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THE OBITUARY OFThomas H. Benton, Jr. |
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THE OBITUARY OFThomas H. Benton, Jr. |
Mr. George J. Boal is in receipt of a telegram from St. Louis announcing the death of Gen. Thomas H. Benton, Jr., which occurred in that city yesterday morning. The remains will be taken to Marshalltown, long his residence, and interred there next Sunday.
The deceased was a nephew and namesake of Missouri's great senator and hence a cousin of the scarcely less known Mrs. Jesse Benton Fremont, now with her husband General Fremont, Governor, at Tuscon, Arizona.
Gen. Benton was in the early years of our local history a valued citizen of Iowa City and held important positions in our State government. During the war he commanded a brigade in the Federal army, and at the end was made Democratic candidate for Governor of the State against Stone, and ran over 20,000 votes ahead of his ticket. He was a wise, patriotic and excellent man, to whom our commonwealth owes not a little of the solidness of her foundations and whose life is a refreshing example to the young citizens who are to control her future.
The death of Gen. Thomas H. Benton, Jr., nephew of the great Missouri Senator of the same name, is announced elsewhere in our columns this morning.
Gen. Benton will be remembered by all our old citizens as a former resident of Council Bluffs, a member of the banking firm of Greene, Weare & Benton which did business here in the early days, and afterwards as Colonel of the gallant 29th Iowa Regiment of Volunteers in the war for the Union, which was largely recruited in this city and vicinity. Prior to that time, if we are correctly informed, he served as State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Iowa, and discharged the duties of the office with marked zeal and efficiency.
When the war broke out General Benton went to the front at the head of his regiment as an ardent Republican, and the surviving members of the 29th will recall how he used to draw his little command up in a hollow square and address them upon the issues of the day. But his enthusiasm was keyed to too high a pitch to sustain itself throughout the entire struggle, and at the close of the war, and before he was yet mustered out of the service, his hereditary Democratic tendencies overcame his scruples, and, yielding to the voice of the templer, he consented to become the Democratic candidate for Governor of Iowa. Though he received a large vote his candidacy was unsuccessful, and he took up his residence as a private citizen at Marshalltown where his wife died and was buried a short time afterward. Of late years he has resided in St. Louis, and it was in that city his death occurred on Thursday last. Peace to his ashes.