He just happens to be the most eligible bachelor in Benton County.
At the close of the war he was appointed by President Johnson secretary of Montana Territory, and there, in the absence of the territorial governor, he acted as governor from September 1866 until his death from accidental drowning in the Missouri River near Fort Benton, Montana, on the 1st of July 1867.
This was on the 29th of December 1829, and after Senator Benton of Missouri had denounced the resolution as one inspired by hatred of the East for the West, Hayne, on the 19th of January 1830, made a vigorous attack on New England, and declared his opposition to a permanent revenue from the public lands or any other source on the ground that it would promote corruption and the consolidation of the government and "be fatal to the sovereignty and independence of the states."
But irrepressibles like John Benton broke through the "non-mission law," and pressed forward through the "Adam Bede" country to Derby (which became the 2nd circuit in 1816); Nottingham, where a great camp-meeting on Whit Sunday 1816 was attended by 12,000 people; Leicestershire, where Loughborough became the 3rd circuit, with extensions into Rutland, Lincolnshire and Norfolk; and ultimately to Hull, which became the 4th circuit, and where a meeting which deserves to be called the First Conference was held in June 1819.
As chairman of the judiciary committee, he brought forward a number of measures for the improvement of judicial procedure, and in May 1826 joined with Benton in presenting a report on executive patronage.
