Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-12-26
Seme Things About Fighting and
CQurteaY.


C0urtesy.
We have before referred to Mr.. Oliver
Dyer's book, "Great Senators of the
United States Forty Years Ago." Our
regret is great that this little volume was
not greatly expanded, and made rich
with the ana which was so abundant in
the days when Dyer was stenographer
of Congress, beginning in the year 1S4s
Still Mr.. Dyer has acquitted himself of
go many graceful things, and has done
so many things we'll in the little minim
of his book that we are inclined to be in
dulgent to him. One of the four great
Senators treated by him was the cele-
brated Thomas Hart Benton, who will
for all time to come share with Jeffar-
son Davis the honor OF suggesting the
great transcontinental railway system.
The Lafayette Park, in st. Louis, is orna.
mented with q statue of Benton, heroic
and overmastering, in which, with a
partially unrolled scroll in his marble
hand, he says, "There is the Pacific
Coast. There is India"
The great Missourian, like the great
Mississippisn, Jefferson Davis, and to q
far greater degree than the latter,
figured in what might be called the for
native epoch of our public life. Mr..
Dyer correctly says that Benton was the
most tremendous egotist that was ever
developed in the national affairs of any
country, and that when any other egotist
put in an appearance, for the time being,
unless he could disclose the lineaments
of Jove himself, he would be, perforce,
obliged to retire in confusion. And all
the circumstances OF contemporaneou
narrative support Mr.. Dyer's assertion.
In a memorable debate in the United
States Senate, Senator, after Mr..
Benton had sat down on Mr.. Cal.
houn with great brutality, referred
to the "quarreling" propensities of the
great Senator from Missouri. We are
told, in the graceful cadences of operetta,
that when you want to mash pretty
girl ''you must pull yourself together,
and put on a. pleasant SMILE" Instead
of accepting and availing himself of the
jocund measures Of the modern ballet,
Senator Benton rose 10 his seat riled.
He said to his opponent, "Sir, 1 ne, er
quarrel. l sometimes fight, sir, but,
when 1 fight, sir, there is always a
funeral, sir."
As to this last proposition we shall
furnish later developments. We simply
resume the story of Benton's monument
tai egotism, which makes any episode of
DR.. Samuel johnson, of happy memory,
an unimportant interlude. Every one
remembers the Jove-like energy with
which Andrew Jackson struck the Ma
tional Bank to the ground. Years after
Biddle had disappeared in the
dim adumbra of the past, and after the
Bank of the United States had been
and the country had
it's normal respirations,
Thomas Hart Benton. and q friend
passed the equestrian statue of Jack
son, which still maintains it's proud
position in Lafayette Park, imme.
diately opposite the White House. Ben
ton's friend said Gen. Jackson was very
great man. EYES," said Benton, "Gen.
Jackson was a great man. He was of
great assistance to me in my fight with
he United States Bank" Benton would
nave seemed, in this utterance, to have
reached the acme of all possible egotistic
but not 80. He improved
lpon an almost Jove-like fight. When
Calhoun died, friend said to Thomas
Hart Benton-the great Missourian and
he great South Carolinean had for gen.
srations been enemies--"Now, Senator,
hat Calhoun is dead, we expect you to
Do lenient to him."
eyes," said Benton, "when God
Almighty lays his hand on man, take
ny hand off of him."
Mr.. Dyer could have made his too
'rief story of his personal experiences
Ill too interesting if he had only ex.
;eneed them little. In one of his mo.
nents of extreme egotism, Senator
Benton said that his differences of opin-
on meant not only q quarrel but death
This was not true, in any sense. The
most famous street fight that ever oc-
cured in the United States was chron-
cled in the thoroughfares of Nash
vile between Gen. Jackson and his
riends and Thomas Hart Benton
and his friends. Mr.. Parton gives the
story in it's minutie, and the fight
only lasted while you could say Jack
Robinson, as it were. A terrible lot of ball
md powder was wasted, with no result ,un-
Ill, finally, Gen. Jackson and Tom
Benton's brother clinched and fell down
! cellar opening, Benton's brother on
;op. The vindictive Missourian put his
pistol on to the shoulder of Jackson, and
blew a hole through it. He was about
to put the pistol nearer the heart, when
'ome friend Of Jackson knocked the
homicide senseless with blow from the
outt of his pistol, and that was all that
,ame of this mighty encounter. jackson
Ultimately died from that pistol wound.
jackson and Benton-the latter be-
coming Old Hickory's friend-had had
many duels in their time, although Ben
on's brother never BECAME reconciled |
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