Thomas Hart Benton

by Theodore Roosevelt

CHAPTER VII.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS.

Benton was supremely self-satisfied with the part he had played in the struggle with the Bank. But very few thinking men would now admit that his actions, as a whole, on the occasion in question, were to his credit, although in the matter of the branch drafts he was perfectly right, and in that of the re-charter at least occupied defensible ground. His general views on monetary matters, however, were sound, and on some of the financial questions that shortly arose he occupied a rather lonely pre-eminence of good sense among his fellow senators; such being particularly the case as regards the various mischievous schemes in relation to disposing of the public lands, and of the money drawn from their sale. The revenue derived from all sources, including these sales of public lands, had for some years been much in excess of the governmental expenses, and a surplus had accumulated in the treasury. This surplus worked more damage than any deficit would have done.

There were gold mines in the Southern States, which had been growing more and more productive; and, as the cost of freighting the bullion was excessive, a bill was introduced to establish branch mints at New Orleans and in the gold regions of Georgia and North Carolina. Benton advocated this strongly, as a constitutional right of the South and West, and as greatly in the interest of those two sections; and also as being another move in favor of a hard-money currency as opposed to one of paper. There was strong opposition to the bill; many of the Whigs having been carried so far by their heated devotion to the United States Bank in its quarrel that they had become paper-money men. But the vote was neither sectional nor partisan in its character. Clay led the opposition, while Webster supported Benton.

Before this time propositions to distribute among the states the revenue from the public lands had become common; and they were succeeded by propositions to distribute the lands themselves, and then by others to distribute all the surplus revenue. Calhoun finally introduced an amendment to the Constitution to enable the surplus in the treasury during the next eight years to be distributed among the various states; the estimate being that for the time mentioned there would be about nine millions surplus annually. Benton attacked the proposal very ably, showing the viciousness of a scheme which would degrade every state government into the position of a mendicant, and would allow money to be collected from the citizens with one hand in order to be given back to them with the other; and also denying that the surplus would reach anything like the dimensions indicated. He ridiculed the idea of making a constitutional amendment to cover so short a period of time; and stated that he would greatly prefer to see the price paid for public lands by incoming settlers reduced, and what surplus there was expended on strengthening the defenses of the United States against foreign powers. This last proposition was eminently proper. We were then, as always, in our chronic state of utter defenselessness against any hostile attack, and yet were in imminent danger of getting embroiled with at least one great power—France. Our danger is always that we shall spend too little, and not too much, in keeping ourselves prepared for foreign war. Calhoun's resolution was a total failure, and was never even brought to a vote.

Benton's proposed method of using the surplus came in with peculiar propriety on account of the conduct of the Whigs and Nullifiers in joining to oppose the appropriation of three millions of dollars for purposes of defense, which was provided for in the general fortification bill. The House passed this bill by a great majority. It was eminently proper that we should at once take steps to provide for the very possible contingency of a war with France, as the relations with that power were growing more threatening every day; but the opposition of the anti-Jackson men to the administration and to all its measures had become so embittered that they were willing to run the risk of seriously damaging the national credit and honor, if they could thereby score a point against their political adversaries. Accordingly, under the lead of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, they defeated the bill in the Senate, in spite of all that could be done to save it by Benton, who, whatever his faults, was always patriotic. The appropriation had been very irregular in form, and under ordinary circumstances there would have been good justification for inquiring into it before permitting its passage; but under the circumstances its defeat at the moment was most unfortunate. For the president had been pressing France, even to the point of tolerably plain threats, in order to induce or compel her to fulfill the conditions of the recent treaty by which she had bound herself to pay a considerable indemnity, long owing by her to the United States for depredations on our commerce. Now she menaced war, avowedly on the ground that we were unprepared to resist her; and this vote in the Senate naturally led the French government to suppose that Jackson was not sustained by the country in the vigorous position which he had assumed. In speaking on the message of the president which alluded to this state of affairs, Benton strongly advocated our standing firmly for our rights, making a good speech, which showed much historical learning. He severely reproached the anti-administration senators for their previous conduct in causing the loss of the defense appropriation bill, and for preferring to do worse than waste the surplus by distributing it among the different states instead of applying it according to the provisions of that wise measure.

This brought on a bitter wrangle, in which Benton certainly had the best of it. Calhoun was in favor of humiliating non-resistance; he never advocated warlike measures when the dignity of the nation was at stake, fond though he was of threatening violence on behalf of slavery or that form of secession known as nullification. Benton quoted from speeches in the French Chamber of Deputies to show that the French were encouraged to take the position that they did on account of the action of the Senate, and the disposition shown by a majority among the senators rather to pull down the president in a party struggle than to uphold him in his efforts to save the national honor in a contest with France. A curious feature of his speech was that in which he warned the latter power that, in the event of a conflict, it would have to do with a branch of the same race which, "from the days of Agincourt and Crecy, of Blenheim and Ramillies, down to the days of Salamanca and Waterloo, has always known perfectly well how to deal with the impetuous and fiery courage of the French." This sudden out-cropping of what, in Bentonian English, might be called Pan-Anglo-Saxon sentiment was all the more surprising inasmuch as both Benton himself and the party to which he belonged were strongly anti-English in their way of looking at our foreign policy, at least so far as North America was concerned. In the end France yielded, though trying to maintain her dignity by stating that she had not done so, and the United States received what was due them.

Benton strongly opposed the payment by the United States of the private claims of its citizens for damages arising from the French spoliations at the end of the last century. He pointed out that the effort to pay such claims, scores of years after the time of their accruing, rarely benefits any of the parties originally in interest, and can only do real service to dishonest speculators. His speech on this matter would not be bad reading for some of the pension-jobbing congressmen of the present day, and their supporters; but as concerned these French claims he could have been easily answered.

In the controversy over the bill introduced by Clay, to distribute the revenue derived from the public lands among the states for the next five years, Benton showed to great advantage compared both to the introducer of the bill himself, and to Webster, his supporter. He had all along taken the view of the land question that would be natural to a far-seeing Western statesman desirous of encouraging immigration. He wished the public lands to be sold in small parcels to actual settlers, at prices that would allow any poor man who was thrifty to take up a claim. He had already introduced a bill to sell them at graduated prices, the minimum being established at a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre; but if land remained unsold at this rate for three years it was then to be sold for what it would bring in the market. This bill passed the Senate, but failed in the House.