The repeal of the Missouri compromise, its origin and authorship

Contents

Preface ...... n

Chapter I. Missouri Politics, 1 844- 1852- Benton's Retirement from the Senate-The Jackson Resolutions-Benton's "Appeal" 27

Chapter II. Missouri Politics, 1844- 1852 (continued) -James S. Green's Reply to Benton's "Appeal. "-Benton's Election to the House in 1852 .... 51

Preface

This book is a thesis submitted to the University Faculty of Cornell University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It embodies the results of an investigation begun in the American History Seminary at Cornell University in 1902-1903.

The manuscript has been read by Dr. Charles H. Hull, Professor of American History, Cornell University, Dr. Ralph C. H. Catterall, Professor of European History, Cornell University, and by Dr. James A. Woodburn, Professor of American History and Politics, Indiana State University. To each of these gentlemen I am indebted for valuable suggestions. Especially large is the debt I owe to Doctor Hull, not only for his unflagging interest, constant encouragement and active assistance in obtaining material, but also for many keen, but kindly, criticisms and much invaluable advice in the arduous labor of preparing the work for publication.

Cordial thanks are due to Hon. Kirk D.

Pierce, of Hillsboro, New Hampshire, for unrestricted access to the existing papers of his uncle, President Franklin Pierce; to Mrs. R. E. Wynne of Tappahannock, Virginia, for the opportunity to ex-

1 2 PREFACE

amine the existing papers of her father, Colonel John A. Parker; to Hon. George W. Martin, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, William E. Connelley, Esq., of Topeka, Kansas, William M. Paxton, Esq., of Platte City, Missouri, Professor Allen Johnson of Bowdoin College, the late Colonel William F. Switzler of Columbia, Missouri, and the late Miss Mary Louise Dalton, Librarian of the Missouri Historical Society of St. Louis, for placing in my hands material which without their kind assistance would have been inaccessible.

I am under great obligation to the officials of the Boston Public Library, the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, Harvard University Library, the Library of the University of Missouri, the Wisconsin State Historical Library, the Pennsylvania State Library, the Library of Cornell University, the Library of the University of Vermont, the Library of the Pennsylvania State College, and the Library of Congress. Their uniform courtesy and valuable assistance have greatly facilitated the collection of material for this book.

A word of grateful appreciation is also due those individuals, too numerous to mention by name, who have taken pains to reply to letters asking for information upon a multitude of minor points.

Some criticism is anticipated on account of the length of many quotations in the text. Two reasons may be offered in defense. First, it has seemed desirable to render accessible to students, lay and professional, much of the new evidence upon which this work is based and which otherwise would remain

PREFACE 13

nearly or quite as inaccessible as manuscript material. In the second place, the unusually full presentation of evidence reflects a desire to remove reasonable ground for asserting that the author has colored or distorted the evidence to prove his case.

Invaluable assistance in the reading of proof has been rendered by my wife and by Mr. Edwin Angell Cottrell, Instructor in History and Political Science in the Pennsylvania State College.

P. Orman Ray State College, Pa.,

September 1, 1908.

Introduction

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 stands conspicuous as a turning point of the American slavery controversy. It put an end forever to the long series of accommodations between the territorial claims of slavery and freedom. In the presidential campaign of 1852 both parties had endorsed as final the adjustment made two years before, and had condemned all attempts to reopen the slavery question. Within the halls of Congress and without, acquiescence in the finality of the Compromise of 1850 had become the test of political orthodoxy for Whigs and for Democrats alike.

Such was the artificial equilibrium when the 33d Congress convened in December, 1853. Within a month the slumbering agitation had flamed forth anew. An apparently innocent bill to organize a territorial government west of the Missouri River provoked a gigantic and picturesque parliamentary duel in the Senate Chamber of the United States, and we who are wise after the fact can see that with the termination of this last gladiatorial combat in the arena of Congress the day had passed for peaceful adjustments and for compromises based upon mutual good faith. The estrangement of the sections was irreconcilable. The appeal to arms was the only and inevitable means of ending forever the irrepressible conflict.

