BENTON, Thomas Hart; was born in Hillsborough, Orange Co., North Carolina, March 14, 1782; was educated at Chapel Hill College; left that institution without receiving a degree, and forthwith commenced the study of law in William and Mary College, Virginia, inder Mr. St. George Tucker; in 1810 entered the U S Army, but soon resigned his commission of Lt. Col, and in 1811 was at Nashville, Tennessee, where he commenced the practice of law; soon afterwards emigrated to St. Louis, Missouri, where he connected himself with the press as the editor of the Missouri Argus; in 1820 was elected a member of the US Senate, serving as Chairman of many important committees, and remained in that body til the session of 1851, at which time he failed of re-election. As Missouri was not admitted into the Union until August 10, 1821, more than a year of his first term of service expired before he took his seat. He occupied himself during this interval in acquiring a knowledge of the language and literature of Spain. Immediately after he appeared in the Senate he took a prominent part in the deliberations of that body and repaidly rose to distinction; was one of the chief supporters of the administrations of President Jackson and Van Buren. The people of Missouri long clung to him as their leader, and it required persevering effort to defeat him; but he had served them during hte period of thirty years without interuption, and others, who aspired to honors which he enjoyed, became impatient for an opportunity to supplant him. He was distinguished for his learning, iron will, practical mind, and strong memory. As a public speaker he was not interesting or calculated to produce an effect on the passions of an audenece, but his speeches were read with avidity, always producing a decided influence; was elected a Representative in the Thirty-third Congress for the District of St. Louis; on hi retirement from public life devoted himself to the preparation of a valuable register of the debates in Congress, upon which he labored until his death which occurred in Washington, on the 10th of April, 1858, of cancer in the stomach. He was the author of a political work, giving an account of his observations during his Senatorial service of thirty years.
(Source: Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States, "Charles Lanman, Joseph M. Morrison")

Thomas H. Benton was born in North Carolina, in the year 1783, and was educated at Chapel Hill College.

He left that institution without receiving a degree, and forthwith commenced the study of the law, in William and Mary's College, Virginia, under Mr. St. George Tucker. In 1810 ho entered the United States Army, and in 1811, was at Nashville, Tennessee, where he commenced the practice of law, and became one of General Jackson's staff in the militia, with the rank of Colonel.
He soon after went to St. Louis, Missouri, to reside, where he connected himself with the press, as editor of a newspaper. He thoroughly identified himself with the interests of the West, and became their leading and most prominent advocate.

In 1820 he was elected to the United States Senate, and remained in that body until the session of 1851, at which time he failed of re-election. As Missouri was not admitted into the Union as a State until August 10, 1821, more than a year of Mr. Benton's term of service expired before he took his seat. He employed himself, during this interval, in acquiring a knowledge of the language and literature of Spain. Immediately after he appeared in the Senate, he took a prominent part in the deliberations of that body, and rapidly rose to eminence and distinction. Few public measures were discussed between the years 1821 and 1851, that he did not participate in largely; and the influence he wielded was always felt and confessed by the country.

He was one of the chief props and supporters of the administrations of General Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The Democrats of Missouri long clung to him as their apostle and leader, and it required a Herculean effort to defeat him. He had served thirty years, when others aspired to the honors he enjoyed, and he was, consequently, defeated.

In 1852 he was a candidate from St. Louis for Representative to Congress, and was elected. He held his seat in that body for two years, when he retired, and devoted himself to the production and publication of two great works: "Thirty Years in the United States Senate," and " An Abridgement of the Debates in Congress." The latter he had hardly finished, when he died, at Washington, April 10, 1858.

Mr. Benton was distinguished for great learning, an iron will, practical mind, and strong memory. His speeches, when written, were firmly fixed in his mind, so that he could repeat them accurately in public, without the manuscript, which might be, at the time, in the printer's hands.
As a public speaker, he was not interesting, or calculated to produce an effect on the passions of an audience. His parliamentary efforts were intended for the closet rather than for the forum, and, when published, were read with avidity, always producing a decided influence. He was industrious, determined, and unyielding, with pockets overflowing the statistics, and his head full of historical lore.
(Source: Biographies of 250 Distinguished National Men by Horatio Bateman. Published 1871)

