had come into the Senate at the same time that Missouri was admitted into the Union,with thanks, therefore, to the same measure, the Missouri Compromise bill. This shut out slavery from all territory north of the line of 36° 30', and did not make it obligatory even where it was permissible; and the immediate cause of Benton's downfall was his courage and persistency in defending the terms of this compromise from the attacks of the Southern slavery extensionists and disunionists. The pro-slavery feeling was running ever higher and higher throughout the South; and his stand on this question aroused the most furious anger among a constantly increasing number of his constituents, and made him the target for bitter and savage assaults on the part of his foes, the spirit of hostility against him being carried to such length as finally almost to involve him in an open brawl on the floor of the Senate with one of his colleagues, Foote, who, like his fellow fire-eaters, found that Benton was not a man who could be bullied. Indeed, his iron will and magnificent physique both fitted him admirably for such a contest against odds, and he seems to have entered into it with a positive zest.
The political Abolitionists having put Polk in power, their action bore fruit after its kind, and very soon the question had to be faced, as to what should be done with the immense tracts of territory conquered from Mexico. Benton opposed,as being needless and harmful, the Wilmot Proviso, which forbade the introduction of slavery into any part of the territory so acquired. He argued, and produced in evidence the laws and Constitution of Mexico, that the soil of California and Mexico was already free, and that as slavery would certainly never be, and indeed could never be, introduced into either territory, the agitation of the question could only result in harm. Calhoun and the other extreme slavery leaders welcomed the discussion over this proviso, which led Benton to remark that the Abolitionists and the Nullifiers were necessary to each other,—the two blades of a pair of shears, neither of which could cut until they were joined together.
When Calhoun introduced his famous resolutions declaring that Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in the territories, and therefore no power to prevent the admission of new states except on the condition of their prohibiting slavery within their limits, Benton promptly and strongly opposed them as being firebrands needlessly thrown to inflame the passions of the extremists, and, moreover, as being disunionist in tendency. The following is his own account of what then took place: "Mr. Calhoun said he had expected the support of Mr. Benton 'as the representative of a slave-holdingstate.' Mr. Benton answered that it was impossible that he could have expected such a thing. 'Then,' said Mr. Calhoun, 'I shall know where to find that gentleman.' To which Mr. Benton said: 'I shall be found in the right place,—on the side of my country and the Union.' This answer, given on that day and on the spot, is one of the incidents of his life which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to remember." We can easily pardon the vanity which wishes and hopes that such an answer, given under such conditions, may be remembered. Indeed, Benton's attitude throughout all this period should never be forgotten; and the words he spoke in answer to Calhoun marked him as the leader among those Southerners who held the nation above any section thereof, even their own, and whose courage and self-sacrifice in the cause of the Union entitled them to more praise than by right belongs to any equal number of Northerners; those Southerners who in the civil war furnished Farragut, Thomas, Bristow, and countless others as loyal as they were brave. The effect of Benton's teachings and the still remaining influence of his intense personality did more than aught else to keep Missouri within the Union, when her sister states went out of it.
Benton always regarded much of the slaveryagitation in the South as being political in character, and the result of the schemes of ambitious and unscrupulous leaders. He believed that Calhoun had introduced a set of resolutions that were totally uncalled for, simply for the purpose of carrying a question to the Slave States on which they could be formed into a unit against the Free States; and there is much to be said in support of his view. Certainly the resolutions mark the beginning of the first great slavery agitation throughout the Southern States, which was engineered and guided for their own ends by politicians like Jefferson Davis. These resolutions were absolutely inconsistent with many of Calhoun's previous declarations; and that fact was also sharply commented on by Benton in his speeches and writings. He also criticised with caustic severity Calhoun's statements that he wished to save the Union by forcing the North to take a position so agreeable to the South as to make the latter willing not to separate. He showed that Calhoun's proposed "constitutional" and "peaceable" methods of bringing this about by prohibiting commercial intercourse between the two sections would themselves be flagrant breaches of the Constitution and acts of disunion,—all the more so as it was proposed to discriminate in favor of the Northwest as against the Northeast. Calhoun wishedto bring about a convention of the Southern States, in order to secure the necessary unity of action; and one of the main obstacles to the success of the plan was Missouri's refusal to take part in it. Great efforts were made to win her over, and to beat down Benton; the extreme pro-slavery men honoring him with a hatred more intense than that they harbored towards any Northerner. Some of Calhoun's recent biographers have credited him with being really a Union man at heart. It seems absolutely impossible that this could have been the case; and the supposition is certainly not compatible with the belief that he retained his right senses. Benton characterizes his system of slavery agitation, very truthfully, as being one "to force issues upon the North under the pretext of self-defense, and to sectionalize the South, preparatory to disunion, through the instrumentality of sectional conventions, composed wholly of delegates from the slave-holding states."
When the question of the admission of Oregon came up, Calhoun attempted to apply to it a dogma wholly at variance with all his former positions on the subject. This was the theory of the self-extension of the slavery part of the Constitution to the territories; that is, he held that the exclusion of slavery from any part of the new territory was itself a subversion of theConstitution. Such a dogma was so monstrous in character, so illogical, so inconsistent with all his former theories, and so absolutely incompatible with the preservation of the Union, that it renders it impossible to believe that his asseverations of devotion to the latter were uttered honestly or in good faith. Most modern readers will agree with Benton that he deliberately worked to bring about secession.
