Thomas Hart Benton

Missouri Democrat who served five terms and championed western expansion and hard money.

Overview

Benton sat in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, the first senator to complete five terms. A devoted ally of Andrew Jackson, he fought the Second Bank of the United States for a decade and promoted hard money, earning the nickname Old Bullion. He advocated western settlement, the Oregon Trail, and a transcontinental route, and in 1844 he opposed the annexation of Texas as an expansion of slave territory that risked war with Mexico. That independence, and his refusal to follow proslavery instructions, led Missouri's legislature to end his career, though his son-in-law John C. Fremont carried expansionist politics to California.