During the four months' debate while the Kansas-Nebraska bill was pending in Congress, 1 the interest of the nation was focused upon the proceedings of that body. Polemical writers, taken unawares by the sudden revival of the slavery dispute, immediately set at work explaining legislative occurrences and imputing motives on the basis of what appeared in the Congressional Globe. Historians have generally followed them, and are practically unanimous in assigning the authorship of the Repeal to Hon. Stephen A. Douglas ; but they offer a variety of suggestions as to his purposes and motives in precipitating a new agitation of the slavery question.

According to Schouler, 2 the Repeal was the result of a plot in which Douglas appears as the archconspirator, seeking purely selfish ends through obsequious pandering to an insatiable Slave Power. Von Hoist's explanation covers several pages, but is fairly well summarized in these sentences:

"The drawing of the slavery question into the bill for the organization of the Territory of Nebraska, which was so complete a surprise, was originally intended .... to be only a tactical manoeuvre. Douglas wished to avert the injury which threat-

1 The bill first passed the Senate, March 4, 1854. It passed the House in an amended form, May 22; on the twenty-fifth, the Senate concurred in the House amendments. President Pierce signed the act, May 30. Cong. Globe, xxviii, Pt. i, 532; Pt. ii, 1254, 1321. The Act may be found, printed in full, in U. S. Statutes at Large, x, 277 ff . ; Cong. Globe, xxviii, Pt. iii, 2225 ff. ; Poore's Charters and Constitutions, i, 569 ff.

2 Schouler's Hist, of the U. S., v, 280, 290.

ened his party because of the attitude assumed by the President toward the Softs of New York." 3

Woodrow Wilson speaks of Douglas's "strong, coarse-grained, unsensitive nature, his western audacity, his love of leading, and leading boldly, in the direction whither, as it seemed to him, there lay party strength." 4 Mr. Rhodes, accepting the motive assigned in the Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress, 5 namely, that the dearest interests of the people were made "the mere hazards of a presidential game," insists that the action of the Illinois Senator was "a bid for Southern support in the next Democratic Convention." 6

Professor Burgess assigns a more creditable motive and a higher purpose to Mr. Douglas, and his

3 Von Hoist's Constitutional and Political Hist, of the U. S., iv, 350. This explanation is based upon what purports to have been a statement once made by Douglas himself:

"He once subsequently in the fall of 1853 confessed 'that his party in the election of Pierce had consumed all its powder, and that therefore without a deep-reaching agitation, it would have no more ammunition for its artillery.'" (Ibid., 315.)

Von Hoist cites Kapp's Geschichte der Sklaverei, 295. But Kapp himself gives no authority and says merely that such was Douglas's opinion. The translator of Von Hoist puts Kapp's statement in quotation marks, and we find Rhodes led to the false conclusiop that the words were actually uttered by Douglas; Rhodes's Hist, of the U. S., i, 430.

4 Division and Reunion, 184; History of the American People, iv, 166 ff.

5 Published January 24, 1854; Cong. Globe, xxviii, Pt. i, 281.

6 Rhodes's Hist, of the U. S., i, 429-430. Prof. T. C. Smith, obviously following Rhodes, says:

"Douglas appears to have introduced this singular and startling project entirely on his own motion, and its purpose seems to have been nothing more or less than an effort on the part of a presidential candidate to secure favor in a quarter where he lacked popularity." — Parties and Slavery, 1850-1859, 96.

explanation has of late been gaining wide acceptance. 7

"Mr. Douglas was a Western Democrat; that is, he was a radical Democrat. He had, therefore, an exaggerated notion of the virtues of the people, and of the importance of local autonomy. He resented the idea that the sturdy adventurers who accomplished the first settlement of a Western Territory were not as fully capable of local self-government, from the very outset, as the 'effeminate' inhabitants of an Eastern Commonwealth. He repudiated the notion that they needed any pupilage from the general government in the management of public affairs. He was not alone in such views. It is safe to say that the mass of

the people in his section held the same views at that time

Is it not, then, fair to say that Mr. Douglas, in all probability, really believed that the reference of the questions in regard to slavery to the residents of each Territory, as well as to those of each 'State', was the true principle of the political science of the Republic, and the true policy of its legislation? If his convictions and his ambition went hand in hand, and if his convictions were not the product of his ambition, should he be so harshly criticised for declaring them? It is true that his announcement of them filled the land with clamor and angry dispute, and that their adoption by Congress led to violence, bloodshed, and war; but can we conclude that he had any conception whatsoever that this could be the result of them? Is it not far more probable that he thought the quiet of the country would be confirmed and forever established by their general acceptance? There is certainly ground for this view of his motives. It is certainly very improbable that there was ever any balancing, in his mind, of risks to his country's peace and safety against his ambition for the presidency. It is much more probable that he believed his principles without his presidency, would contribute, in a high degree, to the peace and welfare of his country, but that, taken together with his presi-

