ts influence is due
largely the repeal of the same.

He was among the foremost who advocated a railroad to the Pacific coast,
and it was Thomas Benton who first introduced the idea of congress
granting pre-emption rights to actual settlers. He favored trade with
New Mexico, and establishing commerce on the great lakes. He was an
eminent specie advocate; so vehement was he that he became known as "OLD
BULLION," and it was through his influence that the forty-ninth parallel
was decided upon as the northern boundary of Oregon. He opposed the
fugitive slave law, and openly denounced nullification views wherever
expressed. Nothing but his known opposition to the extension of slavery
caused his final defeat in the legislature when that body chose another
to succeed him in the United States senate.

Thus in defence of human liberty ended his splendid career of thirty
years in the upper house, struck down by the frown of demagogism. Two
years later he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he did
noble work in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska act, denouncing it as a
violation of the Missouri Compromise, and was defeated as a candidate
for congress in the next campaign. After two years devotion to
literature he was a candidate for governor of his State, but was
defeated by a third ticket being placed in the field. He was the popular
candidate, however, of the three, against great odds being defeated by
only a few votes.

During this year he supported Mr. Buchanan for the presidency against
his son-in-law, Mr. Fremont. He now retired permanently from public
life, devoting his exclusive attention to literature, and his "Thirty
Years View; or a History of the Working of the United States Government
for Thirty Years from 1820 to 1850," was a masterly piece of literature,
and reached a mammoth sale; more than sixty thousand copies being sold
when first issued. When this was finished he immediately began another,
"An Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1850." Although
at the advanced age of seventy-six, he labored at this task daily, the
latter part of which was dictated while on his death-bed, and while he
could speak only in whispers. Surely he deserved the success which had
attended his efforts. He died in Washington on the 10th day of April,
1858.

He had a large and grandly proportioned head, and was a most aggressive
debater. It was in the Expunging Resolution and the exciting debates in
which he