Meanwhile the Missourian had gained an ally of his own stamp in the Senate. This was Houston, from the new State of Texas, who represented in that state, like Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, and Benton himself in Missouri, the old Nationalist Democracy, which held the preservation of the Union dear above all other things. Houston was a man after Benton's own heart, and was thoroughly Jacksonian in type. He was rough, honest, and fearless, a devoted friend and a vengeful enemy, and he promised that combination of stubborn courage and capacity of devotion to an ideal that renders a man an invaluable ally in a fight against odds for principle.
After much discussion and amendment, the Oregon bill, containing a radical anti-slavery clause, passed both houses and became a law in spite of the violent opposition of some of the Southerners, headed by Calhoun, who announcedthat the great strife between the North and the South was ended, and that the time had come for the South to show that, though she prized the Union, yet there were matters which she regarded as of greater importance than its preservation. His ire was most fiercely excited by the action of Benton and Houston in supporting the bill, and after his return to South Carolina he denounced them by name as traitors to the South,—"a denunciation," says Benton, "which they took for a distinction; as what he called treason to the South they knew to be allegiance to the Union." When it was proposed to extend by bill the Constitution of the United States into the territories, with a view to carrying slavery into California, Utah, and New Mexico, Benton was again opposed to Calhoun. As a matter of course, too, he was the stoutest opponent of the Southern convention and other similar disunion movements that were beginning to take shape throughout the South, instigated by the two rank secession states of South Carolina and Mississippi.
Most of the momentous questions springing out of the war with Mexico were left by Polk as legacies to his successor, when the former went out of office, after an administration that Benton criticised with extreme sharpness, although he tried to shield the president by castingthe blame for his actions upon his cabinet advisers; characterizing the Mexican War as one of "speculation and intrigue," and as the "great blot" of his four years' term of office, and ridiculing the theory that we were acting in self-defense, or that our soil had been invaded. In 1848 the Democrats nominated Cass, a Northern pro-slavery politician of moderate abilities, and the Whigs put up and elected old Zachary Taylor, the rough frontier soldier and Louisiana slave-holder. The political Abolitionists again took a hand in the contest, but this time abandoned their abolition theories, substituting instead thereof the prohibition of slavery in the new territories. They derived much additional importance from their alliance with a disappointed politician in the pivotal State of New York; and in this case, in sharp contrast to the result in 1844, their actions worked good, and not evil. Van Buren, chagrined and angered by the way he was treated by the regular Democrats, organized a revolt against them, and used the banner of the new Free Soil party as one under which to rally his adherents. This movement was of consequence mainly in New York, and there it soon became little more than a mere fight between the two sections of the Democracy. Benton himself visited this all-important state to try to patchup matters, but he fortunately failed. The factions proved very nearly equal in strength; and as a consequence the Whigs carried the state and the election, and once more held the reins of government.
When a Louisiana slave-holder was thus installed in the White House, the extreme Southern men may have thought that they were sure of him as an ally in their fight against freedom. But, if so, they soon found they had reckoned without their host, for the election of Taylor affords a curious, though not solitary, instance in which the American people builded better than they knew in choosing a chief executive. Nothing whatever was known of his political theories, and the Whigs nominated him simply because he was a successful soldier, likely to take the popular fancy. But once elected he turned out to have the very qualities we then most needed in a president,—a stout heart, shrewd common sense, and thorough-going devotion to the Union. Although with widely different training from Benton, and nominally differing from him in politics, he was yet of the same stamp both in character and principles; both were Union Southerners, not in the least afraid of openly asserting their opinions, and, if necessary, of making them good by their acts. In his first and only annual message, Taylor expressed,upon all the important questions of the day, views that were exactly similar to those advanced before or after by Benton himself in the Senate; and he used similar emphasis and plainness of speech. He declared the Union to be the greatest of blessings, which he would maintain in every way against whatever dangers might threaten it; he advised the admission of California, which wished to come in as a free state; he thought that the territories of Utah and New Mexico should be left as they were; and he warned the Texans, who were blustering about certain alleged rights to New Mexican soil, and threatening to take them by force of arms, that this could not be permitted, and that the matter would have to be settled by the judicial authority of the United States. Benton heartily indorsed the message. Naturally, it was bitterly assailed by the disunionists under Calhoun; and even Clay, who entirely lacked Taylor's backbone, was dissatisfied with it as being too extreme in tone, and conflicting with his proposed compromise measures. These same compromise measures brought the Kentucky leader into conflict with Benton also, especially on the point of their interfering with the immediate admission of California into the Union.
