But the politicians in the Congress were the last to see the drift. Long after the bankers and merchants had lost interest in the fate of Biddle’s Bank, they continued their fight in its behalf throughout the most bitter congressional session the Republic had ever known. The actions of the Bank, the tumult of the market-places, the proceedings of the merchants, are all intimately interwoven with the activities of the Bank’s champions in House and Senate. There the last stand was taken, there the battle was definitely lost. And there the most dramatic feature of the fight was staged. It was at this juncture that three important figures, not hitherto intimately identified with or against the Administration, moved to the firing line. Thomas H. Benton assumed the leadership of the Jacksonian forces, and Clay’s fighters were brilliantly augmented by the advent of two Senators, William Campbell Preston of South Carolina, and Benjamin Watkins Leigh of Virginia. The complete harmony between Benton’s views and Jackson’s actions in the Bank controversy has given an overshadowing prominence to his leadership. For thirty years he was a constructive force in legislation, associating his name with more important measures written into law than Clay, Webster, and Calhoun combined. In the Senate his faults of mannerism, his arrogance, and stupendous conceit, together with the interminable length of his speeches and his diffusive tendencies, served to overshadow his very substantial contributions to the discussions. The fact that the Chamber emptied and the galleries cleared when he arose did not disturb him in the least. He spoke from the Chamber to the country, and his carefully prepared speeches, especially during the Bank fight, were treatises intended for the education of the people. His personal life was above reproach. His austerity, his imposing dignity, discouraged attempts at intimacy in a day when men loved conviviality and were a trifle lax in their morals. He was one of the colossal figures of American politics and he never loomed larger than in his fight for Jackson.