Thomas Hart Benton
1782=1858.
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Hillsboro, North Carolina, and was partly educated at the State University. He left before graduation, however, and removed with his widowed mother to Tennessee, where twenty-five miles south of Nashville they made a home, around which a settlement called Bentontown gradually grew up.
He studied law with St. George Tucker, began to practice in Nashville, and was elected to the State Legislature in 1811. In 1815 he removed to St. Louis, and was elected United States Senator in 1820 on the admission of Missouri to the Union. He worked heartily and successfully in the interests of settlers in the West. His title “Old Bullion” was derived from his famous speeches on the currency, during Jackson’s administration, and they gained him a European reputation.
He and Calhoun were opposed to each other on almost every question, and they carried on a ferocious warfare in the Senate. He was a Senator for thirty years, 1820-50, and his great work gives an account of men and measures during that very exciting and intensely interesting period, in which he was himself one of the most prominent actors.
A fine statue was erected to him in the park at St. Louis.