7 The Middle Period, 385. See also an article on "Douglas and Popular Sovereignty" by Professor Allen Johnson, in Iowa Journal of History and Politics, for January and July, 1905.

dency, they would shed untold blessings upon the land. This is no unusual psychology. It is decidedly common."

The standard explanations just quoted are for several reasons thoroughly unsatisfactory. 8 They are merely conjectural. And they derive no great support from Mr. Douglas's own assertion that he had been pressing the Nebraska bill upon the attention of Congress for "eight long years," 9 for this assertion is untrue. Although Mr. Douglas had been chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories throughout this period, the records of Congress fail to show the introduction by him of any bill looking toward the territorial organization of Nebraska after December, 1848, until he reported the Kansas-Nebraska bill in January, 1854: for more than four years he was wholly silent upon the subject.

These conjectural explanations may serve to show why Senator Douglas, if called upon in January, 1854, to choose between the settlement of the question of slavery in Nebraska upon the principle of popular sovereignty, entailing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the further delay in the establishment of a territorial government, might

8 Messrs. J. Amos Barrett and A. E. Sheldon, of the Nebraska Historical Society, are the authors of perhaps the most recent and novel explanation of Mr. Douglas's motives. This appeared in the Omaha Bee, June 5, 1904. The argument is based upon very weak premises, and will be considered at some length in the Appendix to this volume. The best and most recent biography of Mr. Douglas, by Professor Allen Johnson, gives no satisfactory explanation.

9 Cong. Globe, xxvi, 1117. See also Douglas's speech at Chicago, Nov. 9, 1854, and Cutts's Constitutional and Party Questions, 87. Professor Johnson accepts this statement at its face value.

favor the Repeal. But they do not indicate that any such alternative was presented to Mr. Douglas. In the circumstances under which the Nebraska bill, after passing the House, failed in the Senate in the last crowded days of the session, in March, 1853, there was nothing to require the insertion of the repealing clause in order to make the measure acceptable to the next Congress. Mr. Douglas himself declared that he knew there was a majority in its favor. 10

Let it be remembered also that no motive of political self-preservation could have led Mr. Douglas to originate the Repeal in 1854. His seat in the Senate was perfectly secure, threatened by no rival, actual or prospective. He had been reelected in 1852 without opposition, and of his new term only nine months had elapsed before the opening of the Congress which enacted the Kansas-Nebraska bill.

Unless some such alternative were presented to him, it is highly improbable that Mr. Douglas would have raised the question himself; for, furthermore, he had eulogized the adjustment made in 1820, as a compromise "canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb." " On at least three different occasions within a decade he had brought forward and advocated the extension of the

*0 March 3, 1853; Cong. Globe, xxvi, 1117.

H October 23, 1849, in a speech at Springfield, 111. Quoted in Von Hoist's Const, and Pol. Hist. U. S., iv, 334 n. 1.; by Jehu Baker in a speech at Belleville, 111., October 18, 1854, reported in the Weekly Democratic Press (Chicago), November 11, 1854; and by Cullom, Cong. Globe, xxix, 539-

Missouri Compromise line as a means of settling the question of slavery in the new Territories. 12 He had even announced in 1851 his resolute determination "never to make another speech on the slavery question" and had added the "hope that the necessity for it will never exist." 13

Under these circumstances, Mr. Douglas's championship of the Repeal inevitably gave rise to charges of infidelity to his party's platform recognizing the finality of the settlement of 1850, and of gross personal inconsistency. Such charges Mr. Douglas must have foreseen; and a politician of his prominence and shrewdness, entertaining presidential aspirations, would not gratuitously have provoked them. The charge of inconsistency, to be sure, he subsequently sought to parry by asserting that the Compromise of 1850 had established a precedent, a new principle, for the settlement of the question of slavery in new Territories; and that it had "superseded" or was "inconsistent with" the Compromise of 1820. But this explanation seems to have been an afterthought.

