Thomas Hart Benton Biography George Caleb Bingham Biography
Back to Leaders & Activists
Senator Thomas Hart Benton was one of Missouri’s most prominent and powerful political leaders during the nineteenth century. He was a national figure who served five successive terms in the Senate. He played a leading role in almost “every major national political debate from the Missouri statehood controversy in 1820 to the crisis of disunion in the early 1850s.” He was the father of Jessie Benton Frémont, an important female figure during the period of westward expansion and the wife of the explorer and military leader, John C. Frémont. [Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Gary R. Kremer, and Kenneth H. Winn, eds. Dictionary of Missouri Biography (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), p. 59.]
Unless otherwise noted, text and images © 2008, State Historical Society of Missouri
