EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE.
When Benton took his seat in the United States Senate, Monroe, the last
president of the great house of Virginia, was about beginning his second
term. He was a courteous, high-bred gentleman, of no especial ability,
but well fitted to act as presidential figure-head during the
politically quiet years of that era of good feeling which lasted from
1816 till 1824. The Federalist party, after its conduct during the war,
had vanished into well-deserved obscurity, and though influences of
various sorts were working most powerfully to split the dominant and
all-embracing Democracy into factional fragments, these movements had
not yet come to a head.
The slavery question, it cannot be too often said, was as yet of little
or no political consequence. The violent excitement over the admission
of Missouri had subsided as quickly as it had arisen; and though the
Compromise bill was of immense importance in itself, and still more as
giving a hint of what was to come, it must be remembered that its effect
upon general politics, during the years immediately succeeding its
passage, was slight. Later on, the slavery question became of such
paramount consequence, and so completely identified with the movement
for the dissolution of the Union, that it seems impossible for even the
best of recent historians of American politics to understand that such
was not the case at this time. One writer of note even goes so far as to
state that "From the night of March 2, 1820, party history is made up
without interruption or break of the development of geographical [the
context shows this to mean Northern and Southern] parties." There is
very little ground for such a sweeping assertion until a considerable
time after the date indicated; indeed, it was more than ten years later
before any symptom of the development spoken of became at all marked.
Until then, parties divided even less on geographical lines than had
been the case earlier, during the last years of the existence of the
Federalists; and what little division there was had no reference to
slavery. Nor was it till nearly a score of years after the passage of
the Missouri Compromise bill that the separatist spirit began to
identify itself for good with the idea of the maintenance of slavery.
Previously to that there had been outbursts of separatist feeling in
different states, but always due to entirely different causes. Georgia
flared up in hot defiance of the federal government, when the latter
rubbed against her on the question of removing the Cherokees from within
her borders. But her having negro slaves did not affect her feelings in
the least, and her attitude was just such as any Western state with
Indians on its frontier is now apt to assume so far as it dares,--such
an attitude as Arizona, for example, would at this moment take in
reference to the Apaches, if she were able. Slavery was doubtless
remotely one of the irritating causes that combined to work South
Carolina up to a fever heat of insanity over the nullification
excitement. But in its immediate origin nullification arose from the
outcry against the protective tariff, and it is almost as unfair to
ascribe it in any way to the influence of slavery as it would be to
assign a similar cause for the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of
1798, or to say that the absence of slavery was the reason for the
abortively disloyal agitation in New England, which culminated in the
Hartford Convention. The separatist feeling is ingrained in the fibre of
our race, and though in itself a most dangerous failing and weakness, is
yet merely a perversion and distortion of the defiant and self-reliant
independence of spirit which is one of the chief of the race virtues;
and slavery was partly the cause and partly merely the occasion of the
abnormal growth of the separatist movement in the South. Nor was the
tariff question so intimately associated with that of slavery as has
been commonly asserted. This might be easily guessed from the fact that
the originator and chief advocate of a high tariff himself came from a
slave state, and drew many of his warmest supporters from among the
slave-holding sugar-planters. Except in the futile discussion over the
proposed Panama Congress it was not till Benton's third senatorial term
that slavery became of really great weight in politics.
One of the first subjects that attracted Benton's attention in the
Senate was the Oregon question, and on this he showed himself at once in
his true character as a Western man, proud alike of every part of his
country, and as desirous of seeing the West extended in a northerly as
in a southerly direction. Himself a slave-holder, from a slave state, he
was one of the earliest and most vehement advocates of the extension of
our free territory northwards along the Pacific coast. All the country
stretching north and south of the Oregon River was then held by the
United States in joint possession with Great Britain. But the whole
region was still entirely unsettled, and as a matter of fact our
British rivals were the only parties in actual occupation. The title to
the territory was doubtful, as must always be the case when it rests
upon the inaccurate maps of forgotten explorers, or upon the chance
landings of stray sailors and traders, especially if the land in dispute
is unoccupied and of vast but uncertain extent, of little present value,
and far distant from the powers claiming it. The real truth is that such
titles are of very little practical value, and are rightly enough
disregarded by any nations strong enough to do so. Benton's intense
Americanism, and his pride and confidence in his country and in her
unlimited capacity for growth of every sort, gifted him with the power
to look much farther into the future, as regarded the expansion of the
United States, than did his colleagues; and moreover caused him to
consider the question from a much more far-seeing and statesmanlike
stand-point. The land belonged to no man, and yet was sure to become
very valuable; our title to it was not very good, but was probably
better than that of any one else. Sooner or later it would be filled
with the overflow of our population, and would border on our dominion,
and on our dominion alone. It was therefore just, and moreover in the
highest degree desirable, that it should be made a part of that
dominion at the earliest possible moment. Benton introduced a bill to
enable the president to terminate the arrangement with Great Britain and
make a definite settlement in our favor; and though the Senate refused
to pass it, yet he had the satisfaction of bringing the subject
prominently before the people, and, moreover, of outlining the way in
which it would have to be and was finally settled. In one of his
speeches on the matter he said, using rather highflown language, (for he
was unfortunately deficient in sense of humor): "Upon the people of
Eastern Asia the establishment of a civilized power on the opposite
coast of America could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits.