This is not the place to discuss Clay's proposedcompromise, which was not satisfactory to the extreme Southerners, and still less so to the Unionists and anti-slavery men. It consisted of five different parts, relating to the recovery of fugitive slaves, the suppression of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as a state, and the territorial condition of Utah and New Mexico. Benton opposed it as mixing up incongruous measures; as being unjust to California, inasmuch as it confounded the question of her admission with the general slavery agitation in the United States; and above all as being a concession or capitulation to the spirit of disunion and secession, and therefore a repetition of the error of 1833. Benton always desired to meet and check any disunion movement at the very outset, and, if he had had his way, would have carried matters with a high hand whenever it came to dealing with threats of such a proceeding; and therein he was perfectly right. In regard to the proposed compromise he believed in dealing with each question as it arose, beginning with the admission of California, and refusing to have any compromise at all with those who threatened secession.
The slavery extensionists endeavored to have the Missouri compromise line stretched on to the Pacific. Benton, avowing his belief thatslavery was an evil, opposed this, and gave his reasons why he did not wish to see the line which had been used to divide free and slave soil in the French or Louisiana purchase extended into the lands won from Mexico. Slavery had always existed in Louisiana, while it had been long abolished in Mexico. "The Missouri compromise line, extending to New Mexico and California, though astronomically the same as that in Louisiana, would be politically directly the opposite. One went through a territory all slave, and made one half free; the other would go through territory all free, and make one half slave." In fact Benton, as he grew older, unlike most of his compatriots, gained a clearer insight into the effects of slavery. This was shown in his comments upon Calhoun's statement, made in the latter's last speech, in reference to the unequal development of the North and South; which, Benton said, was partly owing to the existence of "slavery itself, which he (Calhoun) was so anxious to extend." It was in this same speech that Calhoun hinted at his plan for a dual executive,—one president from the Free and one from the Slave States,—a childish proposition, that Benton properly treated as a simple absurdity.
In his speech against the compromise, Benton discussed it, section by section, with great force,and with his usual blunt truthfulness. His main count was the injustice done to California by delaying her admittance, and making it dependent upon other issues; but he made almost as strong a point against the effort to settle the claims of Texas to New Mexican territory. The Texan threats to use force he treated with cavalier indifference, remarking that as long as New Mexico was a territory, and therefore belonged to the United States, any controversy with her was a controversy with the federal government, which would know how to play her part by "defending her territory from invasion, and her people from violence,"—a hint that had a salutary effect upon the Texans; in fact the disunionists, generally, were not apt to do much more than threaten while a Whig like Taylor was backed up by a Democrat like Benton. He also pointed out that it was not necessary, however desirable, to make a compact with Texas about the boundaries, as they could always be settled, whether she wished it or not, by a suit before the Supreme Court; and again intimated that a little show of firmness would remove all danger of a collision. "As to anything that Texas or New Mexico may do in taking or relinquishing possession, that is all moonshine. New Mexico is the property of the United States, and she cannotdispose of herself or any part of herself, nor can Texas take her or any part of her." He showed a thorough acquaintance with New Mexican geography and history, and alluded to the bills he had already brought in, in 1844 and 1850, to establish a divisional line between the territory and Texas, on the longitude first of one hundred and then of one hundred and two degrees. He recalled the fact that before the annexation of Texas, and in a bill proposing to settle all questions with her, he had inserted a provision forever prohibiting slavery in all parts of the annexed territory lying west of the hundredth degree of longitude. He also took the opportunity of formally stating his opposition to any form of slavery extension, remarking that it was no new idea with him, but dated from the time when in 1804, while a law student in Tennessee, he had studied Blackstone as edited by the learned Virginian, Judge Tucker, who, in an appendix, treated of, and totally condemned, black slavery in the United States. The very difficulty, or, as he deemed it, the impossibility, of getting rid of the evil, made Benton all the more determined in opposing its extension. "The incurability of the evil is the greatest objection to the extension of slavery. If it is wrong for the legislator to inflict an evil which can be cured, how muchmore to inflict one that is incurable, and against the will of the people who are to endure it forever! I quarrel with no one for deeming slavery a blessing; I deem it an evil, and would neither adopt it nor impose it on others." The solution of the problem of disposing of existent slavery, he confessed, seemed beyond human wisdom; but "there is a wisdom above human, and to that we must look. In the mean time, do not extend the evil." In justification of his position he quoted previous actions of Congress, done under the lead of Southern men, in refusing again and again, down to 1807, to allow slavery to be introduced into Indiana, when that community petitioned for it. He also repudiated strongly the whole spirit in which Clay had gotten up his compromise bill, stating that he did not believe in geographical parties; that he knew no North and no South, and utterly rejected any slavery compromises except those to be found in the Constitution. Altogether it was a great speech, and his opposition was one of the main causes of the defeat of Clay's measure.
Benton's position on the Wilmot Proviso is worth giving in his own words: "That measure was rejected again as heretofore, and by the votes of those who were opposed to extending slavery into the territories, because it wasunnecessary and inoperative,—irritating to the Slave States, without benefit to the Free States, a mere work of supererogation, of which the fruit was discontent. It was rejected, not on the principle of non-intervention; not on the principle of leaving to the territories to do as they pleased on the question, but because there had been intervention; because Mexican law and constitution had intervened, had abolished slavery by law in those dominions; which law would remain in force until repealed by Congress. All that the opponents to the extension of slavery had to do, then, was to do nothing. And they did nothing."