THOMAS HART BENTON; was born near Hillsboro, N. C, March 14, 1782. He lost his father when quite) young; but received from his worthy mother the best of mental and moral training. Under her care, and that of the New England schoolmaster, he was prepared to enter the University of North Carolina, but his college course was interrupted by the removal of the family to Tennessee. He did not, however, neglect his books; but gained, mainly by his own unaided efforts, a good knowledge of the law and of general literature. He was among the most active in building up the new settlement which bore his own name, not neglecting, either, to sow a few wild oats in the neighboring town of Nashville. In due time he was admitted to the bar, and, in 1811, was a member of the Tennessee Legislature. Like the majority of Southern and Western people, he was strongly in favor of the war of 1812, and denounced the apparent disunion sentiment of New England. When, in after years, his party changed front, and themselves adopted boldly the same political heresy which the New England federalists had only whispered, he remained true to his original convictions, and was first, last, and always, a loyal supporter of the Union. He received a colonelcy, but history records of him no greater feat of arms than the duel, or more properly the tavern brawl with his commander, General Jackson. Benton was one of the few enemies with whom Jackson became reconciled. The affair was soon forgotten, and the two became warm friends and close political allies.
After the close of the war, Benton removed to Missouri, which he made his permanent home. He quickly assumed a prominent place in the St. Louis Bar, established a newspaper, and plunged into politics. The caustic utterances of the "Missouri Inquirer" involved him in many of those personal encounters incidental to the life of a journalist in a frontier district; but he was enabled to acquire a controlling influence in the Democratic party of Missouri, and that influence he continued to exert for upwards of a quarter of a century. Missouri was admitted in 1821, and Mr. Benton took his seat as one of the first pair of senators from the new State. He retained it for the extraordinary period of thirty years.
His early labors in the Senate were mainly devoted to the interests of his section; the extension of the territory of the United States toward the Pacific, and the development of our vast Western domain. He favored the protective tariff, introduced by Clay in 1824, but was averse to governmental interference with internal improvements, which he deemed to be strictly within the sphere of the several States. He found much fault with the lower House for its action in the choice of John Quincy Adams for President, against the clearly expressed preference of the people for Jackson; but refused to believe in the alleged underhand dealings between Adams and Clay. As the leader of the Jacksonians in the Senate, he neglected no opportunity to oppose the Adams administration. One of the most important measures which he originated, and which met with success after some years of opposition, was the law providing for the sale of public lands to actual settlers at a low price. Of course he was in accord with the general policy of President Jackson, but it stands recorded to his credit that he was opposed to the in discriminate expulsion of public servants from office, solely on account of their political faith. His strong Union sentiment led him to denounce the attempts made by South Carolina, in 1832, to nullify the national tariff laws, and he heartily approved of the course of the iron-willed President in dealing with that contumacious State. Indeed he joined with Webster in opposing Clay's compromise measures on the tariff, being unwilling to make any concessions, however proper they might be in themselves, so long as South Carolina's insolent threats of secession were not withdrawn.
During the controversy in regard to the United States Bank, or the "Bank War" as it has been called, Mr. Benton was the President's right-hand man in the Senate. Although he could not prevent the passage of the bill for the recharter, he easily marshaled a sufficient minority to sustain the president's veto. Later on, when Jackson, now impregnably fortified by a triumphant reelection, went so far as to deal one last blow to the expiring bank by the removal of the United States deposits, Benton still clung faithfully to his chief, though temporarily overborne by the formidable coalition of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. Jackson's conduct was formally censured by the Senate, but Benton at once gave notice that he should move to have the resolutions of censure expunged from the records. Before the close of the administration he got a majority to back him, and the obnoxious resolutions were blotted out, literally, much to the mortification of the great trio of statesmen who had formulated them, but to the President's intense delight. During the progress of the bank debates, and subsequently, Mr. Benton took so firm a stand in favor of a metallic currency, that he received the popular nickname of "Old Bullion." He opposed the distribution of the surplus with which the United States Treasury was troubled, and favored using the money on coast defenses. He also introduced a bill to compel purchasers to pay for public lands in specie, as large amounts of very doubtful State Bank bills were accumulating in the treasury. This bill failed to pass; but the great advocate of honest money gained his point in another way. President Jackson, upon his own responsibility issued the well-known Treasury Order, which was drawn up by Benton, forbidding Land Agents to receive anything but gold and silver in payment for land.