Science, liberal principles in government, and the true religion might
cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia
might become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet to their
imprisoned and exuberant population." Could he have foreseen how, in the
future, the Americans of the valley of the Columbia would greet the
"imprisoned and exuberant population" of China, he would probably have
been more doubtful as to the willingness of the latter empire to accept
our standard of the true religion and liberal principles of government.
In the course of the same speech he for the first time, and by what was
then considered a bold flight of imagination, suggested the possibility
of sending foreign ministers to the Oriental nations, to China, Japan,
and Persia, "and even to the Grand Turk."
Better success attended a bill he introduced to establish a trading-road
from Missouri through the Indian country to New Mexico, which, after
much debate, passed both houses and was signed by President Monroe. The
road thus marked out and established became, and remained for many
years, a great thoroughfare, and among the chief of the channels through
which our foreign commerce flowed. Until Benton secured the enactment of
this law, so important to the interests and development of the West, the
overland trade with Mexico had been carried on by individual effort and
at the cost of incalculable hazard, hardship, and risk of life. Mexico,
with its gold and silver mines, its strange physical features, its
population utterly foreign to us in race, religion, speech, and ways of
life, and especially because of the glamour of mystery which surrounded
it and partly shrouded it from sight, always dazzled and strongly
attracted the minds of the Southwesterners, occupying much the same
place in their thoughts that the Spanish Main did in the imagination of
England during the reign of Elizabeth. The young men of the Mississippi
valley looked upon an expedition with one of the bands of armed traders,
who wound their way across Indian-haunted wastes, through deep canyons
and over lofty mountain passes, to Santa Fe, Chihuahua, and Sonora, with
the same feelings of eager excitement and longing that were doubtless
felt by some of their forefathers more than two centuries previously in
regard to the cruises of Drake and Hawkins. The long wagon trains or
pack trains of the traders carried with them all kinds of goods, but
especially cotton, and brought back gold and silver bullion, bales of
furs and droves of mules; and, moreover, they brought back tales of
lawless adventure, of great gains and losses, of fights against Indians
and Mexicans, and of triumphs and privations, which still further
inflamed the minds of the Western men. Where they had already gone as
traders, who could on occasion fight, they all hoped on some future day
to go as warriors, who would acquire gain by their conquests. These
hopes were openly expressed, and with very little more idea of there
being any right or wrong in the matter than so many Norse Vikings might
have felt. The Southwesterners are credited with altogether too complex
motives when it is supposed that they were actuated in regard to the
conquest of northern Mexico by a desire to provide for additional slave
states to offset the growth of the North; their emotions in regard to
their neighbor's land were in the main perfectly simple and purely
piratical. That the Northeast did not share in the greed for new
territory felt by the other sections of the country was due partly to
the decline in its militant spirit, (a decline on many accounts
sincerely to be regretted,) and partly to its geographical situation,
since it adjoined Canada, an unattractive and already well-settled
country, jealously guarded by the might of Great Britain.
