Col. Benton was married, after becoming Senator, to Elizabeth, daughter of Col. James McDowell, of Rockbridge county, Virginia, and of Sarah his wife, born Sarah Preston; and has surviving issue four daughters: Mrs. William Carey Jones, Mrs. Jessie Ann Benton Fremont, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacob, and Madame Susan Benton Boilleau, now at Calcutta, wife of the French consul general--all respectable in life and worthy of their mother, who was a woman of singular merit, judgment, elevation of character, and regard for every social duty, crowned by a life-long connection with the church in which she was bred, the Presbyterian old school. Following the example of their mother, all the daughters are members of some church. Mrs. Benton died in 1854, having been struck with paralysis in 1844, and from the time of that calamity her husband was never known to go to any place of festivity or amusement. PREFACE [Illustration: decorative] 1.--MOTIVES FOR WRITING THIS WORK. Justice to the men with whom I acted, and to the cause in which we were engaged, is my chief motive for engaging in this work. A secondary motive is the hope of being useful to our republican form of government in after ages by showing its working through a long and eventful period; working well all the time, and thereby justifying the hope of its permanent good operation in all time to come, if maintained in its purity and integrity. Justice to the wise and patriotic men who established our independence, and founded this government, is another motive with me. I do not know how young I was when I first read in the speeches of Lord Chatham, the encomium which he pronounced in the House of Lords on these founders of our republic; but it sunk deep into my memory at the time, and, what is more, went deep into the heart: and has remained there ever since. "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America; when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation--and it has been my favorite study--I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world--that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation, or body of men, can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia." This encomium, so just and so grand, so grave and so measured, and the more impressive on account of its gravity and measure, was pronounced in the early part of our revolutionary struggle--in its first stage--and before a long succession of crowning events had come to convert it into history, and to show of how much more those men were capable than they had then done. If the great William Pitt--greater under that name than under the title he so long refused--had lived in this day, had lived to see