Before California was admitted into the Union old Zachary Taylor had died, leaving behind him a name that will always be remembered among our people. He was neither a great statesman nor yet a great commander; but he was an able and gallant soldier, a loyal and upright public servant, and a most kindly, honest, and truthful man. His death was a greater loss to the country than perhaps the people ever knew.
The bill for the admission of California as a free state, heartily sustained by Benton, was made a test question by the Southern disunionists; but on this occasion they were thoroughly beaten. The great struggle was made over aproposition to limit the southern boundary of the state to the line of 36° 30', and to extend the Missouri line through to the Pacific, so as to authorize the existence of slavery in all the territory south of that latitude. This was defeated by a vote of thirty-two to twenty-four. Not only Benton, but also Spruance and Wales of Delaware, and Underwood of Kentucky, joined with the representatives from the Free States in opposing it. Had it not been for the action of these four slave-state senators in leaving their associates, the vote would have been a tie; and their courage and patriotism should be remembered. The bill was then passed by a vote of thirty-four to eighteen, two other Southern senators, Houston of Texas, and Bell of Tennessee, voting for it, in addition to the four already mentioned. After its passage, ten of the senators who had voted against it, including, of course, Jefferson Davis, and also Benton's own colleague from Missouri, Atchison, joined in a protest against what had been done, ending with a thinly veiled threat of disunion,—"dissolution of the confederacy," as they styled it. Benton stoutly and successfully opposed allowing this protest to be received or entered upon the journal, condemning it, with a frankness that very few of his fellow-senators would havedared to copy, as being sectional and disunion in form, and therefore unfit even for preservation on the records.
When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, through the help of some Northern votes, Benton refused to support it; and this was the last act of importance that he performed as United States Senator. He had risen and grown steadily all through his long term of service; and during its last period he did greater service to the nation than any of his fellow-senators. Compare his stand against the slavery extremists and disunionists, such as Calhoun, with the position of Webster at the time of his famous seventh of March speech, or with that of Clay when he brought in his compromise bill! In fact, as the times grew more troublesome, he grew steadily better able to do good work in them.
It is this fact of growth that especially marks his career. No other American statesman, except John Quincy Adams,—certainly neither of his great contemporaries, Webster and Clay,—kept doing continually better work throughout his term of public service, or showed himself able to rise to a higher level at the very end than at the beginning. Yet such was the case with Benton. He always rose to meet a really great emergency; and his services to thenation grew steadily in importance to the very close of his life. Whereas Webster and Clay passed their zenith and fell, he kept rising all the time.
Benton had now finished his fifth and last term in the United States Senate. He had been chosen senator from Missouri before she was admitted into the Union, and had remained such for thirty years. During all that time the state had been steadily Democratic, the large Whig minority never being able to get control; but on the question of the extension of slavery the dominant party itself began at this time to break into two factions. Hitherto Benton had been the undisputed leader of the Democracy, but now the pro-slavery and disunionist Democrats organized a very powerful opposition to him; while he still received the enthusiastic support of an almost equally numerous body of followers. Although the extension of slavery and the preservation of the Union were the two chief and vital points on which the factions differed, yet the names by which they designated each other were adopted in consequence of their differing also on a third and only less importantone. Benton was such a firm believer in hard money, and a currency of gold and silver, as to have received the nickname of "Old Bullion," and his followers were called "hards;" his opponents were soft money men, in addition to being secessionists and pro-slavery fanatics, and took the name of "softs." The principles of the Bentonians were right, and those of their opponents wrong; but for all that the latter gradually gained upon the former. Finally, in the midst of Benton's fight against the extension of slavery into the territories, the "softs" carried the Missouri legislature, and passed a series of resolutions based upon those of Calhoun. These were most truculent and disloyal in tone, demanding that slavery be permitted to exist in all the new states to be admitted, and instructing their senators to vote accordingly. These resolutions were presented in the senate by Benton's colleague from Missouri, Atchison, who was rather hostile to him and to every other friend of the Union, and later on achieved disreputable notoriety as a leader of the "border ruffians" in the affrays on the soil of Kansas. Benton at once picked up the glove that had been flung down. He utterly refused to obey the resolutions, denounced them savagely as being treasonable and offensive in the highest degree, asserted thatthey did not express the true opinions of the voters of the state, and appealed from the Missouri legislature to the Missouri people.
The issue between the two sides was now sharply brought out, and, as this took place towards the end of Benton's fifth term, the struggle to command the legislature which should reëlect him or give him a successor was most exciting. Benton himself took an active part in the preliminary canvass. Neither faction was able to get a majority of the members, and the deadlock was finally broken by the "softs" coming to the support of the Whigs, and helping them to elect Benton's rival. Thus, after serving his state faithfully and ably for thirty years, he was finally turned out of the position which he so worthily filled, because he had committed the crime of standing loyally by the Union.