Another question, on which Benton showed himself to be thoroughly a
representative of Western sentiment, was the removal of the Indian
tribes. Here he took a most active and prominent part in reporting and
favoring the bills, and in advocating the treaties, by which the Indian
tribes of the South and West were forced or induced, (for the latter
word was very frequently used as a euphemistic synonym of the former,)
to abandon great tracts of territory to the whites and to move farther
away from the boundaries of their ever-encroaching civilization. Nor was
his action wholly limited to the Senate, for it was at his instance that
General Clark, at St. Louis, concluded the treaties with the Kansas and
Osage tribes, by which the latter surrendered to the United States all
the vast territory which they nominally owned west of Missouri and
Arkansas, except small reserves for themselves. Benton, as was to be
expected, took the frontier view of the Indian question, which, by the
way, though often wrong, is much more apt to be right than is the
so-called humanitarian or Eastern view. But, so far as was compatible
with having the Indians removed, he always endeavored to have them
kindly and humanely treated. There was, of course, much injustice and
wrong inevitably attendant upon the Indian policy advocated by him, and
by the rest of the Southern and Western statesmen; but it is difficult
to see what other course could have been pursued with most of the
tribes. In the Western States there were then sixty millions of acres of
the best land, owned in great tracts by barbarous or half-barbarous
Indians, who were always troublesome and often dangerous neighbors, and
who did not come in any way under the laws of the states in which they
lived. The states thus encumbered would evidently never have been
satisfied until all their soil was under their own jurisdiction and open
to settlement. The Cherokees had advanced far on the road toward
civilization, and it was undoubtedly a cruel grief and wrong to take
them away from their homes; but the only alternative would have been to
deprive them of much of their land, and to provide for their gradually
becoming citizens of the states in which they were. For a movement of
this sort the times were not then, and, unfortunately, are not yet ripe.
Much maudlin nonsense has been written about the governmental treatment
of the Indians, especially as regards taking their land. For the simple
truth is that they had no possible title to most of the lands we took,
not even that of occupancy, and at the most were in possession merely by
virtue of having butchered the previous inhabitants. For many of its
actions towards them the government does indeed deserve the severest
criticism; but it has erred quite as often on the side of too much
leniency as on the side of too much severity. From the very nature of
things, it was wholly impossible that there should not be much mutual
wrong-doing and injury in the intercourse between the Indians and
ourselves. It was equally out of the question to let them remain as they
were, and to bring the bulk of their number up to our standard of
civilization with sufficient speed to enable them to accommodate
themselves to the changed condition of their surroundings. The policy
towards them advocated by Benton, which was much the same as, although
more humane than, that followed by most other Western men who have had
practically to face the problem, worked harshly in many instances, and
was the cause of a certain amount of temporary suffering. But it was
infinitely better for the nation, as a whole, and, in the end, was
really more just and merciful, than it would have been to attempt
following out any of the visionary schemes which the more impracticable
Indian enthusiasts are fond of recommending.
It was during Monroe's last term that Henry Clay brought in the first
protective tariff bill, as distinguished from tariff bills to raise
revenue with protection as an incident only. It was passed by a
curiously mixed vote, which hardly indicated any one's future position
on the tariff excepting that of Clay himself; Massachusetts, under the
lead of Webster, joining hands with the Southern sea-coast states to
oppose it, while Tennessee and New York split, and Missouri and
Kentucky, together with most of the North, favored it. Benton voted for
it, but on the great question of internal improvements he stood out
clearly for the views that he ever afterwards held. This was first
brought up by the veto, on constitutional grounds, of the Cumberland
Road bill, which had previously passed both houses with singular
unanimity, Benton's vote being one of the very few recorded against it.
In regard to all such matters Benton was strongly in favor of a strict
construction of the Constitution and of guarding the rights of the
states, in spite of his devoted attachment to the Union. While voting
against this bill, and denying the power or the right of the federal
government to take charge of improvements which would benefit one state
only, Benton was nevertheless careful to reserve to himself the right to
support measures for improving national rivers or harbors yielding
revenues. The trouble is, that however much the two classes of cases may
differ in point of expediency, they overlap so completely that it is
wholly impossible to draw a hard and fast line between them, and the
question of constitutionality, if waived in the one instance, can
scarcely with propriety be raised in the other.
With the close of Monroe's second term the "era of good feeling" came to
an end, and the great Democratic-Republican party split up into several
fragments, which gradually crystallized round two centres. But in 1824
this process was still incomplete, and the presidential election of that
year was a simple scramble between four different candidates,--Jackson,
Adams, Clay, and Crawford. Jackson had the greatest number of votes, but
as no one had a majority, the election was thrown into the House of
Representatives, where the Clay men, inasmuch as their candidate was out
of the race, went over to Adams and elected him. Benton at the time, and
afterwards in his "Thirty Years' View," inveighed against this choice as
being a violation of what he called the "principle demos krateo"--a
barbarous phrase for which he had a great fondness, and which he used
and misused on every possible occasion, whether in speaking or writing.
