The resolution offered by Benton contemplated that the record on the official journal of the vote of censure passed upon the President be encircled with large black lines, and crossed with the inscription, “Expunged by order of the Senate.” If it had been intended merely to counteract whatever mischievous influence the vote of censure might have had as a precedent, some resolution simply rescinding it, or some declaration censuring the censor, would have served the purpose. But it was desired to make the Senators, who by their votes had pronounced the censure upon Jackson, feel all the bitterness of humiliation. They were to be presented to the country as having done a thing too infamous to have a place on the records of the government. It was one of those coarse parades of the brutal power which, not satisfied with victory, delights in mortifying the defeated.
On January 12, 1837, Benton opened the debate with a highly characteristic speech. He presented himself as the voice of the popular will. The people had decided that the resolution censuring President Jackson must be expunged. He found conclusive proof of the popular will in the fact that many state legislatures had so instructed their Senators; that a large majority of the states had elected Democratic Senators and Representatives favorable to the measure; that the Bank of the United States had become odious to the public mind; and that Jackson's friend, Martin Van Buren, who had openly approved the expunging
