Murder of Thomas Roberts Benning

 

The Murder of Thomas Roberts Benning, 1829

The following accounts from the pages of the Kentucky Gazette reveal how brutal politics and journalism could be in early Kentucky. Thomas Roberts Benning was the son of Anthony Benning, Sr., and Elizabeth Roberts; he was born 15 September 1803 and was named for his maternal grandfather.1   The victim had married, just over a year before, Sarah Clopton Bristow, a daughter of James and Jane Shelton Clarkson Bristow of Bourbon County. Tom and Sally may have met when the young newsman was serving as editor of the Paris Register, the Bourbon County paper, before moving on to Lexington and taking the helm of the Gazette.2

 


For the Gazette.

THOMAS ROBERTS BENNING

As the death of this gentleman, on account of its cause and manner, will necessarily attract attention, it is due the public, as well as to his individual worth, to sketch his character.

He was born in Jessamine county, and was about twenty-four years old.— Whilst a boy, he lost his mother, and the misfortunes of his father left him to contend in the beginning of life, with the difficulties of orphanage and poverty. Obeying the impulses of genius, following the precepts taught him by his mother, a pious and highly gifted woman, by study, temperance, industry and a course of upright honorable conduct, he rose to a respectable standing in society; was distinguished for his attainments, and looked upon as one of the most promising of the Editorial corps. For a while he taught school in Winchester, devoted his leisure hours to the study of the law, and patronized by gentlemen of the bar, whilst in the neighborhood, qualified himself for the profession, and removed to Paris with the intention of practising law. He there became the editor of the Paris Advertiser, which he conducted with ability, as was evidenced by the approbation expressed in the frequent quotations from his paper in the prints of other states. Invited to Lexington, he quit the establishment at Paris and became the Editor of the Kentucky Gazette. The part he acted in the late political struggle is well known. The friends of Jackson and reform, and of the principles of free government, will cherish in grateful remembrance the recollection of his important services. Although warmly devoted to the party he acted with and to the cause they advocated, his views upon all subjects were liberal, as his feelings were generous. As soon as the Presidential election was over, his attention was turned to the interests of education, and the subject of internal improvement. The farmers and cultivators of the soil owed him high obligations, for the intelligence with which he discerned and the fearless manner with which he advocated their interests, and exposed the arts of the monopolizing manufacturers, by which they were deprived of the just profits of their labour. The Kentucky Agricultural Society cannot fail to recollect the man whose suggestions led to its establishment. But it was in the private circle that Mr Benning was most esteemed— there the goodness of his heart, his amiable unassuming manners, were known and appreciated. All that knew admired and loved him. He was frank, generous, sincere, of pure morals and perfect integrity of character. Frequently admonished of the boldness with which he arraigned the conduct of public men— his unsuspecting nature would not allow him to keep arms. It had been instilled into his mind the liberty of the Press is the Palladium of freedom. His confidence in the genius of our government, and the protecting influence of its laws, did not suffer him to apprehend, that for exercising the common right of all, his life would be forfeit. Such however was destined to be his fate.. In his own office, in the discharge of his Editorial duties, on account of an innocent publication in his paper, he was, whilst unarmed and without the means of defence, killed with the pistol of an individual to whom he was a stranger, one that he had never in the slightest degree injured.

Death is the lot of man—we are often called upon to mourn over the grave of a departed friend—but the present melancholy occasion, demands that public sorrow should mingle with private grief. We will not go to the bedside to witness the agony of death, or paint the deep distresses of a fond affectionate wife, it would awaken feelings that are sacred to the bosom of his friends; they will fondly cherish his memory in their hearts. But the liberty of the Press has been assailed in his person. In this, all society are interested. His persecutors may indulge in malignant sneers, and wicked sarcasms—but it will not do. Admit that in his origin he was of plebian family, a poor country boy.—Give to wealth a momentary triumph in the impunity it secures. Truth and justice must and will prevail. The name of Thomas R. Benning is no longer obscure. It will live whilst the press is free, and be read in the highest page of his country's history, that records the names of the virtuous and the good.3

— — ¤ — —

A STATEMENT OF FACTS.

