Benjamin Harrison

23rd President of the United States

### Children

Russell Benjamin Harrison (son), Mary Scott Harrison McKee (daughter), Elizabeth Harrison Walker (daughter)

### Parents

John Scott Harrison (father)Elizabeth Ramsey Irwin (mother)

### Siblings

Elizabeth Short Harrison (half-sister), William Henry Harrison II (half-brother) Sarah Lucretia Harrison (half-sister) Lt Col Archibald Harrison (brother), Mary Jane Harrison (sister), Anna Symmes Harrison (sister), John Irwin Harrison (brother), Carter Bassett Harrison (brother) Anna Symmes Harrison (sister), John Scott Harrison Jr. (brother), James Findlay Harrison (brother), James Irwin Harrison (brother)

### Hair color

Blonde brown

**Benjamin Harrison** was the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893, elected after conducting one of the first “front-porch” campaigns by delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him at his home in Indianapolis. He was the grandson of 9th President William Harrison.

*The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison spanned the period in United States history that encompasses the events of the Maturation Era or the Gilded Age. It was the age of many new inventions and in 1891 electricity was installed in the White House. It was the era of the Ghost Dance Movement, the Wounded Knee Massacre and the demise of many Native American tribes. It was also the period of rapid Urbanization in America and the establishment of the Ellis Island Immigration Process. President Benjamin Harrison represented the Republican political party which influenced the domestic and foreign policies of his presidency.*

## Biography

Nominated for President on the eighth ballot at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first “front-porch” campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis. As he was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, Democrats called him “Little Ben”; Republicans replied that he was big enough to wear the hat of his grandfather, “Old Tippecanoe.”

Born in 1833 on a farm by the Ohio River below Cincinnati, Harrison attended Miami University in Ohio and read law in Cincinnati. He moved to Indianapolis, where he practiced law and campaigned for the Republican Party. He married Caroline Lavinia Scott in 1853. 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 that 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.

## Personality

The character traits of President Benjamin Harrison can be described as reserved, intelligent, formal, aloof and diligent. It has been speculated that the Myers-Briggs personality type for Benjamin Harrison is an ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment). A reserved, well-regulated and serious character and a strong traditionalist. Benjamin Harrison Personality type: logical, organized, sensible, thorough and dependable.

## Nicknames

* "The Front Porch Campaigner"
* "The Human Iceberg"
* "Little Ben"

*Meaning: The nickname of President Benjamin Harrison provides an insight into how the man was viewed by the American public during his presidency. The meaning of the nickname "Little Ben" refers to his small stature whilst the nickname of "Human Iceberg" refers to his stern, cold manner when communicating with people, although he managed to convey a warmer image when giving speeches.*

## Inauguration

The **inauguration of Benjamin Harrison** as the 23rd president of the United States took place on Monday, March 4, 1889, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 26th inauguration and marked the commencement of the only four-year term of Benjamin Harrison as president and Levi P. Morton as vice president. Chief Justice Melville Fuller administered the presidential oath of office as rain poured down.

Harrison was 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall, he was only slightly taller than James Madison, the shortest president, but much heavier; he was the fourth (and last) president to sport a full beard. Harrison's inauguration ceremony took place during a rainstorm in Washington D.C. Outgoing president Grover Cleveland attended the ceremony and held an umbrella over Harrison's head as he took the oath of office. His speech was brief – half as long as that of his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, whose speech holds the record for the longest inaugural address of a U.S. president. In his speech, Benjamin Harrison credited the nation's growth to the influences of education and religion, urged the cotton states and mining territories to attain the industrial proportions of the Eastern United States and promised a protective tariff. Concerning commerce, he said, "If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal obligations and duties, they would have less call to complain of the limitations of their rights or of interference with their operations." Harrison also urged early statehood for the territories and advocated pensions for veterans, a statement that was met with enthusiastic applause. In foreign affairs, Harrison reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine as a mainstay of foreign policy, while urging modernization of the Navy and a merchant marine force. He gave his commitment to international peace through noninterference in the affairs of foreign governments.

John Philip Sousa's Marine Band played at the Inaugural Ball inside the Pension Building with a large crowd attending. After moving into the White House, Harrison noted, quite prophetically, "There is only a door – one that is never locked – between the president's office and what are not very accurately called his private apartments. There should be an executive office building, not too far away, but wholly distinct from the dwelling house. For everyone else in the public service there is an unroofed space between the bedroom and the desk."