In short, Mr. Douglas was thoroughly committed to the Missouri Compromise, he was not particularly interested in Nebraska, and he was subject in 1853 to no political necessity originating in his own position which could have forced him to adopt a

12 In 1845, in connection with the resolutions for the annexation of Texas; in 1846, as a substitute for the Wilmot Proviso; in 1848, when the Oregon bill was under consideration; Cong. Globe, xviii, 1062. See Douglas's speech, December 23, 1851, in Cong. Globe, xxv, 67; and his speech at Chicago, November 9, 1854.

13 December 23, 1851 ; Cong. Globe, xxv, 67.

course so manifestly dangerous and which in its outcome wrecked his career.

On the other hand, there was a member of the Senate who belonged to the radical wing of the Democratic party and had long regarded the Missouri Compromise restriction as unconstitutional. His senatorial existence was in jeopardy and for his political salvation the repeal of the Compromise in 1854 seemed absolutely essential. On more than one occasion, he afterwards lay claim to the honor, as he regarded it, of originating the Repeal.

Senator David R. Atchison of Missouri stands a rival claimant for consideration as the real author of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

In a speech at Atchison, in Kansas Territory, a few months after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 14 Senator Atchison asserted that at the opening of the 33d Congress, he had desired the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories in order to introduce a bill for a territorial government in Nebraska which should repeal the Missouri Compromise. With this object in view "he had a private interview with Mr. Douglas and informed him of what he desired." "Judge Douglas requested twenty-four hours to consider the matter," offering to resign the chairmanship "if at the expiration of that time he could not introduce such a bill" as Mr. Atchison proposed. "At the expiration of the given time Senator Douglas signified his intention to report such a bill as had been spoken of." Senator Atchison is reported to

14 September 20, 1854; reported in New York Tribune, October io, 1854, and June 4, 1855.

have used emphatic language when asserting his claim on this occasion: "Gentlemen, you make a d — d fuss about Douglas, but Douglas don't deserve the credit of this Nebraska bill. I told Douglas to introduce it. I originated it. I got Pierce committed to it, and all the glory belongs to me." Historians have disparaged this claim because it was made when Mr. Atchison was "under the influence of the invisible spirit of wine."

There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Atchison was intoxicated when he recurred to the same subject at Platte City, Missouri, in February, 1856. 15 Referring to speeches made by him "all over the State" in 1853 in which he had pledged himself to vote for a bill establishing a territorial government in Nebraska on the one condition that the Missouri Compromise was repealed, telling the people that "unless that restriction was repealed" he "would see them damned" before he would support such a bill, Mr. Atchison said, "Well, it was done. I do not say that I did it, but I was a prominent agent"

Some time after the publication of Mr. Atchison's claims Senator Douglas characterized the reports of Atchison's remarks as a "stale abolition libel," 16 and the issue of veracity thus raised between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Atchison historians have summarily adjudged in favor of Mr. Douglas on the ground that the claims of Mr. Atchison were made during a state of intoxication. This is entirely un-

15 New York Times, February 25, 1856.

16 April 14, 1856; Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 34th Cong., App. 390 ff. See Appendix E.

satisfactory because while the fact of intoxication may impair the force of Atchison's claims, it does not warrant their total rejection.

The issue thus raised and the inadequacy of the standard explanations justify an attempt to explain the origin of the Repeal by looking away from the pages of the Congressional Globe, and studying the political conditions existing in the State of Missouri. 17 To advance a new explanation, resulting from such a study, of the circumstances under which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was conceived; and to explain how the Repeal happened to occur early in 1854 when the country had been lulled into apparent quietude after the tumultuous agitation threatening the integrity of the Union, constitute the main purpose of this book. Closely connected with this, there is a problem of secondary importance, namely, the question who originated the suggestion of the Repeal.

17 The possibility of a western or Missouri origin of the Repeal has not escaped such leading historians as Rhodes and Von Hoist but its significance is not appreciated; Rhodes's Hist, of the U. S., i, 431, 440; Von Hoist's Const, and Pol. Hist. U. S., iv, 285 ff.

Chapter I

Missouri Politics, 1844-1852-Bentons Retirement from the Senate-The Jackson Resolutions-Benton s "Appeal."

