nator of the Jackson era,
was then, as he had been for twenty-four years, the political autocrat
of Missouri. He had long been convinced of the latent treason of the
Calhoun school of politicians. He was able to combat the schemes of the
Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President
Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his
popularity at home. Nevertheless, the seeds of disunion had been borne
to his State; they had taken root; and, like all evil in life, they
proved self-perpetuating and ineradicable. In 1849 the Mexican war,
begun in the interest of the disunionists, had been closed. A vast
accession of territory had accrued to the Union. It was the plan and
purpose of the disunion party to appropriate and occupy this territory;
to organize it in their interests; and, finally, to admit it into the
Union as States, to add to their political power, and prepare for that
struggle between the principle of freedom and the principle of slavery
in the government, which Mr. Calhoun had taught was inevitable. But the
hostility of Benton in the Senate was dreaded by the Southern leaders
thus early conspiring against the integrity of the Union. The Missouri
senator seemed, of all cotemporaneous statesmen, to be the only one that
fully comprehended the incipient treason. His earnest opposition assumed
at times the phases of _monomania_. He sought to crush it in the egg. He
lifted his warning voice on all occasions. He inveighed bitterly against
the 'Nullifiers,' as he invariably characterized the Calhoun
politicians, declaring that their purpose was to destroy the Union. It
became necessary, therefore, before attempting to dispose of the
territories acquired from Mexico, to silence Benton, or remove him from
the Senate. Accordingly, when the legislature of Missouri met in 1849, a
series of resolutions was introduced, declaring that all territory
derived by the United States, in the treaty with Mexico, should be open
to settlement by the citizens of all the States in common; that the
question of allowing or prohibiting slavery in any territory could only
be decided by the people resident in the territory, and then only when
they came to organize themselves into a State government; and, lastly,
that if the general government should attempt to establish a rule other
than this for the settlement of the territories, the State of Missouri
would stand pledged to her sister Southern Stat