## Accomplishments and major events

*The major accomplishments and the famous, main events that occurred during the time that Benjamin Harrison was president included the First Pan-American Conference in 1889, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), the Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890) and the McKinley Tariff of 1890.*

**The Billion Dollar Congress**

Summary: The Billion Dollar Congress was the nickname given to the 51st Congress because it was the first to pass a billion dollar budget. The laws passed during Benjamin Harrison's term in office included the costly Dependent Pension Bill that provided benefits to Union veterans and their families. The 'Billion Dollar Congress' also approved the cost of naval expansion.

**The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act**

Summary: The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act was first measure passed by Congress to prohibit monopolies in order to maintain free competition in business.

**The McKinley Tariff**

Summary: The McKinley Tariff was a protective tariff (tax), became law on October 1, 1890 and was framed by future president William McKinley. The McKinley Tariff raised the average duty on foreign imports to almost 50% protect the nation's home-grown goods from cheaper priced foreign items.

**Ellis Island**

Summary: The Ellis Island immigration center was opened on January 1, 1892 in Upper New York Bay as a federal immigration inspection station.

**The 1888 Ghost Dance Movement**

Summary: The second Ghost Dance Movement emerged in 1888 led by Wovoka, of the Paiute Indian tribe. In December 1890 U.S. Army officers tried to arrest the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull who supported the Ghost Dance movement and was killed in the gun battle at the Standing Rock Reservation.

**The 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre**

Summary: The Ghost Dance Movement effectively ended at the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890 in which 400 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux were massacred by the 7th Cavalry.

## Post Presidency

After he left office, Harrison visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in June 1893. After the Expo, Harrison returned to his home in Indianapolis. Harrison had been elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882, and was elected as commander (president) of the Ohio Commandery on May 3, 1893. For a few months in 1894, Harrison lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University. In 1896, some of Harrison's friends in the Republican party tried to convince him to seek the presidency again, but he declined. He traveled around the nation making appearances and speeches in support of William McKinley's candidacy for president.

From June 1895 to March 1901 Harrison served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University, where Harrison Hall, a dormitory, was named in his honor. He wrote a series of articles about the federal government and the presidency which were republished in 1897 as a book titled *This Country of Ours*. In 1896, Harrison at age 62 remarried, to Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, the widowed 37-year-old niece and former secretary of his deceased wife. Harrison's two adult children, Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary (Mamie) McKee, 38, disapproved of the marriage and did not attend the wedding. Benjamin and Mary had one child together, Elizabeth (February 21, 1897 – December 26, 1955).

In 1898, Harrison served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in their British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. An international trial was agreed upon; he filed an 800-page brief and traveled to Paris where he spent more than 25 hours in court on Venezuela's behalf. Although he lost the case, his legal arguments won him international renown. In 1899 Harrison attended the First Peace Conference at The Hague. Harrison was an active Presbyterian and served as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis and on a special committee on creed revision in the national Presbyterian General Assembly. However, he died before he could cast his vote at the meeting.

## Death

Harrison developed what was thought to be influenza (then referred to as grippe), which later proved to be pneumonia, in February 1901. He was treated with steam vapor inhalation and oxygen, but his condition worsened. Harrison died from pneumonia at his home in Indianapolis on March 13, 1901, at the age of 67. His last words were reported to be, "Are the doctors here? Doctor, my lungs...". Harrison's remains are interred in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the remains of his first wife, Caroline. After her death in 1948, Mary Dimmick Harrison, his second wife, was buried beside him.