But the stout old Nationalist was not in the least cast down or even shaken by his defeat. He kept up the fight as bitterly as ever, though now an old man, and in 1852 went to Congress as a representative Union Democrat. For thirty years he had been the autocrat of Missouri politics, and had at one time wielded throughout his own state a power as great as Calhoun possessed in South Carolina; greater than Webster held in Massachusetts, or Clayin Kentucky. But the tide which had so long flowed in his favor now turned, and for the few remaining years of his life set as steadily against him; yet at no time of his long public career did he stand forth as honorably and prominently as during his last days, when he was showing so stern a front to his victorious foes. His love for work was so great that, when out of the Senate, he did not find even his incessant political occupations enough for him. During his contest for the senatorship his hands had been full, for he had spoken again and again throughout the entire state, his carefully prepared speeches showing remarkable power, and filled with scathing denunciation and invective and biting and caustic sarcasm. But so soon as his defeat was assured he turned his attention immediately to literature, setting to work on his great "Thirty Years' View," of which the first volume was printed during his congressional term, and was quoted on the floor of the House, both by his friends and foes, during the debates in which he was taking part.
In 1852, when he was elected to Congress as a member of the House, he had supported Pierce for the presidency against Scott, a good general, but otherwise a wholly absurd and flatulent personage, who was the Whig nominee.But it soon became evident that Pierce was completely under the control of the secession wing of the party, and Benton thereafterwards treated him with contemptuous hostility, despising him, and seeing him exactly as he was,—a small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler. He was ever ready to do any work the slavery leaders set him, and to act as their attorney in arguing in its favor,—to quote Benton's phrase, with "undaunted mendacity, moral callosity [and] mental obliquity." His last message to Congress in the slavery interest Benton spoke of as characteristic, and exemplifying "all the modes of conveying untruths which long ages have invented,—direct assertion, fallacious inference, equivocal phrase, and false innuendo." As he entertained such views of the head of the Democratic party, and as this same head was in hearty accord with, and a good representative of the mass of the rank and file politicians of the organization, it is small wonder that Benton found himself, on every important question that came up while he was in Congress, opposed to the mass of his fellow-Democrats.
Although the great questions to which he devoted himself, while a representative in Congress,were those relating to the extension of slavery, yet he also found time to give to certain other subjects, working as usual with indomitable energy, and retaining his marvelous memory to the last. The idea of desponding or giving up, for any cause whatever, simply never entered his head. When his house, containing all the manuscript and papers of the nearly completed second volume of his "Thirty Years' View," was burned up, he did not delay a minute in recommencing his work, and the very next day spoke in Congress as usual.
His speeches were showing a steady improvement; they were not masterpieces, even at the last, but in every way, especially in style, they were infinitely superior to those that he had made on his first entrance into public life. Of course, a man with his intense pride in his country, and characterized by such a desire to see her become greater and more united in every way, would naturally support the proposal to build a Pacific Railroad, and accordingly he argued for it at great length and with force and justness, at the same time opposing the propositions to build northern and southern trans-continental roads as substitutes for the proposed central route. He showed the character of the land through which the road would run, and the easiness of the passes across the Rockies, and prophesied a rapid increaseof states as one of the results attendant upon its building. At the end of his speech he made an elaborate comparison of the courses of trade and commerce at different periods of the world's history, and showed that, as we had reached the Pacific coast, we had finally taken a position where our trade with the Oriental kingdoms, backed up by our own enormous internal development, rendered us more than ever independent of Europe.
In another speech he discussed very intelligently, and with his usual complete command of the facts of the case, some of the contemporary Indian uprisings in the far West. He attacked our whole Indian policy, showing that the corruption of the Indian agents, coupled with astute aggressions, were the usual causes of our wars. Further, he criticised our regular troops as being unfit to cope with the savages, and advocated the formation of companies of frontier rangers, who should also be settlers, and should receive from the government a bounty in land as part reward for their service. Many of his remarks on our Indian policy apply quite as well now as they did then, and our regular soldiers are certainly not the proper opponents for the Indians; but Benton's military views were, as a rule, the reverse of sensible, and we cannot accept his denunciations of the army, and especiallyof West Point, as being worth serious consideration. His belief in the marvelous efficacy of a raw militia, especially as regards war with European powers, was childish, and much of his feeling against the regular army officer was dictated by jealousy. He was, by all the peculiarities of his habits and education, utterly unfitted for military command; and it would have been an evil day for his good fame if Polk had succeeded in having him made lieutenant-general of our forces in Mexico.
His remarks upon our Indian policy were not the only ones he made that would bear study even yet. Certain of his speeches upon the different land-bounty and pension bills, passed nominally in the interests of veterans, but really through demagogy and the machination of speculators, could be read with profit by not a few Congressmen at the present time. One of his utterances was: "I am a friend to old soldiers ... but not to old speculators;" and while favoring proper pension bills he showed the foolishness and criminality of certain others very clearly, together with the fact that, when passed long after the services have been rendered, they always fail to relieve the real sufferers, and work in the interests of unworthy outsiders.
But his great speech, and one of the best and greatest that he ever made, was the one inopposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which was being pushed through Congress by the fire-eaters and their Northern pro-slavery followers. His own position upon the measure was best expressed by the words he used in commenting on the remarks of a Georgian member: "He votes as a Southern man, and votes sectionally; I also am a Southern man, but vote nationally on national questions."
