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Benjamin Harrison
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. |