Like many other Southerners, he anticipated the peaceful abolition of slavery at some time in the distant future; but, like all Southerners, he hated the Northern abolitionists, who wished to put an immediate end to the system, at no matter what cost, and he had flattering words of praise for the mobs that broke up anti-slavery gatherings at the North. His course in opposing the ultra pro-slavery measures of Calhoun and his tribe, redounds the more to his honor as we compare it with that of the Northern apologists for slavery,—Buchanan, Van Buren, and many others,—who humbly followed where Calhoun led. As Benton had served Jackson, so he continued to serve Van Buren, Jackson's political heir and successor, and was the champion of the most important measure of his administration, the independent treasury act. By this act, which is still to all intents and purposes in force to-day, essentially as it finally passed in July, 1840, after once suffering defeat in the House, the money belonging to the United States passes from the hands of the collectors of revenue, or customs, into the custody of United States officials, and is secured under lock and key in the sub-treasury vaults in the great cities, or in those of the Treasury itself at Washington, until it is paid out to meet the needs of the government. Benton successfully opposed, against Webster and Clay, the proposition to have the Federal government assume certain poor debts of some of the States.
In 1841 there was a Whig majority in Congress and a nominal Whig in the presidential chair. Benton continued to be the leader of the Democratic minority; but was unable to prevent the passage of the favorite measure of the dominant party, the bill for the establishment of a National Bank, or "Fiscal Corporation," as its promoters were now forced to call it, in the vain hope of winning Mr. Tyler's signature. To the indignation and disgust of the Whigs, that signature was persistently withheld; but Mr. Tyler, while thus forfeiting the esteem of the one party, failed to reingratiate himself with the other. Mr. Benton was intensely American, devoted with all his heart to the well-being of the whole country, and favorable to its aggrandizement. And yet, to what his enemies were pleased to call an abandonment of the just claims of the United States on two memorable occasions was due, indirectly, the loss of that preeminence in political life which he had so long enjoyed. He had long favored the acquisition of Texas; but when he saw that the slaveholders coveted not only Texas, but a large portion of Mexico as well, wherein to extend their darling system, he opposed the treaty of annexation in 1844, thereby incurring the hatred of the Calhoun wing of his party, who branded him as a traitor to the South. After the failure of the treaty, a convention of disunionists from the slave States was proposed; but, owing in great measure to Mr. Benton's opposition, it came to nothing at that time. Again, Mr. Benton regarded the claims of our country upon the territory known as Oregon, reaching from California to Alaska, to be far superior to those of Great Britain, by whom they were contested; but deeming it unwise to risk a war with that powerful nation, he favored the Buchanan-Packenham treaty, by which the United States yielded her claim to the greater, but less valuable, portion of the Territory. This course met with a storm of abuse from the Northwest. By fearlessly doing what he considered his duty in these instances, he alienated from himself a large section of the Democratic Party, the section which came into power with Mr. Polk. Powerless to prevent the Mexican War, he advocated its vigorous prosecution, and lauded, in his most eloquent strain, the valor of the American troops under Taylor and Scott. It is even said that he would not have refused the chief command of the army which it was by some proposed to confer upon him; but it is probably fortunate for his reputation that this project was not carried into effect. The war ended, and California and New Mexico annexed, the champions of slave labor found that the North was not disposed to stand calmly by and see the soil of the new territories, already free, polluted by the introduction of slavery. Once more the cry of disunion was raised at the South. It was terrifying to Northern politicians, Whig and Democrat alike. The greatest among them all, Daniel Webster, hastened to propitiate the secessionists by ignobly yielding to them. Thomas H. Benton, immovably fixed in his loyalty to the Union, fearlessly denounced the secession movement, and deprecated the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, as an insult to the North. He was honored with the hatred of Calhoun and the other pro-slavery leaders, and, at last, he was rejected by his own State.
Missouri had upheld him for thirty years; five successive times had he been chosen to represent her in the Senate. He was a candidate for the sixth term, but the separatist party now controlled the State, and he lost his election. He retired from the position which he had filled so long and so ably, in March, 1851; but he could not remain idle. He now took up the task of writing an account of the men and measures of his times, and he subsequently published, as the result of these labors, his famous "Thirty Years' View," a book which is still read with interest, although we are now happily far removed from the troubled times of which it is a history. He favored the election of Mr. Pierce, but soon learned to despise him for his subserviency to the slave-power, for what he characterized, in his peculiar bombastic phrase, as his "undaunted mendacity, moral callosity, and mental obliquity." In 1853 Mr. Benton again entered Congress, this time as a member of the Lower House; but his manly stand against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill ruined his chances for reelection.
While uncompromising in his opposition to disunion and the extension of slavery, Mr. Benton remained to the last a Democrat, casting his vote in 1856 for Buchanan, although the Republican candidate, John C. Fremont, was his own son-in-law. Mr. Benton was at the same time a candidate for the Governorship of Missouri, making an active canvas of the State, though now seventy-four years of age. He was defeated and so ended his political life. He visited New England during this same fall; addressing respectful audiences, and warning the people against the disloyal schemes of Southern politicians.
Mr. Benton was a man of ceaseless activity, continuing his literary labors almost to the last moment. In addition to the work already mentioned, he published an abridgment of the Congressional debates. His death occurred at Washington, April 10, 1858. In honesty of purpose, in purity of character, in devotion to the best interests of his country, he has not been excelled, and he may safely be taken as a model for American statesmen.
[Source: Biographical Sketches of Preeminent Americans, Volume 2; By Frederick G. Harrison; Publ. 1892; Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]