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had expressly abolished slavery in the territory out of which Kansas and Nebraska were carved. By the proposed bill this compromise was to be repealed, and the famous doctrine of non-intervention, or "squatter sovereignty," was to take its place, the people of each territory being allowed to choose for themselves whether they did or did not wish slavery. Benton attacked the proposal with all the strength of his frank, open nature as "a bungling attempt to smuggle slavery into the territory, and throughout all the country, up to the Canada line and out to the Rocky Mountains." He showed exhaustively the real nature of the original Missouri Compromise, which, as he said, was forced by the South upon the North, and which the South now proposed to repeal, that it might humiliate the North still further. The compromise of 1820 was, he justly contended, right; it waslike the original compromises of the Constitution, by which the Slave States were admitted to the formation of the Union; no greater concession of principle was involved in the one case than in the other; and, had either compromise failed, the Union would not now be in existence. But the day when compromises had been necessary, or even harmless, had passed. The time had come when the extension of slavery was to be opposed in every constitutional way; and it was an outrage to propose to extend its domain by repealing all that part of a compromise measure which worked against it, when the South had already long taken advantage of such parts of the law as worked in its favor. Said Benton: "The South divided and took half, and now it will not do to claim the other half." Exactly as a proposition to destroy the slavery compromises of the Constitution would be an open attempt to destroy the Union, so, he said, the attempt to abrogate the compromise of 1820 would be a preparation for the same ending. "I have stood upon the Missouri Compromise for about thirty years, and mean to stand upon it to the end of my life ... [it is] a binding covenant upon both parties, and the more so upon the South, as she imposed it."
The squatter sovereignty theories of Douglas he treated with deserved ridicule, laughing atthe idea that the territories were not the actual property of the nation, to be treated as the latter wished, and having none of the rights of sovereign states; and he condemned even more severely the theory advanced to the effect that Congress had no power to legislate on slavery in the territories. Thus, he pointed out that to admit any such theories was directly to reverse the principles upon which we had acted for seventy years in regard to the various territories that from time to time grew to such size as entitled them to come into the Union as states. After showing that there was no excuse for bringing in the bill on the plea of settling the slavery question, since there was not a foot of territory in the United States where the subject of slavery was not already settled by law, he closed with an earnest appeal against such an attempt to break up the Union and outrage the North by forcing slavery into a land where its existence was already forbidden by law. His speech exceeded the hour allotted to it, and he was allowed to go on only by the courtesy of a member from Illinois, who, when some of the Southerners protested against his being heard farther, gave up part of his own time to the grand old Missourian, and asked the House to hear him, if only "as the oldest living man in Congress, the only man in Congress who waspresent at the passage of the Missouri Compromise bill." Many a man at the North, ashamed and indignant at seeing the politicians of his own section cower at the crack of the Southern whip, felt a glow of sincere gratitude and admiration for the rugged Westerner, who so boldly bade defiance to the ruling slave party that held the reins not only in his own section, but also in his own state, and to oppose which was almost certain political death.
The Gadsden treaty was also strongly opposed and condemned by Benton, who considered it to be part of a great scheme or movement in the interests of the slavery disunionists, of which he also believed the Kansas-Nebraska bill to be the first development,—the "thin end of the wedge." He opposed the acquirement even of the small piece of territory we were actually able to purchase from Mexico; and showed good grounds for his belief that the administration, acting as usual only in the interest of the secessionists, had tried to get enough North-Mexican territory to form several new states, and had also attempted to purchase Cuba, both efforts being for the purpose of enabling the South either to become again dominant in the Union or else to set up a separate confederacy of her own. For it must be kept in mind that Benton always believed that the Southern disunionmovements were largely due to conspiracies among ambitious politicians, who used the slavery question as a handle by which to influence the mass of the people. This view has certainly more truth in it than it is now the fashion to admit. His objection to the actual treaty was mainly based on its having been done by the executive without the consent of the legislature, and he also criticised it for the secrecy with which it had been put through. In bringing forward the first objection, however, he was confronted with Jefferson's conduct in acquiring Louisiana, which he endeavored, not very successfully, to show had nothing in common with the actions of Pierce, who, he said, simply demanded a check from the House with which to complete a purchase undertaken on his own responsibility.
Throughout his congressional term of service, Benton acted so as to deserve well of the Union as a whole, and most well of Missouri in particular. But he could not stem the tide of folly and madness in this state, and was defeated when he was a candidate for reëlection. The Whigs had now disappeared from the political arena, and the Know-nothings were running through their short and crooked lease of life; they foolishly nominated a third candidate in Benton's district, who drew off enough votesfrom him to enable his pro-slavery Democratic competitor to win.
