THIRTY YEARS' VIEW;
OR,
A HISTORY OF THE WORKING OF THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT FOR THIRTY YEARS,
FROM 1820 TO 1850.
CHIEFLY TAKEN
FROM THE CONGRESS DEBATES, THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF GENERAL JACKSON
AND THE SPEECHES OF EX-SENATOR BENTON, WITH HIS
ACTUAL VIEW OF MEN AND AFFAIRS:
WITH
HISTORICAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SOME NOTICES OF EMINENT
DECEASED COTEMPORARIES:
BY A SENATOR OF THIRTY YEARS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1, 3, and 5 BOND STREET.
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.
1883.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
[The outlines of the life of the lately deceased Thomas H. Benton, which are contained in thefollowing pages, were prepared by the author and subject of them whilst he was suffering excruciatingpain from the disease that, a few weeks later, closed his earthly career. They were not intendedfor a Biography, properly so called, but rather to present some salient points of character andsome 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 asthe author of several works, was born in Orange County, near Hillsborough, NorthCarolina, March 14th, 1782; and was the son of Col. Jesse Benton, an able lawyerof that State, and of Ann Gooch, of Hanover county, Virginia, of the family of theGooches of colonial residence in that State. By this descent, on the mother's side, hetook 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 Hartfamily. 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. Clayhimself. He lost his father before he was eight years of age, and fell under the care ofa mother still young, and charged with a numerous family, all of tender age—and devotingherself to them. She was a woman of reading and observation—solid reading, andobservation of the men of the Revolution, brought together by course of hospitality ofthat time, in which the houses of friends, and not taverns, were the universal stoppingplaces. Thomas was the oldest son, and at the age of ten and twelve was reading solidbooks with his mother, and studying the great examples of history, and receiving encouragementto emulate these examples. His father's library, among others, contained thefamous State Trials, in the large folios of that time, and here he got a foundation ofBritish history, in reading the trea