He insisted that, as Jackson had secured the majority of the electoral
vote, it was the duty of the House of Representatives to ratify promptly
this "choice of the people." The Constitution expressly provided that
this need not be done. So Benton, who on questions of state rights and
internal improvements was so pronounced a stickler for a strict
construction of the Constitution, here coolly assumed the absurd
position that the Constitution was wrong on this particular point, and
should be disregarded, on the ground that there was a struggle "between
the theory of the Constitution and the democratic principle." His
proposition was ridiculous. The "democratic principle" had nothing more
to do with the matter than had the law of gravitation. Either the
Constitution was or it was not to be accepted as a serious document,
that meant something; in the former case the election of Adams was
proper in every aspect, in the latter it was unnecessary to have held
any election at all.
At this period every one was floundering about in efforts to establish
political relations, Benton not less than others; for he had begun the
canvass as a supporter of Clay, and had then gone over to Crawford. But
at the end he had become a Jacksonian Democrat, and during the rest of
his political career he figured as the most prominent representative of
the Jacksonian Democracy in the Senate. Van Buren himself, afterwards
Jackson's prime favorite and political heir, was a Crawford man during
this campaign.
Adams, after his election, which was owing to Clay's support, gave Clay
the position of secretary of state in his cabinet. The affair
unquestionably had an unfortunate look, and the Jacksonians, especially
Jackson, at once raised a great hue and cry that there had been a
corrupt bargain. Benton, much to his credit, refused to join in the
outcry, stating that he had good and sufficient reasons--which he
gave--to be sure of its falsity; a position which brought him into
temporary disfavor with many of his party associates, and which a man
who had Benton's ambition and bitter partisanship, without having his
sturdy pluck, would have hesitated to take. The assault was directed
with especial bitterness against Clay, whom Jackson ever afterwards
included in the very large list of individuals whom he hated with the
most rancorous and unreasoning virulence. Randolph of Roanoke, the
privileged eccentric of the Senate, in one of those long harangues in
which he touched upon everybody and everything, except possibly the
point at issue, made a rabid onslaught upon the Clay-Adams coalition as
an alliance of "the blackleg and the Puritan." Clay, who was susceptible
enough to the charge of loose living, but who was a man of rigid honor
and rather fond than otherwise of fighting, promptly challenged him, and
a harmless interchange of shots took place. Benton was on the field as
the friend of both parties, and his account of the affair is very
amusing in its description of the solemn, hair-splitting punctilio with
which it is evident that both Randolph and many of his contemporaries
regarded points of dueling honor, which to us seem either absurd,
trivial, or wholly incomprehensible.
Two tolerably well-defined parties now emerged from the chaos of
contending politicians; one was the party of the administration, whose
members called themselves National Republicans, and later on Whigs; the
other was the Jacksonian Democracy. Adams's inaugural address and first
message outlined the Whig policy as favoring a protective tariff,
internal improvements, and a free construction of the Constitution
generally. The Jacksonians accordingly took the opposite side on all
these points, partly from principle and partly from perversity. In the
Senate they assailed with turgid eloquence every administration measure,
whether it was good or bad, very much of their opposition being purely
factious in character. There has never been a time when there was more
rabid, objectless, and unscrupulous display of partisanship. Benton,
little to his credit, was a leader in these purposeless conflicts. The
most furious of them took place over the proposed Panama mission. This
was a scheme that originated in the fertile brain of Henry Clay, whose
Americanism was of a type quite as pronounced as Benton's, and who was
always inclined to drag us into a position of hostility to European
powers. The Spanish-American States, having succeeded in winning their
independence from Spain, were desirous of establishing some principle of
concert in action among the American republics as a whole, and for this
purpose proposed to hold an international congress at Panama. Clay's
fondness for a spirited and spectacular foreign policy made him grasp
eagerly at the chance of transforming the United States into the head of
an American league of free republics, which would be a kind of
cis-Atlantic offset to the Holy Alliance of European despotisms. Adams
took up the idea, nominated ministers to the Panama Congress, and gave
his reasons for his course in a special message to the Senate. The
administration men drew the most rosy and impossible pictures of the
incalculable benefits which would be derived from the proposed congress;
and the Jacksonians attacked it with an exaggerated denunciation that
was even less justified by the facts.