No sooner had he lost his seat in Congress than Benton, indefatigable as ever, set to work to finish his "Thirty Years' View," and produced the second volume in 1856, the year when he made his last attempt to regain his hold in politics, and to win Missouri back to the old Union standard. Although his own son-in-law, Fremont, the daring western explorer, was running as the first presidential candidate ever nominated by the Republicans, the old partisan voted for the Democrat, Buchanan. He did not like Buchanan, considering him weak and unsuitable, but the Republican party he believed to be entirely too sectional in character for him to give it his support. For governor there was a triangular fight, the Know-nothings having nominated one candidate, the secessionist Democrats a second, while Benton himself ran as the choice of the Union Democracy. He was now seventy-four years old, but his mind was as vigorous as ever, and his iron will kept up a frame that had hardly even yet begun to give way. During the course of the campaign he traveled throughout the state, going in all twelve hundred miles, and making forty speeches, each one of two or three hours' length. This was a remarkable feat forso old a man; indeed, it has very rarely been paralleled, except by Gladstone's recent performances. The vote was quite evenly divided between the three candidates; but Benton came in third, and the extreme pro-slavery men carried the day. After this, during the few months of life he yet had left, he did not again mingle in the politics of Missouri.
But in the days of his defeat at home, the regard and respect in which he was held in the other states, especially at the North, increased steadily; and in the fall of 1856 he made by request a lecturing tour in New England, speaking on the danger of the political situation and the imperative necessity of preserving the Union, which he now clearly saw to be gravely threatened. He was well received, for the North was learning to respect him, and he had gotten over his early hostility to New England,—a hostility originally shared by the whole West. The New Englanders were not yet aware, however, of the importance of the secession movements, and paid little heed to the warnings that were to be so fully justified by the events of the next few years. But Benton, in spite of his great age, saw distinctly the changes that were taking place, and the dangers that were impending,—an unusual thing for a man whose active life has already been lived out under widely different conditions.
He again turned his attention to literature, and produced another great work, the "Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1787 to 1856," in sixteen volumes, besides writing a valuable pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which he severely criticised. The amount of labor all this required was immense, and his health completely gave way; yet he continued working to the very end, dictating the closing portion of the "Abridgment" in a whisper as he lay on his death-bed. When he once began to fail his advanced years made him succumb rapidly; and on April 10, 1858, he died, in the city of Washington. As soon as the news reached Missouri, a great revulsion of feeling took place, and all classes of the people united to do honor to the memory of the dead statesman, realizing that they had lost a man who towered head and shoulders above both friends and foes. The body was taken to St. Louis, and after lying in state was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, more than forty thousand people witnessing the funeral. All the public buildings were draped in mourning; all places of business were closed, and the flags everywhere were at half-mast. Thus at the very end the great city of the West at last again paid fit homage to the West's mightiest son.
Benton's most important writings are thosementioned above. The "Thirty Years' View" ("a history of the working of the American government for thirty years, from 1820 to 1850") will always be indispensable to every student of American history. It deals with the deeds of both houses of Congress, and of some of the higher federal officials during his thirty years' term of service in the Senate, and is valuable alike for the original data it contains, and because it is so complete a record of our public life at that time. The book is also remarkable for its courteous and equable tone, even towards bitter personal and political enemies. It shows a vanity on the part of the author that is too frank and free from malice to be anything but amusing; the style is rather ponderous, and the English not always good, for Benton began life, and, in fact, largely passed it, in an age of ornate periods, when grandiloquence was considered more essential than grammar. In much of the Mississippi valley the people had their own canons of literary taste; indeed, in a recent book by one of Benton's admirers, there is a fond allusion to his statement, anent the expunging resolution, that "solitary and alone" he had set the ball in motion,—the pleonasm being evidently looked upon in the light of a rather fine oratorical outburst.
"The Abridgment of the Debates of Congressfrom 1789 to 1856" he was only able to bring down to 1850. Sixteen volumes were published. It was a compilation needing infinite labor, and is invaluable to the historian. While in the midst of the vast work he also found time to write his "Examination of the Dred Scott case," in so far as it decided the Missouri Compromise law to be unconstitutional, and asserted the self-extension of the Constitution into the territories, carrying slavery with it,—the decision in this case promulgated by Judge Taney, of unhappy fame, having been the last step taken in the interests of slavery and for the overthrow of freedom. The pamphlet contained nearly two hundred pages, and showed, as was invariably the case with anything Benton did, the effects of laborious research and wide historical and legal learning. His summing up was, "that the decision conflicts with the uniform action of all the departments of the federal government from its foundation to the present time, and cannot be accepted as a rule to govern Congress and the people, without severing that act and admitting the political supremacy of the court and accepting an altered constitution from its hands, and taking a new and portentous point of departure in the working of the government." He denounced the new party theoriesof the Democracy, which had abandoned the old belief of the founders of the Republic, that Congress had power to legislate upon slavery in territories, and which had gone on "from the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, which saved the Union, to squatter sovereignty, which killed the compromise, and thence to the decisions of the supreme court, which kill both." In closing he touched briefly on the history of the pro-slavery agitation. "Up to Mr. Pierce's administration the plan had been defensive, that is to say, to make the secession of the South a measure of self-defense against the abolition encroachments and crusades of the North. In the time of Mr. Pierce the plan became offensive, that is to say, to commence the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of territory to spread it over, so as to overpower the North with new Slave States, and drive them out of the Union.... The rising in the Free States, in consequence of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, checked these schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to the revival of the agitation which enables them to wield the South against the North in all the federal elections and all federal legislation. Accidents and events have given the party a strange preëminence,—under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason;since at the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point." This was the last protest of the last of the old Jacksonian leaders against that new generation of Democrats, whose delight it had become to bow down to strange gods.
