Benjamin Harrison

president benjamin harrison
twenty-third president of the united states  

interesting facts  
Of Chief Executives, only Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of a President.  

quotation  
"The virtues of courage and patriotism have given recent proof of their continued presence and increasing power in the hearts and over the lives of our people." - Inaugural Address

biography    

Benjamin Harrison was born Aug. 20, 1833, in his grandfather's beautiful home at North Bend, Ohio. He was the second son of John Scott Harrison and Elizabeth Irwin Harrison. He was named Benjamin after his great-grandfather, who signed the Declaration of Independence as "Benj. Harrison."

Ben's father had nine children of his own and adopted two. He hired a governess to teach the young children and a tutor for the older children. Ben cut wood and carried water for the black cook so that the cook would have time to go with him to fish or hunt. In his later years, however, he never cared for sports.

Ben married Carrie when he was 20. The next year they moved to Indianapolis, Ind. Clients were few for a lawyer who looked like a boy, and Ben earned his first money as a court crier at $2.50 a day. The young couple lived in a boardinghouse until their first child, Russell, was born, in 1854. Then they moved to a three-room cottage. Their second child, Mary, was born in 1858.

At this time the struggle over slavery was dividing the nation. Harrison joined the new Republican party. In 1860 he was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. When the Civil War broke out, he was working day and night to pay for a new house.

After the Civil War--he was Colonel of the 70th Volunteer Infantry--Harrison became a pillar of Indianapolis, enhancing his reputation as a brilliant lawyer. The Democrats defeated him for Governor of Indiana in 1876 by unfairly stigmatizing him as "Kid Gloves" Harrison. In the 1880's he served in the United States Senate, where he championed Indians. homesteaders, and Civil War veterans.

In the Presidential election, Harrison received 100,000 fewer popular votes than Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had made no political bargains, his supporters had given innumerable pledges upon his behalf.  When Boss Matt Quay of Pennsylvania heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed hat Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach... the penitentiary to make him President."

Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy which he helped shape. The first Pan American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan American Union. At the end of his administration Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii; to his disappointment, President Cleveland later withdrew it.  

Substantial appropriation bills were signed by Harrison for internal improvements, naval expansion, and subsidies for steamship lines. For the first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country." President Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act "to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies," the first Federal act attempting to regulate trusts.  

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue. The high tariff rates in effect had created a surplus of money in the Treasury. Low-tariff advocates argued that the surplus was hurting business. Republican leaders in Congress successfully met the challenge. Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed a still higher tariff bill; some rates were intentionally prohibitive.  

Harrison tried to make the tariff more acceptable by writing in reciprocity provisions. To cope with the Treasury surplus, the  tariff was removed from imported raw sugar; sugar growers within the United States were given two cents a pound bounty on  their production.  

Long before the end of the Harrison Administration, the Treasury surplus had evaporated, and prosperity seemed about to  disappear as well. Congressional elections in 1890 went stingingly against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to  abandon President Harrison although he had cooperated with Congress on party legislation. Nevertheless, his party  renominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Cleveland.  

After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis, and married the widowed Mrs. Mary Dimmick in 1896. A dignified elder  statesman, he died in 1901.