For a decade prior to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Democratic party in Missouri had been rent with internal dissensions. These were but one manifestation of a cleavage running through the Democratic party in the Southern States during these years, separating into one faction the radical, secessionist followers of Mr. Calhoun, and into the other, the conservative elements opposed to disunion tendencies. 18 In no State, however, was the war between these factions characterized by a greater bitterness of feeling and violence of utterance than in the State of Missouri. There the disciples of Mr. Calhoun found leaders in David R. Atchison and James S. Green. In the opposing faction no one equalled in prominence and influence Calhoun's bitter political and personal enemy, Colonel Thomas

18 The fight of 1849-51 "in which Benton was overthrown was merely the Missouri extension of the conflict between the Calhoun and the Jackson elements of the Democracy which raged through most of the slave States, but which was particularly fierce in the border tier, in which the Jacksonians had been largely in the preponderance in the beginning." — Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, Editor-in-Chief, Provinces and States; A History of the Province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the Territories and States formed therefrom, iv, 108. Hereafter cited as Goodspeed.

H. Benton. Chiefly to the peculiar characteristics of Colonel Benton is to be attributed the extraordinary fierceness of the conflict in Missouri.

Both Mr. Atchison and Colonel Benton were members of the 33d Congress: Atchison, in the Senate; Benton, in the House. Atchison had never played a prominent part in national politics. Benton had been conspicuously before the public for a generation. He was a statesman of the old school; personally ostentatious and overbearing, respected and honored, but never loved. Atchison, a younger man, was a politician of the new school; swaggering and coarse, but magnetic, skilful in intrigue, and a masterful manipulator of men. The name of one is writ large in the annals of the country: the name of the other has come down to posterity as that of a "Border Ruffian."

In 1853-54 tne factional war in Missouri was at its height. Colonel Benton, after thirty years in the Senate, had been defeated for reelection in 1850 by a combination of radical Democrats and Whigs. Almost immediately he had been elected to the House of Representatives where he sat during the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He ardently desired to return to the Senate in March, 1855, as the successor of Mr. Atchison. Mr. Atchison desired to be his own successor. The final stage of the contest for the senatorial succession began as early as the spring of 1853. When the Missouri Compromise was repealed the next year, Colonel Benton was struggling desperately to restore his waning political power in the State, and Senator Atchison was no less strenuously endeavoring to bring about his own reelection to the Senate. The political ambition and success of one inevitably involved the political destruction of the other. Quarter was neither asked nor given. From the State of Missouri, the scene of its birth, this titanic struggle was transferred to Washington and there, in the arena of national politics, it led to the proposal to repeal the Missouri Compromise.

For a clear understanding of the way in which a senatorial contest in a single State could produce such stupendous national consequences as were wrought by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it becomes necessary to examine in some detail the political conditions existing in Missouri in the decade preceding the Repeal. By untangling the confused and complex issues then before the people of that State we shall set the Repeal in a new and true light. It will signally illustrate the way in which State political issues have been transformed, more frequently than is generally realized, into national issues. It will show that a correct understanding of national issues may require a thorough study of local conditions.

The story of Senator Benton's retirement from the Senate begins with his attitude toward Mr. Calhoun and the policies for which Mr. Calhoun stood, 19 especially with his opposition to the plans of the aggressive and radical pro-slavery element in the Mis-

19 Goodspeed, iv, 84; Niles's Register, lxvi, 444.

souri Democracy which derived its principles from the great Nullifier. 20

Since the time when Colonel Benton had defended and supported President Jackson in his policy toward Nullification in South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun and Senator Benton had been personal and political enemies. 21 With his characteristically fearless and energetic opposition, the latter had been conspicuously instrumental in defeating Mr. Calhoun's scheme for the "immediate" annexation of Texas by the treaty signed the twelfth of April, 1844, and rejected by the Senate on the twelfth of June in the same year. 22

20 In assigning the causes which led to Benton's retirement one must not overlook those repellent personal characteristics which no doubt played a considerable part in his political overthrow. These, taken with his long residence in Washington which removed him from close and sympathetic contact with the younger generation of Missourians and from a first-hand knowledge of actual conditions in Missouri, probably had a great deal to do in undermining his power and in strengthening the arm of his enemies. A brief but excellent statement of these peculiarities of Benton is to be found in Rogers's Life of Thomas Hart Benton, 228, 283, 297, 312-313, 315, 318; hereafter cited as Rogers's Benton.

