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.