586
THE GREEN BAG
In those days in Missouri and the West, generally, law and politics went hand in hand; all lawyers were politicians, although all politicians were not lawyers. Benton's vigorous intellect and forcible character soon made him one of the leaders of the bar of Missouri. In a new country, where land was acquired upon easy terms, there were many disputed land titles. This was especially the case in Missouri, where the titles to land were very mixed, based, as many of them were, upon concessions of land made by the old Spanish and French governments, which had been ratified by Congress, subject to certain conditions which the Creole inhabit ants refused to fulfill. Congress decreed that these "inchoate" claims must be brought before the United States recorder of land titles. The Missouri bar were divided as to what was the proper action to be taken on them. The majority of the lawyers in sisted that those claims should be held void, but a strong minority, headed by Benton, were opposed to the forfeiture of property on merely technical grounds, and declared in favor of affirming every honest claim. Benton was the most influential lawyer on that side of the question, and as he was recognized as the ablest, most honest, and active lawyer at the bar, had many titles under his professional care. His com pensation depended upon his success, and he might have acquired a great fortune in this business, but before the matter was settled he was elected to the United States Senate, when Missouri was admitted into the Union in 1821, after a memorable con test, in which the newly elected senator had taken an active part. As soon as he was elected he informed his clients that he could no longer act as their attorney in prosecuting the claims, as their success would depend largely upon what action Congress would take; and as he was now a member of Congress, he was bound to consult, not the private interest of his clients, but the good of the whole community. As senator he was determined to be perfectly
unbiased in acting upon the matter of the claims. In this he showed a sensitiveness of conscience which might be imitated with advantage at the present day. It was this admirable scruple of the new senator from Missouri which kept him out of a handsome fortune, but won for him the unqualified approbation of the people of Missouri, who, recognizing his preeminent honesty as well as great ability, returned him to the senate again and again until he had served the unparalleled period of thirty years. In this august assembly, Thomas H. Benton ranked high as a patriot and statesman, at the time when the genius and eloquence of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster dominated the Senate, and over-shadowed all lesser luminaries. Colonel Benton was the leader of the Senate in the support of President Jackson's admin istration, in opposition to the powerful triumvirate just mentioned. His long ex perience as a lawyer was of great service to him in the many measures which he advocated or opposed in the Senate. His knowledge of the law was not so profound as that of Webster — not so ornamental as that of Wirt —- not so showy as that of Clay, but it was just what was required beyond the Mississippi during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. As a lawyer he laid the foundation of his future political fortune, and although he never returned to the active practice of his pro fession, he never forgot what it had been to him in the strenuous days of his youth. When Alexander the Great was asked whether he would take part in the Olympian games, it is recorded that he answered, "Yes, if kings will be my antagonists." During the thirty years that Thomas H. Benton sat in the Senate of the United States, he had greater than kings as his antagonists in that great political arena. Not quite forty years old when he was elected to the Senate, he took at once a prominent position in that high assembly, most of the time leading his party, and all the time exerting a powerful influence upon