## Facts and trivia

* Benjamin Harrison is the only American president to be the grandson of a President, William Henry Harrison. He was also the grandson of Virginia planter Benjamin Harrison V, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence and a governor of Virginia.
* Harrison's paternal ancestors were the Harrison family of Virginia, whose immigrant ancestor, Benjamin Harrison, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, circa 1630 from England. Harrison was of entirely English ancestry, all of his ancestors having emigrated to America during the early colonial period.
* Harrison was seven years old when his grandfather was elected U.S. president, but he did not attend the inauguration.
* Harrison's family was distinguished, but his parents were not wealthy. His father, John Scott Harrison, a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio, spent much of his farm income on his children's education. Despite the family's modest resources, Harrison's boyhood was enjoyable, much of it spent outdoors fishing or hunting.
* Harrison's early schooling took place in a log cabin near his home, but his parents later arranged for a tutor to help him with college preparatory studies. Fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847. He attended the college for two years and while there met his future wife, Caroline "Carrie" Lavinia Scott, a daughter of John Witherspoon Scott, the school's science professor, who was also a Presbyterian minister.
* Harrison transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for much of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that permitted dual membership. Classmates included John Alexander Anderson, who became a six-term U.S. congressman, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison's vice presidential running mate in 1892. At Miami, Harrison was strongly influenced by history and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop. He also joined a Presbyterian church at college and, like his mother, became a lifelong Presbyterian.
* After his college graduation in 1852, Harrison studied law with Judge Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati, but before he completed his studies, he returned to Oxford, Ohio, to marry Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. Caroline's father, a Presbyterian minister, performed the ceremony. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 – December 13, 1936) and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison (April 3, 1858 – October 28, 1930).
* Harrison and his wife returned to live at The Point, his father's farm in southwestern Ohio, while he finished his law studies. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar in early 1854, the same year he sold property that he had inherited after the death of an aunt for $800 (equivalent to $24,127 in 2021), and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana.
* Harrison began practicing law in the office of John H. Ray in 1854 and became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis, for which he was paid $2.50 per day. He also served as a Commissioner for the U.S. Court of Claims.
* Harrison became a founding member and first president of both the University Club, a private gentlemen's club in Indianapolis, and the Phi Delta Theta Alumni Club. Harrison and his wife became members and assumed leadership positions at Indianapolis's First Presbyterian Church.
* Having grown up in a Whig household, Harrison initially favored that party's politics, but joined the Republican Party shortly after its formation in 1856 and campaigned on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. In 1857 Harrison was elected Indianapolis city attorney, a position that paid an annual salary of $400 (equivalent to $11,633 in 2021).
* In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for more recruits for the Union Army; Harrison wanted to enlist, but worried about how to support his young family. While visiting Governor Oliver Morton, Harrison found him distressed over the shortage of men answering the latest call. Harrison told the governor, "If I can be of any service, I will go.
* During the American Civil War, Harrison served in the Union Army as a colonel, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865.
* Harrison unsuccessfully ran for governor of Indiana in 1876. The Indiana General Assembly elected Harrison to a six-year term in the Senate, where he served from 1881 to 1887.
* During the 1888 U.S. Presidential Election, Harrison reprised a more traditional front-porch campaign, abandoned by his immediate predecessors; he received visiting delegations to Indianapolis and made over 90 pronouncements from his hometown.
* A Republican, Harrison was elected to the presidency in 1888, defeating the Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.
* Harrison was sworn into office on Monday, March 4, 1889, by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. His Inauguration took place during a rainstorm and was brief, half the length of his grandfather's, William Henry Harrison, who gave the longest Inaugural Address in American Presidential History. During Harrison's speech, outgoing President Grover Cleveland, held his umbrella.
* Harrison was the first U.S. President to enjoy electricity in the White House.
* Hallmarks of Harrison's administration included unprecedented economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff, which imposed historic protective trade rates, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Harrison also facilitated the creation of the national forest reserves through an amendment to the Land Revision Act of 1891.
* During Harrison's administration, the country's annual budget reached $1,000,000 for the first time in American history. Harrison also added six western states to the Union, more than any president since George Washington.
* As president, Harrison substantially strengthened and modernized the U.S. Navy and conducted an active foreign policy, but his proposals to secure federal education funding as well as voting rights enforcement for African Americans were unsuccessful.
