After Colonel Benton's thirty years' service in the Senate had terminated, the city of St. Louis sent him to the House in the autumn of 1852. He had entered the Senate when Missouri came into the Union as the result of the Compromise of 1820. He had remained there until after the Compromise of 1850 was adopted. He denounced the proceeding of Douglas with unsparing severity, and gave his best efforts, but in vain, to defeat the bill. He pointed out the fact that the original Compromise had been forced upon the North by the South, and that the present proposition to repeal it had been initiated "without a memorial, without a petition, without a request from any human being. It was simply and only a contrivance of political leaders, who were using the institution of slavery as a weapon, and rushing the country forward to excitements and conflicts in which there was no profit to either section, and possibly great harm to both." Colonel Benton belonged to a class of Southern Democrats who were passing away,--of whom he, indeed, was the last in conspicuous stature. He represented the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and of Nathaniel Macon,--not the Democracy of Mr. Calhoun. He placed the value of the Union above the value of slavery, and was a relentless foe to all who plotted against the integrity of the government. But his day was past, his power was broken, his influence was gone. Even in his own State he had been beaten, and David R. Atchison installed as leader of the Democratic party. His efforts were vain, his protest unheard; and amid the sorrow and gloom of thinking men, and the riotous rejoicings of those who could not measure the evil of their work, the Douglas Bill was passed. On the thirtieth of May, 1854, the wise and patriotic Compromise of March 6, 1820, was declared to be at an end, and the advocates and the opponents of slavery were invited to a trial of strength on the public domain of the United States.