Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

      Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government / for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

      AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

      [The outlines of the life of the lately deceased Thomas H. Benton, which are contained in the following pages, were prepared by the author and subject of them whilst he was suffering excruciating pain from the disease that, a few weeks later, closed his earthly career. They were not intended for a Biography, properly so called, but rather to present some salient points of character and some chief incidents of life, and in respect of them, at least, to govern subsequent Biographies.]

      Thomas Hart Benton, known as a senator for thirty years in Congress, and as the author of several works, was born in Orange County, near Hillsborough, North Carolina, March 14th, 1782; and was the son of Col. Jesse Benton, an able lawyer of that State, and of Ann Gooch, of Hanover county, Virginia, of the family of the Gooches of colonial residence in that State. By this descent, on the mother's side, he took his name from the head of the Hart family (Col. Thomas Hart, of Lexington, Kentucky), his mother's maternal uncle; and so became related to the numerous Hart family. He was cousin to Mrs. Clay, born Lucretia Hart, the wife of Henry Clay; and, by an easy mistake, was often quoted during his public life as the relative of Mr. Clay himself. He lost his father before he was eight years of age, and fell under the care of a mother still young, and charged with a numerous family, all of tender age – and devoting herself to them. She was a woman of reading and observation – solid reading, and observation of the men of the Revolution, brought together by course of hospitality of that time, in which the houses of friends, and not taverns, were the universal stopping places. Thomas was the oldest son, and at the age of ten and twelve was reading solid books with his mother, and studying the great examples of history, and receiving encouragement to emulate these examples. His father's library, among others, contained the famous State Trials, in the large folios of that time, and here he got a foundation of British history, in reading the treason, and other trials, with which these volumes abound. She was also a pious and religious woman, cultivating the moral and religious education of her children, and connected all her life with the Christian church; first, as a member of the English Episcopalian, and when removal to the Great West, then in the wilderness, had broken that connection, then in the Methodist Episcopalian – in which she died. All the minor virtues, as well as the greater, were cherished by her; and her house, the resort of the eminent men of the time, was the abode of temperance, modesty, decorum. A pack of cards was never seen in her house. From such a mother all the children received the impress of future character; and she lived to see the fruits of her pious and liberal cares – living a widow above fifty years, and to see her eldest son half through his senatorial career, and taking his place among the historic men of the country for which she had begun so early to train him. These details deserve to be noted, though small in themselves, as showing how much the after life of the man may depend upon the early cares and guidance of a mother.

      His scholastic education was imperfect: first, at a grammar school taught by Richard Stanford, Esq., then a young New England emigrant, soon after, and for many years, and until death, a representative in Congress, noted as the life-long friend of Macon and Randolph. Afterwards he was at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, but finished no course of study there, his mother removing to Tennessee, where his father had acquired great landed property (40,000 acres), and intended to make Nashville his home; and now, as the eldest of the family, though not grown, the care and management of a new settlement, in a new country, fell upon him. The family went upon a choice tract of 3000 acres, on West Harpeth, twenty-five miles south of Nashville, where for several years the main care was the opening a farm in the wilderness. Wilderness! for such was the state of the country at that time within half a day's ride of the city of Nashville. "The widow Benton's settlement" was the outside settlement between civilization and the powerful southern tribes which spread to the Gulf of Mexico. The Indian wars had just been terminated, and the boundary which these great tribes were enabled to exact brought their frontier almost to the gates of Nashville – within 25 miles! for the line actually touched the outside line of the estate. The Indians swarmed about it. Their great war trace (the trace on which they came for blood and plunder in time of war, for trade in time of peace) led through it. Such a position was not to be maintained by a small family alone – a widow, and every child under age, only some twenty odd slaves. It required strength! and found it in the idea of a little colony – leases to settlers without price, for seven years; moderate rents afterwards. The tract was well formed for the purpose, being four miles square, with every attraction for settlement – rich land fine wood, living streams. Settlers came; the ground was covered over: it was called "Benton Town," and retains the name to this day. A rude log school-house, a meeting house of the same primitive structure, with roads and mills, completed the rapid conversion of this wilderness into an abode of civilization. The scholastic education of her son had ceased, but reading continued; and books of solid instruction became his incessant companions. He has been heard to say that, in no period of his life, has he ever read so much, nor with as much system and regularity, nor with the same profit and delight. History and geography was (what he considered) his light reading; national law, the civil law, the common law – and, finally, the law itself, so usually read by law students – constituted his studies. And all this reading, and study, was carried on during the active personal exertions which he gave to the opening of the farm and to the ameliorations upon it which comfort exacted.

      Then came the law license, indulgently granted by the three Superior Court Judges – White, Overton, and Campbell – the former afterwards senator in Congress, Overton an eminent lawyer before he was a Superior Court judge, and Campbell, one of the respectable early settlers and lawyers of the State. The law license signed, practice followed, and successful – Gen. Jackson, Gen. James Robertson, Judge McNairy, Major Thomas Hardeman, and the old heads of the population giving him their support and countenance as a young man that might become useful to the State, and so deserved to be encouraged. Scarcely at the bar, and a legislative career was opened to him. He was elected to the General Assembly of the State; and, though serving but for a single session, left the impress of his mind and principles on the statute book, and on the public policy. He was the author of the Judicial Reform Act, by which the old system of Superior Courts was substituted by the circuit system, in which the administration of justice was relieved of great part of its delay, of its expense, and of much of its inconvenience to parties and witnesses. And he was the author of a humane law, giving to slaves the same full benefit of jury trial which was the right of the white man under the same accusation – a law which still remains on the statute book, but has lost its effect under the fatal outside interference which has checked the progress of Southern slave policy amelioration, and turned back the current which was setting so strongly in favor of mitigating the condition of the slave.

      Returning to the practice of the law, the war of 1812 broke out. Volunteers were called for, to descend the rivers to New Orleans, to meet the British, expected there in the winter of 1812-'13, but not coming until the winter of 1814-'15. Three thousand volunteers were raised! raised in a flash! under the prestige of Jackson's name – his patriotic proclamation – and the ardent addresses of Benton, flying from muster ground to muster ground, and stimulating the inherent courage and patriotism of the young men. They were formed into three regiments, of which Benton was colonel of one. He had been appointed aide-de-camp to Jackson (then a major-general in the Tennessee militia), on the first symptoms of war with Great Britain, and continued to perform many of the most intimate duties of that station, though, as colonel of a regiment, he could not hold the place. The force descended to the Lower Mississippi: the British did not come; the volunteers returned to Tennessee, were temporarily disbanded, but called again into service by Gen. Jackson at the breaking out of the Creek war. These volunteers were the foundation of all Jackson's subsequent splendid career; and the way in which, through their means, he was enabled to get into the regular army, is a most curious piece of history, not told anywhere but by Col. Benton, as a member of the House of Representatives, on the presentation of Jackson's sword (Feb. 26th, 1855). That piece of unknown history, which could only come from one who was part and parcel of the transaction, deserves to be known, and to be studied by every one who is charged with the administration of government, and by every one who would see with what difficulties genius and patriotism may have to contend – with what chances they may have to wrestle