* Due in large part to surplus revenues from the tariffs, federal spending reached one billion dollars for the first time during his term. The spending issue in part led to the defeat of the Republicans in the 1890 midterm elections. Grover Cleveland defeated Harrison for reelection in 1892, due to the growing unpopularity of high tariffs and high federal spending.
* Cleveland won the election by 277 electoral votes to Harrison's 145, and also won the popular vote by 5,556,918 to 5,176,108; this was the most decisive presidential election in 20 years. It gave Harrison the distinction of being the only president whose predecessor and successor were the same man.
* Two weeks before losing reelection in 1892, Harrison lost his wife, Caroline, to tuberculosis. Their daughter Mary Harrison McKee assumed the role of First Lady after her mother's death. Mrs. Harrison's terminal illness and the fact that both candidates had served in the White House called for a low key campaign, and resulted in neither of the candidates actively campaigning personally.
* After he left office, Harrison visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in June 1893. After the expo, Harrison returned to private life and his law practice in Indianapolis.
* Harrison had been elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882, and was elected as commander (president) of the Ohio Commandery on May 3, 1893. For a few months in 1894, Harrison lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University.
* In 1896, some of Harrison's friends in the Republican party tried to convince him to seek the presidency again, but he declined. He traveled around the nation making appearances and speeches in support of William McKinley's candidacy for president.
* From July 1895 to March 1901 Harrison served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University, where Harrison Hall, a dormitory, was named in his honor. He wrote a series of articles about the federal government and the presidency which were republished in 1897 as a book titled *This Country of Ours*.
* In 1896, Harrison at age 62 remarried, to Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, the widowed 37-year-old niece and former secretary of his deceased wife. Harrison's two adult children, Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary (Mamie) McKee, 38, disapproved of the marriage and did not attend the wedding.
* In 1898, Harrison served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in their British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. An international trial was agreed upon; he filed an 800-page brief and traveled to Paris where he spent more than 25 hours in court on Venezuela's behalf. Although he lost the case, his legal arguments won him international renown. In 1899 Harrison attended the First Peace Conference at The Hague.
* Harrison was an active Presbyterian and served as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis and on a special committee on creed revision in the national Presbyterian General Assembly. However, he died before he could cast his vote at the meeting.
* Harrison developed what was thought to be influenza (then referred to as grippe), which later proved to be pneumonia, in February 1901. He was treated with steam vapor inhalation and oxygen, but his condition worsened. Harrison died from pneumonia at his home in Indianapolis on March 13, 1901, at the age of 67. His last words were reported to be, "Are the doctors here? Doctor, my lungs...".
* Harrison's remains are interred in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the remains of his first wife, Caroline. After her death in 1948, Mary Dimmick Harrison, his second wife, was buried beside him.
* Harrison was memorialized on several postage stamps. The first was a 13-cent stamp issued on November 18, 1902, with the engraved likeness of Harrison modeled after a photo provided by his widow. In all Harrison has been honored on six U.S. Postage stamps, more than most other U.S. Presidents. Harrison also was featured on the five-dollar National Bank Notes from the third charter period, beginning in 1902. In 2012, a dollar coin with his image, part of the Presidential $1 Coin Program, was issued.
* In 1908, the people of Indianapolis erected the Benjamin Harrison memorial statue, created by Charles Niehaus and Henry Bacon, in honor of Harrison's lifetime achievements as military leader, U.S. Senator, and President of the United States. The statue occupies a site on the south edge of University Park, facing the Birch Bayh Federal Building and United States Courthouse across New York Avenue.
* In 1951, Harrison's home was opened to the public as a library and museum. It had been used as a dormitory for a music school from 1937 to 1950. The house was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
* Theodore Roosevelt dedicated Fort Benjamin Harrison in the former president's honor in 1906. It is located in Lawrence, Indiana, a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis. The federal government decommissioned Fort Harrison in 1991 and transferred 1,700 of its 2,500 acres to Indiana's state government in 1995 to establish Fort Harrison State Park. The site has been redeveloped to include residential neighborhoods and a golf course.
* In 1931, Franklin Hall at Miami University, Harrison's alma mater, was renamed Harrison Hall. It was replaced by a new building of the same name in 1960 and houses the college's political science department. In 1966, Purdue University opened Harrison Hall, an 8-floor, 400-room residence hall. Harrison served as a Purdue University Trustee for the last six years of his life.
* Many have praised Harrison's commitment to African Americans' voting rights, but scholars and historians generally regard his administration as below average due to its corruption, and they have criticized his signing of the McKinley Tariff. They rank him in the bottom half among U.S. presidents.

## References

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin\_Harrison
* https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/benjamin-harrison/
* https://www.american-historama.org/presidents-united-states/benjamin-harrison.htm
* https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Harrison-913