Those who in the easier acres of the northwestern prairie
lands reared their own corn and swine and cotton, often wondered at
the half-wild man from St. Francois, who came riding into the
capital on a blooded horse, who was followed by negroes also on
blooded horses, a self-contained man who never lacked money, who
never lacked wit, whose hand was heavy, whose tongue was keen,
whose mind was strong and whose purse was ever open.
The state which had produced a Benton was now building up a rival
to Benton. That giant, then rounding out a history of thirty years'
continuous service in the Senate of the United States, unlike the
men of this weaker day, reserved the right to his own honest and
personal political belief. He steadily refused to countenance the
extending of slavery, although himself a holder of slaves; and,
although he admitted the legality and constitutionality of the
Fugitive Slave Act, he deplored that act as much as any. To the
eventual day of his defeat he stood, careless of his fate, firm
in his own principles, going down in defeat at last because he
would not permit his own state legislature--headed then by men
such as Warville Dunwody and his friends--to dictate to him the
workings of his own conscience.
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