es to co-operate in
whatever measures of resistance or redress _they_ might deem necessary.
The resolutions distinctly abdicated all right of judgment on the part
of Missouri, and committed the State to a blind support of Southern
'Nullification' in a possible contingency. They were in flagrant
opposition to the life-long principles and daily vehement utterances of
Benton--as they were intended to be. Nevertheless, they were adopted;
and the senators of Missouri were instructed to conform their public
action to them. These resolutions were introduced by one Claiborne F.
Jackson, a member of the House of Representatives from the County of
Howard, one of the most democratic and largest slave-holding counties in
the State. The resolutions took the name of their mover, and are known
in the political history of Missouri as the 'Jackson resolutions.' And
Claiborne F. Jackson, who thus took the initiative in foisting treason
upon the statute-books of Missouri, is, to-day, by curious coincidence,
the official head of that State nominally in open revolt. But Jackson,
it was early ascertained, was not entitled to the doubtful honor of the
paternity of these resolutions. They had been matured in a private
chamber of the Capitol at Jefferson City, by two or three conspirators,
who received, it was asserted by Benton, and finally came to be
believed, the first draft of the resolutions from Washington, where the
disunion cabal, armed with federal power, had its headquarters.

Thus the bolt was launched at the Missouri senator, who, from his
prestige of Jacksonism, his robust patriotism, his indomitable will, and
his great abilities, was regarded as the most formidable if not the only
enemy standing in the way of meditated treason. It was not doubted that
the blow would be fatal. Benton was in one sense the father of the
doctrine of legislative instructions. In his persistent and famous
efforts to 'expunge' the resolutions of censure on Gen. Jackson that had
been placed in the Senate journal, Benton had found it necessary to
revolutionize the sentiments or change the composition of the Senate.
Whigs were representing democratic States, and Democrats refused to vote
for a resolution expunging any part of the record of the Senate's
proceedings. To meet and overcome this resistance, Benton introduced the
dogma that a senator was bound to obey the instructions of the
legislature of his State. He succeeded, by his great influence in his
pa