cting slavery, but
Free-Boilers had been to a large extent reabsorbed into the Democratic
party, their vote of 1852 being only about half that of 1848. Though the
Whig vote was large and only about two hundred thousand less than that
of the Democrats, yet it was so distributed that the Whigs carried only
four States, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The other
States gave a Democratic plurality.

Had there been time for readjustment, the Whig party might have
recovered lost ground, but no time was permitted. There was in progress
in Missouri a political conflict which was already commanding national
attention. Thomas H. Benton, for thirty years a Senator from Missouri,
and a national figure, was the storm-center. His enemies accused him of
being a Free-Boiler, an abolitionist in disguise. He was professedly a
stanch and uncompromising unionist, a personal and political opponent of
John C. Calhoun. According to his own statement he had been opposed
to the extension of slavery since 1804, although he had advocated the
admission of Missouri with a pro-slavery constitution in 180. He
was, from the first, senior Senator from the State, and by a peculiar
combination of influences incurred his first defeat for reelection in
1851.

Benton's defeat in the Missouri Legislature was largely the result of
national pro-slavery influences. In a former chapter, reference was
made to the Ohio River as furnishing a "providential argument against
slavery." The Mississippi River as the eastern boundary of Missouri
furnished a like argument, but on the north not even a prairie
brook separated free labor in Iowa from slave labor in Missouri. The
inhabitants of western Missouri, realizing that the tenure of their
peculiar institution was becoming weaker in the east and north, early
became convinced that the organization of a free State along their
western boundary would be followed by the abolition of slavery in
their own State. This condition attracted the attention of the national
guardians of pro-slavery interests. Calhoun, Davis, Breckinridge,
Toombs, and others were in constant communication with local leaders.
A certain Judge W. C. Price, a religious fanatic, and a pro-slavery
devotee, was induced to visit every part of the State in 1844, calling
the attention of all slaveholders to the perils of the situation and
preparing the way for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Senator
Benton, who was approached on the subj