Thos. H. Benton

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THOS. H. BENTON.

A very good article is published in the last Sunday Atlas, headed “Idiosyncrasies of the late Thomas Hart Benton.”¹ It approaches nearer to the true office of history than most biographies—and probably gives a faithful daguerreotype of the Missouri Senator, in his personal qualities. At all events it is so out of the usual style of commonplace that we have read it with a great deal of satisfaction.

Mr. Benton is a specimen of a marked class of American mentality and physiology. He was not what is called an intellectual man, but rather a great imperious, animal man. Also, he had a faculty for obtaining, digesting, and enjoying information, statistics, facts, &c. He did not attach men to him, by the warmest friendship, like Henry Clay;² nor could he, like Webster, command the admiring worship of his countrymen for the unrivalled power and splendor of his intellectual endowments; nor always like Jackson, enforce submission to his will. He was purely a man bristling with wilful passion and courage, and would have made even a better military commander than Pelissier,³ had he been entrusted with the control of armies. He loved the turmoil and the excitement of those hand-to-hand political encounters, which, at one time overspread the country; and in all of these, down to the period of the great debate of 1850, on the Compromise measures, when he fairly made pugnacious Foote, of Mississippi, flee from his seat in the Senate, he ever bore himself as a fighting and a defiant man. But truly it has been said of him that he never spoke the word which touched the nation’s heart.

In the case of the attachment between young Fremont and Mr. Benton’s daughter Ann, the father was perfectly frantic against what he styled the presumption of the nameless adventurer, whom he looked upon with ineffable scorn, and sought to exercise his parental authority, even to the verge of personal violence, in order to prevent a match which he openly denounced as a disgrace to his name and family. Still the marriage took place, (for the child had some of the same resolution as the parent)—and eventually the son-in-law became the great admiration of Col. B.

The Colonel did not stand on the ceremonies. One day, as he was passing through the rotunda of the Capitol, just after emerging from one of the hottest fights he had ever been engaged in, during which he had come in immediate conflict with Henry Clay, he fell in with that celebrated Swiss of the political world, Francis T. Grund, who, with head uncovered, stood bowing and scraping, in the futile attempt to elicit some courteous salutation in return. Grund had lately made some impertinent remarks in one of his letters to the Baltimore Sun, reflecting rather disparagingly on the course which Mr. Benton had thought proper to pursue on the great question of the day; but thinking himself unsuspected, his sycophant nature readily betrayed him into this untoward exhibition of studied urbanity. Colonel Benton, who had seen the obnoxious paragraph, and knew its author, strode directly towards him, and with uplifted finger, said: “You will please spare me the infliction of your salutation, sir! I dislike to be saluted by a rogue or a rascal, sir! It is extremely obnoxious to my digestion, sir! So let me have no more salutations from you, sir!”

The last picture we have of the powerful old man presents him standing really chastened and subdued in front of his burning house, contemplating the progress of the devouring flames. The House of Representatives, of which he was then a member, had just adjourned, in consequence of that unfortunate casualty. Col. Benton had hardly reached the spot where he stood, when his daughter Susan rushed up to him in a state of bewilderment, and exclaimed, “Oh! Papa, your manuscripts are all destroyed.” “Then let the house burn down,” was the stoic reply; but the quivering of the lip and the tremulous voice told how much he suffered inwardly. It is probable, however, that Col. Benton might have turned his rich experience to better account than in compiling and publishing a score of volumes of speeches out of the chaotic verbiage of Congressional debates. A great majority of those debates have gone to sleep, some of Mr. Benton’s own verbose productions among the rest. Why awake them from that everlasting nap which seemed to be their destiny? Col. Benton’s industry was immense, and had it been directed to more durable objects, would have made him longer remembered than it can now be hoped he will be.

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