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
re-nominated 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.
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Benjamin
Harrison