Thomas Hart Benton: The Jackson Brawl, Bloody Island Duels, Old Bullion

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Thomas Hart Benton was born in North Carolina in 1782 and was expelled from the University of North Carolina in 1799 after admitting he stole money from classmates, vowing as he left that they would hear his name again. He rebuilt his life on a 40,000 acre family estate near Nashville, trading otter, bear and beaver pelts as frontier currency, and passed the Tennessee bar in 1805. As a young lawyer he won a pardon for Harriet, an 11 year old enslaved girl charged with murder, even as he bought and sold enslaved people himself. He served as Andrew Jackson's aide during the War of 1812, and in 1813 a Nashville hotel brawl between the Jackson and Benton camps ended with Jesse Benton shooting Jackson in the left arm.

Benton moved to St. Louis, where his feud with attorney Charles Lucas led to two duels on Bloody Island in the Mississippi in 1817; in the rematch, fought at nine feet, Benton killed Lucas. Elected one of Missouri's first senators in 1821, he reconciled with Jackson, refused Henry Clay's 1824 request to steer Missouri's House vote to John Quincy Adams, and became Jackson's floor leader in the Bank War, earning the name Old Bullion for his defense of gold and silver coin. Later he turned against the expansion of slavery into the western territories, a stand that cost him his Senate seat in 1851.

• He spent years fighting to expunge the Senate's censure of Jackson from the Senate Journal and succeeded in 1837.
• He opposed the Mexican-American War and pushed for a compromise at the 49th parallel instead of 54-40 or Fight.
• He argued against recognizing Haiti, warning that its diplomats could inspire slave revolts in the South.
• In April 1850 Mississippi senator Henry Foote aimed a loaded pistol at him in the Senate chamber during the Compromise of 1850 debate.
• In 1856 he voted for James Buchanan rather than his son-in-law John C. Frémont, the first Republican presidential nominee; he died in 1858.