In his private life Benton's relations were of the pleasantest. He was a religious man, although, like his great political chief, he could on occasions swear roundly. He was rigidly moral, and he was too fond of work ever to make social life a business. But he liked small dinners, with just a few intimate friends or noted and brilliant public men, and always shone at such an entertainment. Although he had not traveled much, he gave the impression of having done so, by reason of his wide reading, and because he always made a point of knowing all explorers, especially those who had penetrated our great western wilds. His geographical knowledge was wonderful; and his good nature, as well as his delight in work for work's sake, made him of more use than any library of reference, if his friends needed information upon some abstruse matter,—Webster himself acknowledging his indebtedness tohim on one occasion, and being the authority for the statement that Benton knew more political facts than any other man he had ever met, even than John Quincy Adams, and possessed a wonderful fund of general knowledge. Although very gentle in his dealings with those for whom he cared, Benton originally was rather quarrelsome and revengeful in character. His personal and political prejudices were bitter, and he denounced his enemies freely in public and from the stump; yet he always declined to take part in joint political debates, on account of the personal discourtesy with which they were usually conducted. He gave his whole time to public life, rarely or never attending to his law practice after he had fairly entered the political field.
Benton was one of those who were present and escaped death at the time of the terrible accident on board the Princeton, during Tyler's administration, when the bursting of her great gun killed so many prominent men. Benton was saved owing to the fact that, characteristically enough, he had stepped to one side the better to note the marksmanship of the gunner. Ex-Governor Gilmer, of Virginia, who had taken his place, was instantly killed. Tyler, who was also on board, was likewise saved in consequence of the exhibition of acharacteristic trait; for, just as the gun was about to be fired, something occurred in another part of the ship which distracted the attention of the fussy, fidgety president, who accordingly ran off to see what it was, and thus escaped the fatal explosion. The tragic nature of the accident and his own narrow escape made a deep impression upon Benton; and it was noticed that ever afterwards he was far more forbearing and forgiving than of old. He became good friends with Webster and other political opponents, with whom he had formerly hardly been on speaking terms. Calhoun alone he would never forgive. It was not in his nature to do anything by halves; and accordingly, when he once forgave an opponent, he could not do enough to show him that the forgiveness was real. A Missourian named Wilson, who had been his bitter and malignant political foe for years, finally becoming broken in fortune and desirous of bettering himself by going to California, where Benton's influence, through his son-in-law, Fremont, was supreme, was persuaded by Webster to throw himself on the generosity of his old enemy. The latter not only met him half-way, but helped him with a lavish kindness that would hardly have been warranted by less than a life-long friendship. Webster has left on record thefact that, when once they had come to be on good terms with each other, there was no man in the whole Senate of whom he would more freely have asked any favor that could properly be granted.
He was a most loving father. At his death he left four surviving daughters,—Mrs. William Carey Jones, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacobs, Madame Susan Benton Boilleau, and Mrs. Jessie Ann Benton Fremont, the wife of the great explorer, whose wonderful feats and adventures, ending with the conquest of California, where he became a sort of viceroy in point of power, made him an especial favorite with his father-in-law, who loved daring and hardihood. Benton took the keenest delight in Fremont's remarkable successes, and was never tired of talking of them, both within and without the Senate. He records with very natural pride the fact that it was only the courage and judgment displayed in a trying crisis by his own gifted daughter, Fremont's wife, which enabled the adventurous young explorer to prosecute one of the most important of his expeditions, when threatened with fatal interference from jealous governmental superiors.
He was an exceptionally devoted husband. His wife was Miss Elizabeth McDowell, of Virginia, whom he married after he had enteredthe Senate. Their life was most happy until 1844, when she was struck by paralysis. From that time till her death in 1854, he never went out to a public place of amusement, spending all his time not occupied with public duties in writing by her bedside. It is scant praise to say that, while mere acquiescence on his part would have enabled him to become rich through government influence, he nevertheless died a poor man. In public, as in private life, he was a man of sensitive purity of character; he would never permit any person connected with him by blood or marriage to accept office under the government, nor would he ever favor any applicant for a government contract on political grounds.
During his last years, when his sturdy independence and devotion to the Union had caused him the loss of his political influence in his own state and with his own party, he nevertheless stood higher with the country at large than ever before. He was a faithful friend and a bitter foe; he was vain, proud, utterly fearless, and quite unable to comprehend such emotions as are expressed by the terms despondency and yielding. Without being a great orator or writer, or even an original thinker, he yet possessed marked ability; and his abounding vitality and marvelous memory, his indomitableenergy and industry, and his tenacious persistency and personal courage, all combined to give him a position and influence such as few American statesmen have ever held. His character grew steadily to the very last; he made better speeches and was better able to face new problems when past three score and ten than in his early youth or middle age. He possessed a rich fund of political, legal, and historical learning, and every subject that he ever handled showed the traces of careful and thorough study. He was very courteous, except when provoked; his courage was proof against all fear, and he shrank from no contest, personal or political. He was sometimes narrow-minded, and always wilful and passionate; but he was honest and truthful. At all times and in all places he held every good gift he had completely at the service of the American Federal Union.