the offender a torrent of denunciation and abuse, unmeasured and appalling.  The extraordinary course adopted by Benton in urging his ‘appeal,’ excited astonishment and indignation among the democratic partisans that had, in many cases, thoughtlessly become arrayed against him.[A] They might have yielded to expostulation; they were stung to resentment by unsparing vilification.  The rumor of Benton’s manner preceded him through the State, after the first signal manifestations of his ruthless spirit; and he was warned not to appear at some of the appointments he had made, else his life would pay the forfeit of his personal assaults.  These threats only made the Missouri lion more fierce and untamable.  He filled all his appointments, bearing everywhere the same front, often surrounded by enraged enemies armed and thirsting for his blood, but ever denunciatory and defiant, and returned to St. Louis, still boiling with inexhaustible choler, to await the judgment of the State upon his appeal.  He failed.  The pro-slavery sentiment of the people had been too thoroughly evoked in the controversy, and too many valuable party leaders had been needlessly driven from his support by unsparing invective.  An artful and apparently honest appeal to the right of legislative instructions,—­an enlargement of popular rights which Benton himself had conferred upon them,—­and—­the unfailing weapon of Southern demagogues against their opponents—­the charge that Benton had joined the ‘Abolitionists,’ and was seeking to betray ‘the rights of the South,’ worked the overthrow of the hitherto invincible senator.  The Whigs of Missouri, though agreeing mainly with Benton in the principles involved in this contest, had received nothing at his hands, throughout his long career, but defeat and total exclusion from all offices and honors, State and National.  This class of politicians were too glad of the prospective division of his party and the downfall of his power, to be willing to re-assert their principles through a support of Benton.  The loyal Union sentiments of the State in this way failed to be united, and a majority was elected to the legislature opposed to Benton.  He was defeated of a re-election to the Senate by Henry S. Geyer, a pro-slavery Whig, and supporter of the Jackson resolutions, after having filled a seat in that august body for a longer time consecutively than any other senator ever did.  Thus was removed from the halls of Congress the most sagacious and formidable enemy that the disunion propagandists ever encountered.  Their career in Congress and in the control of the federal government was thenceforth unchecked.  The cords of loyalty in Missouri were snapped in Benton’s fall, and that State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of secessionism.  The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating, the State at last succeeded, through