n private life Colonel
Benton was gentleness and domestic affection personified, and a
desire to have his children profit by the superior advantages for
their education in the District of Columbia kept him from his
constituents in Missouri, where a new generation of voters grew up
who did not know him and who would not follow his political lead,
while he was ignorant of their views on the question of slavery.

Senator Randolph, of Virginia, attracted the most attention on the
part of strangers. He was at least six feet in height, with long
limbs, an ill-proportioned body, and a small, round head. Claiming
descent from Pocahontas, he wore his coarse, black hair long, parted
in the middle, and combed down on either side of his sallow face.
His small, black eyes were expressive in their rapid glances,
especially when he was engaged in debate, and his high-toned and
thin voice would ring through the Senate Chamber like the shrill
scream of an angry vixen. He generally wore a full suit of heavy,
drab-colored English broadcloth, the high, rolling collar of his
surtout coat almost concealing his head, while the skirts hung in
voluminous folds about his knee-breeches and the white leather tops
of his boots. He used to enter the Senate Chamber wearing a pair
of silver spurs, carrying a heavy riding-whip, and followed by a
favorite hound, which crouched beneath his desk. He wrote, and
occasionally spoke, in riding-gloves, and it was his favorite
gesture to point the long index finger of his right hand at his
opponent as he hurled forth tropes and figures of speech at him.
Every ten or fifteen minutes, while he occupied the floor, he would
exclaim in a low voice, "Tims, more porter!" and the assistant
doorkeeper would hand him a foaming tumbler of potent malt liquor,
which he would hurriedly drink, and then proceed with his remarks,
often thus drinking three or four quarts in an afternoon. He was
not choice in his selection of epithets, and as Mr. Calhoun took
the ground that he did not have the power to call a Senator to
order, the irate Virginian pronounced President Adams "a traitor,"
Daniel Webster "a vile slanderer," John Holmes "a dangerous fool,"
and Edward Livingston "the most contemptible and degraded of beings,
whom no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs." One day,
while he was speaking with great freedom of abuse of Mr. Webster,
then a member of the House, a Senator informed him in an undertone
that