21 "I am mortified to dwell upon Mr. Calhoun He has been

instigating attacks upon me for twenty years — ever since I stood by Jackson and the Union in the first war of nullification. His Duff Green Telegraph commenced upon me at the same time that it did upon Jackson, and for the same cause — because we stood by the Union." — Benton's speech, Jefferson City, Mo., May 26, 1849. Niles's Register, lxxv, 390 ff.

"He [Benton] says I instigated attacks on him for twenty years. I instigate attacks on him! He must have a very exalted opinion of himself. I never thought of such a thing. We move in different spheres. My course is, and has been, to have nothing to do with him. I never wanted his support, nor dreaded his opposition." — Calhoun's Reply mentioned in note 45.

22 Benton's Thirty Years' View, ii, 581 ff. See also Benton's Jefferson City speech, May 26, 1849; Stephens's The War between the States, ii, 242; Calhoun's "Correspondence" in American Historical Association's Report, 1899, i', 633, 635, 636, 658.

In retaliation, an active organization of the friends of Mr. Calhoun and the "immediate" annexation of Texas appeared in the State of Missouri when the time came round late in 1844 for Mr. Benton's fifth election. This movement had the support, so Colonel Benton claimed, of "every Calhoun man and every Calhoun newspaper in the State and in the United States." 23 Instructions alleged to have been inspired by Mr. Calhoun were sent to hundreds of newspapers over the country, intended for their guidance in the presidential and state elections and especially to defeat Mr. Benton's own election. These instructions advised and urged attacks upon Benton by showing that he had allied himself with the Whigs on the Texas question. "Quote," said the instructions, "Jackson's letter on Texas, 24 where he denounces all those as traitors to the country who oppose the treaty. Apply it to Benton. Proclaim that Benton, by attacking Mr. Tyler and his friends, and driving them from the party, is aiding the election of Mr. Clay; and charge him with doing this to defeat Mr. Polk, and insure himself the succession in 1848; and claim that full justice be done the acts and motives of John Tyler by the leaders. Harp

22 "In the year 1844, as it will be remembered, when my fifth election was coming round, there was an organization against me in the State, supported by every Calhoun man, and every Calhoun newspaper in the State, and in the United States. There was a coincidence in their operations which showed that they worked by a pattern. I knew at the time where it all came from ; and the source has since been authentically revealed to me " Benton's Jefferson City speech.

24 Letter of Andrew Jackson to William B. Lewis, January 28, 1844, in N. Y. Public Library Bulletin, iv, 308.

upon these strings." 25 So far as Missouri was concerned it appears that these instructions were obeyed to the letter. 26

This effort of Mr. Calhoun and his friends to discredit Colonel Benton by emphasizing his opposition to the annexation of Texas was probably the strongest move which could have been made at that time to undermine Benton's political supremacy in Missouri. An overwhelming majority of the people of that State ardently favored the acquisition of Texas. 27 The Legislature which met in December, 1844, had adopted a memorial to Congress urging the annexation of Texas at the "earliest practicable moment." 28

25 Quoted in Benton's Jefferson City speech.

26 "How well the instructions were obeyed was seen in this State, and in other States, and in all the presses and politicians which followed the lead of 'our leading friend at the South.' Benton — Clay — Whigs — Texas. Harp upon these strings, and harp they did until the strings were worn out ; and then the harps were hung upon the willows." — Benton's Jefferson City speech.

27 "The State of Missouri is more deeply interested in the annexation of Texas than any other State;" Benton's remarks in the Senate, in presenting this memorial, January 20, 1845; Cong. Globe, xiv, 154-155. See also Benton's View, ii, 615; Carr's Missouri, 193-199; Calhoun's "Correspondence," 633, 635, 636, 658, 954, 969, 1197, 1199. The people of Missouri were "for speedy annexation regardless of the smiles or frown of foreign nations;" letter of Andrew Jackson to B. F. Butler, May 14, 1844, printed in Am. Hist. Rev., xi, 833. See also Niles's Register, lxvii, 42 (September 21, 1844), quoting the Richmond Whig; Goodspeed, iv, ch. 9.