Senator Thomas Hart Benton was a towering figure in Missouri politics. Elected in 1821, he was their first senator and served in Washington, DC, for more than thirty years. Like Andrew Jackson, with whom he had a long and complicated relationship, Benton came out of the developing western section of the young American Republic. The foremost Democratic leader in the Senate, he claimed to represent the rights of “the common man” against “monied interests” of the East. “Benton and the people,” the Missourian was fond of saying, “are one and the same”a bit of bombast that reveals a good deal about this seasoned politician who was himself a mass of contradictions. He possessed an enormous ego and a touchy sense of personal honor that led to violent results on several occasions. Yet this conflation of “the people” and their tribune raises questions not addressed in earlier biographies of Benton. -- front jacket flap.

Introduction - Honor and country : Bloody Island -- The transformation of frontier Missouri : Frontiers of inclusion, frontiers of exclusion -- The triumph of master race democracy : The racialization of American politics -- "The land belongs to the people" : Public lands, States' rights, and the "Indian Problem" -- Old Bullion and the borderlands : Mexican dollars -- The destiny of the races : the free soil schism.