Benton, Joel
author, was born May 29, 1832, in Amenia, N. Y. He is a versewriter and critic and the author of Under the Apple Boughs, a collection of verse; and Emerson as a Poet.
BENTON, MÆCENAS E., lawyer, congressman, was born Jan. 29, 1849, in Obion county, Tenn. Beginning with 1872 (with three exceptions) he has been a delegate to every democratic state convention held in Missouri, and was president of the conventions held in 1890 and 1896. He was elected prosecuting attorney in 1878 and in 1880, and declined re-election in 1882; was attorney of the United States from March, 1885, to July, 1889; and is the original offensive partisan who was charged with pernicious activity in politics. He has served as a member of the democratic state committee for the state at large; was a delegate to the national democratic convention held in Chicago in 1896, and was a member of the committee on credentials in that body. He was elected to the fifty-fifth congress as a democrat.