Adams's message was properly open to attack on one or two points;
notably in reference to its proposals that we should endeavor to get the
Spanish-American States to introduce religious tolerance within their
borders. It was certainly an unhappy suggestion that we should endeavor
to remove the mote of religious intolerance from our brother's eye while
indignantly resenting the least allusion to the beam of slavery in our
own. It was on this very point of slavery that the real opposition
hinged. The Spanish States had emancipated their comparatively small
negro populations, and, as is usually the case with Latin nations, did
not have a very strong caste feeling against the blacks, some of whom
accordingly had risen to high civic and military rank; and they also
proposed to admit to their congress the negro republic of Hayti. Certain
of the slave-holders of the South fiercely objected to any such
association; and on this occasion Benton for once led and voiced the
ultra-Southern feeling on the subject, announcing in his speech that
diplomatic intercourse with Hayti should not even be discussed in the
senate chamber, and that we could have no association with republics who
had "black generals in their armies and mulatto senators in their
congresses." But this feeling on the part of the slave-holders against
the measure was largely, although not wholly, spurious; and really had
less to do with the attitude of the Jacksonian Democrats than had a mere
factious opposition to Adams and Clay. This was shown by the vote on the
confirmation of the ministers, when the senators divided on party and
not on sectional lines. The nominations were confirmed, but not till
after such a length of time that the ministers were unable to reach
Panama until after the congress had adjourned.
The Oregon question again came up during Adams's term, the
administration favoring the renewal of the joint occupation convention,
by which we held the country in common with Great Britain. There was
not much public feeling in the matter; in the East there was none
whatever. But Benton, when he opposed the renewal, and claimed the whole
territory as ours, gave expression to the desires of all the Westerners
who thought over the subject at all. He was followed by only half a
dozen senators, all but one from the West, and from both sides of the
Ohio--Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi; the Northwest and
Southwest as usual acting together.
The vote on the protective tariff law of 1828 furnished another
illustration of the solidarity of the West. New England had abandoned
her free trade position since 1824, and the North went strongly for the
new tariff; the Southern sea-coast states, except Louisiana, opposed it
bitterly; and the bill was carried by the support of the Western States,
both the free and the slave. This tariff bill was the first of the
immediate irritating causes which induced South Carolina to go into the
nullification movement. Benton's attitude on the measure was that of a
good many other men who, in their public capacities, are obliged to
appear as protectionists, but who lack his frankness in stating their
reasons. He utterly disbelieved in and was opposed to the principle of
the bill, but as it had bid for and secured the interest of Missouri by
a heavy duty on lead, he felt himself forced to support it; and so he
announced his position. He simply went with his state, precisely as did
Webster, the latter, in following Massachusetts' change of front and
supporting the tariff of 1828, turning a full and complete somersault.
Neither the one nor the other was to blame. Free traders are apt to look
at the tariff from a sentimental stand-point; but it is in reality
purely a business matter, and should be decided solely on grounds of
expediency. Political economists have pretty generally agreed that
protection is vicious in theory and harmful in practice; but if the
majority of the people in interest wish it, and it affects only
themselves, there is no earthly reason why they should not be allowed to
try the experiment to their hearts' content. The trouble is that it
rarely does affect only themselves; and in 1828 the evil was peculiarly
aggravated on account of the unequal way in which the proposed law would
affect different sections. It purported to benefit the rest of the
country, but it undoubtedly worked real injury to the planter states,
and there is small ground for wonder that the irritation over it in the
region so affected should have been intense.
During Adams's term Benton began his fight for disposing of the public
lands to actual settlers at a small cost. It was a move of enormous
importance to the whole West; and Benton's long and sturdy contest for
it, and for the right of preemption, entitle him to the greatest credit.
He never gave up the struggle, although repulsed again and again, and at
the best only partially successful; for he had to encounter much
opposition, especially from the short-sighted selfishness of many of the
Northeasterners, who wished to consider the public lands purely as
sources of revenue. He utterly opposed the then existing system of
selling land to the highest bidder--a most hurtful practice; and
objected to the establishment of an arbitrary minimum price, which
practically kept all land below a certain value out of the market
altogether. He succeeded in establishing the preemption system, and had
the system of renting public mines, etc., abolished; and he struggled
for the principle of giving land outright to settlers in certain cases.
As a whole, his theory of a liberal system of land distribution was
undoubtedly the correct one, and he deserves the greatest credit for
having pushed it as he did.