County of statue: St. Louis Independent City
Location of statue: Lafayette Ave., Lafayette Park - Lafayette Square neighborhood, St. Louis
Artist: Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, 1830-1908, sculptor
Founder: Royal Foundry
Statue Text:
(Proper left bronze base): FERD. v. MILLER fudit MUNCHEN 1864
(Proper left Bronze base): HARRIET HOSMER SCULPT. ROME MDCCCLX
(Front of granite base, center):
THERE IS THE EAST
THERE IS INDIA.
(Rear of Granite Base, center:
BENTON.
(Top of step base, plaque):
SENATOR
THOMAS HART BENTON
1782 ~ 1858
Sculpture in Bronze
by
Harriet Hosmer 1830 ~ 1908
Dedicated in 1868
(Plaque proper left of display pad upon which base rests):
Senator Thomas Hart Benton, 1782-1858
Sculpture in bronze by
Harriet Hosmer 1830-1908.
America's First Professional Female Sculptor
Sculpture dedicated in 1868
Harriet Hosmer began her sculpture studies in St. Louis and was the first woman to get a diploma in Anatomy in 1851 from the Missouri Medical College, forerunner of the Washington University School of Medicine. The study of anatomy was important to sculptors of the human form and when she was denied entry into medical schools in the East because of her gender. St. Louis friends helped he bypass these restrictions. While working in Rome, she was commissioned by the State of Missouri to sculpt Missouri's fist public monument. The first United States Senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton, a great champion of westward expansion.
Plaques gift of Richard and Elizabeth Hosmer Kramer, June 2002.
Proper Description: "Colossal figure of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton wearing a Classical toga and holding a partially unrolled scroll of a map of North America. Beneath the toga Benton is wearing a contemporary jacket and scarf. The base is square shaft with three granite steps mounted on a marble plinth." ~ Smithsonian American Art Museum
Remarks: "This sculpture, the first public sculpture erected in Missouri, was funded by the state of Missouri, private contributions, and the Lafayette Park Commission, for a total cost of $36,000
Benton served in the United States Senate from the beginning of Missouri's existence in 1820 until 1850. The base inscription "There is the East, there is India," is a quote from a speech Benton made, advocating a transcontinental railroad route through St. Louis." ~ Smithsonian American Art Museum
"Tomas Hart Benton, (born March 14, 1782, near Hillsborough, N.C., U.S.—died April 10, 1858, Washington, D.C.), American writer and Democratic Party leader who championed agrarian interests and westward expansion during his 30-year tenure as a senator from Missouri.
"After military service in the War of 1812, Benton settled in St. Louis, Mo., in 1815 and became editor of the St. Louis Enquirer (1818–20). Vigorously asserting that the West must “share in the destinies of this Republic,” he appealed to a mixture of agrarian, commercial, and slaveholding interests and was elected a U.S. senator in 1820, an office he held until 1851.
"Building an electoral base among small farmers and traders in the mid-1820s, Benton became a crusader for the distribution of public lands to settlers. His views on many issues grew to coincide with those of President Andrew Jackson, and he was soon acknowledged as the chief spokesman for the Democratic Party in the Senate. In the 1830s he led in Congress Jackson’s successful fight to dissolve the Bank of the United States. Benton also eschewed wildcat state banks as economically unsound; rather, he advocated a federal independent treasury and a hard-money policy.
"Although he was generally considered proslavery and pro-Southern and was an early supporter of statehood for Missouri without restriction on bondage, in the 1840s he came to oppose the extension of slavery into the territories on the grounds that it inhibited the national growth and was a menace both to the Union and to his vision of the freeholder’s Arcadia. This steadfast antislavery position, applied repeatedly to emotionally charged sectional issues, finally cost him his Senate seat in 1851. He continued his opposition in the House of Representatives, however, from 1853 to 1855. Unlike many other antislavery Democrats, he rejected the newly formed Republican Party, and he went so far as to oppose his own son-in-law, John C. Frémont, as Republican presidential nominee (1856).
"Benton’s imposing memoir-history of his years in the Senate, Thirty Years’ View, 2 vol. (1854–56), was eloquent with agrarian and Jacksonian Democratic faith, opposition to slavery extension, and concern for the imperiled Union. He produced a learned Examination of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1858 (which reaffirmed that the status of slaves, as property, could not be affected by federal legislation), and his 16-volume Abridgement of the Debates of Congress through 1850 is still useful." ~ Encyclopædia Britannica