From the attempts that are made through the various presses, in Lexington and elsewhere to poison the public mind in relation to the late manslaughter, as our grand jury have very mildly termed it (the people generally term it murder) it becomes necessary that we should state some facts in relation to the case, which we believe to be true.

An anonymous piece signed Coriolanus, avowed by Charles Wickliffe to be his production, appeared in the Reporter of the third inst, in which a great deal of abuse was heaped upon certain persons said to be "Gazette men" by the writer. He said that he alluded particularly to two persons whom it turns out, were Major James Shannon, and the present Editor of this paper.

We answered the piece in the Gazette under the signature of Dentatus, both of which pieces were re-published in the last Gazette, for the public information.

Mr Wickliffe on Monday the ninth inst, after preparing himself with at least three pistols, invited a friend to go with him to the Gazette office, for the purpose of demanding the author of Dentatus. The friend inquired first to see the two essays, and having examined them declined going any further in the business, and advised him not to do it either. He however persisted and called at the Gazette office, where he saw Mr. Benning, and demanded the author of Dentatus. The editor requested him to call at five o'clock, which he did. Mr. Benning at that interview told him he must see the author, and that if he would call at eight o'clock the next morning he should have the name. This was strongly objected to by Wickliffe who insisted on instant information, but at length agreed to wait until the time specified, some conversation then ensued in relation to a publication about Robert Wickliffe, which ended by Wickliffe calling Benning by some harsh epithet and advancing upon him in an attitude of attack. Benning, who had a small stick in his hand, attempted to raise it in his defence, but it was quickly taken from him, or thrown on the floor by Wickliffe, who at the same time pulling out one of his pistols. Benning who was perfectly unarmed, attempted to make his escape through a back door of his office, and whilst going from his assailant, and endeavoring to avoid his attack, was mortally wounded by the discharge of the pistol.

Wickliffe then pulled out another pistol and maintained his stand for a moment in an attitude of menace, in Benning's office, and finally pulled out a third pistol and stood some time in front of the office threatening to shoot again.

Mr. Benning did not fall when he received the wound, but was soon carried from his office to his residence, and had his wound examined; as described by one of the Surgeons, he was wounded just above the left hip, and about two inches on the left side of the back bone, and the probe on being introduced, at about three inches struck against the transverse process of that portion of the back bone above the hip, the ball having gone through the intestines, and lodged in the walls of the belly in the front and to one side. He lived in extreme agony about twenty four hours and then died.4

— — ¤ — —

Tom's widow, Sally, died not long after her husband. She might have died in childbirth, which was a dangerous affair, or perhaps from one of the infectious diseases so often fatal in the age before antibiotics. Her younger sister, Mary, recalled the deaths three decades later. "When [I was] in my seventeenth year, my brother James died. In one year more sister Jane, then my brother-in-law Thomas R. Benning, whom I loved as a brother in the flesh, next his widow, Sister Sally..."5

Tom's killer, Charles Wickliffe, who was the son of the richest man in Kentucky, Robert Wickliffe, escaped legal penalties through his father's powerful influence. However, in poetic justice, Charles died almost exactly six months later, shot in a duel he had instigated with the new editor of the Gazette, George James Trotter, Jr.6

 


Notes:

1 My thanks to Judy Godwin and Robert O. Johnson for supplying data on Tom's origins.

2 See W.H. Perrin, History of Bourbon, 111.

3 Kentucky Gazette, 20 Mar 1829, p. 2, col. 4.

4 Ibid., p. 2, col. 4 - p. 3 col. 1.

5 Bristow, Diary, 18 Nov 1858.    (Read Mary's Diary.)

6 That story can be found in J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Famous Kentucky Duels..

 


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This page updated 28 March 2004.