Thomas Hart Benton, Senator from Missouri, and the first to serve five terms in the Senate, was born on March 14, 1782 in Harts Mill, North Carolina a few months after the Battle at Yorktown was won, and years before Missouri became a state. He is the subject of one of the two statues from Missouri in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S Capitol.
Thomas Benton’s father was a successful lawyer, who died when Thomas was a boy. Young Thomas loved books and read all he could. His mother was an educated woman who influenced his education. Another plus was the access to his father’s law library.
Thomas attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but didn’t complete his studies there because his mother decided to move the family to farm a tract of land his father had purchased near Nashville, Tennessee.
Thomas continued to study law and passed the Tennessee bar in 1806. He was elected to the Tennessee Legislature in 1809. When the British became aggressive against the new nation and the War of 1812 broke out, Thomas Hart Benton joined the military. He served as a colonel of volunteers under Andrew Jackson. Benton never saw combat. He had wanted to be in the fight, but instead got caught up in helping Andrew Jackson smooth over problems that had arisen, in part due to Jackson’s temperament. Benton went to Washington DC where he had some pull, due to connections he had, and was able to patch up Jackson’s rift with Washington.
Jackson and Benton had a friendship, but that was put to the test when Thomas Benton’s brother was in a duel, and Andrew Jackson, for some reason, was the second to the opposition. The outcome of this duel led to an embarrassing wound in the backside for Benton’s brother and when Thomas learned that Jackson had not been in his brother’s corner, there was a fissure in the Jackson-Benton relationship for a number of years.
There even was an episode in which the Bentons, and Jackson and some friends found themselves in a brawl that included gunshots. Jackson was shot in the arm and was carried away from the fight!
The amount of dueling that went on at the time is amazing. Sadly, many were killed or seriously injured, often over nothing more than insulting fighting words, that could’ve been addressed with more words rather than bullets. Both Thomas Benton and Andrew Jackson had actually killed men in duels, yet their political careers did not suffer for it.
In 1815, Benton moved to the Missouri Territory. In 1818 he founded the St. Louis Enquirer, and used his newspaper to launch a political career, often editorializing about the westward expansion of the United States. In 1821, Missouri became a state and Benton was elected Senator.
Seemingly, more often than not, those who dueled would be able to put their argument aside (if one wasn’t killed) and forge forward in friendship. That is exactly what happened between Jackson and Benton. When Jackson was in a close election with John Quincy Adams and others for the presidency, although Benton first supported Henry Clay, when it came to the last stand-off in the election, Benton sided with Jackson. When Jackson learned this, the Benton-Jackson team was back. Benton worked to get Andrew Jackson elected the next time around and was successful. Benton was a strong ally in the Senate to Jackson.
Thomas Hart Benton, earned the nickname “Old Bullion” because he supported hard money-gold, not paper money. While in the Senate, Benton supported funding for western expeditions. John C. Frémont known as the “The Pathfinder” was one of the explorers Benton supported. He even ended up becoming Benton’s son-in-law.
Although Benton owned slaves, he did not believe the new territories of the United States should allow slavery. This was a stance that cost him his sixth term as Senator. It also led to him nearly being shot on the Senate Floor!
It seems things had not changed much in regards to the all too common way of settling disagreements. In April 1850, during heated Senate floor debates over the proposed Compromise of 1850, Benton was nearly shot by pistol-wielding Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote, who did not approve of Benton’s political spoken sparring. Thankfully, Foote was wrestled to the floor, and disarmed.
Thomas Hart Benton then ran for a congressional seat, but lost. He also ran for governor, but also lost. Then his wife died. Overcome with grief, he decided to go on a lecture tour. He gave lectures on slavery, warning listeners of terrible consequences if the North and South did not end their dispute.
In 1858, Thomas Hart Benton died after a long battle with cancer. A twice life-size neoclassical statue of Thomas Hart Benton was dedicated in Lafayette Park, in 1868, only 10 years after Benton’s death. It is the first public monument in Missouri. Thomas Hart Benton was a firm believer in western expansion of the United States. He felt if we didn’t expand our nation, the British would fill that void. On the base of the statue are engraved “There is the East, there is India.” These words are from a speech Benton gave praising the virtues of a transcontinental rail system. It was delivered at the Old Courthouse in St Louis, October 16, 1849, to the National Railroad Convention.
Thomas Hart Benton is also honored with a statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. Two U.S. President would write about him. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a biography about Benton in 1887, and John F. Kennedy included Benton in his “Profiles in Courage”.
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read more in her series Statues: The People They Salute visit The Table of Contents and the Facebook Page. (I’ll be adding to the Substack Table of Contents as I transfer the Blog Posts. Please subscribe to this Substack 😊🇺🇸🤓)
Great story!
Im trying to picture a couple of our Senators dueling…Mitch McConnell would be a goner for sure