The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-05-19
THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM sUNTELEGRA

at him as "a political adventurer" of
shallow mind" whose thirst for lu-
crative Office is absolutely rabid,' he
appointed him Minister to Columbia,
but the incoming Jackson Administra-
ton promptly recalled him from his
remote post at Boegota.
Rigidly barred from Federal Office
thenceforth throughout the long Jack
sonian era; honorably poor and with
cut a profession; unable to make a
living merely by farming, his estate
at North Bend, on the Ohio. d little
way below Cincinnati, Harrison tried
for awhile to exc out an income by
running a whisky distillery on his
place. But he reformed and became
| clerk Of the Hamilton County Court.
| From that modest post to the Presi-
dency is a long stretch, but he took
| it at single step. 1t is the longest
stride forward in the records Of
politics.
Jackson had blazed a new trail to
the White House, and Harrison was
the second to tread it. In the first
| 40 years men became President only
after serving a regular apprenticeship.
Jackson rudely broke that order of
succession, and we since have had
J OIly tulcC al Dull Suy
Buchanan and Taft-who had any ex-
perience in high executive or diplo-
matte posts under the Federal Govern
ment. The rest have been picked out
CT the crowd.
! At Harrison's inauguration the
! Presidency entered an eclipse and was
held for 20 years by secondary char
acters, who reigned, but did not rule.
! With Of nroinonpo ne GLOW
and Webster, Calhoun and Benton,
latterly Cass and Houston, Douglas.
and Davis, Chase and Wade, Seward
and Sumner in the Senate, distinction
and leadership passed from the White
House to the Capitol. 1t was an ig-
noble period in our politics when
both parties were lodging the ire.
pressible issue Of slavery, and the
smaller the candidate for President
the better chance he had to dodge the
question
Thus, Harrison, the County Court
clerk, outran Henry Clay in the Wing
convention and outran Webster at the
polls in 1886 when he himself was
an unsuccessful against Van Buren,
Again, in 1910, the Wings preferred
him. to Clay and made him the gro
tesque figurehead in a hippodroming
campaign such as the country never
had seen before and happily never
since has seen. AS proof of the i'm
Partially of the Wing convention, it
nominated John Tyler, a Democrat
for Vice President. on the ticket with
Harrison, and adopted no platform OF
party principles. Nevertheless,
Maine went, hell bent,
for Governor Kent.
in the September election. Thence
forth, till November, log cabin on
wheels, with it's coonskins and its
barrel of hard cider, rolled noisily on
to an easy, but empty, victory in the
Nation.
For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.
Elected without a party policy fol
his guidance, the President was ex
rected by Clay and Webster to &C
cept them as his guides. He invited
both of those towering giants into
his Cabinet, but only Webster accept
ed, taking the Secretaryship of State
To him was submitted the Inaugural
address for revision. After wadins
} through it's flowery rhetoric with q
, pruning knife, the great man was ex
hausted by his editorial labors anG
, his anxious landlady was moved tc