   #copyright

Benjamin Harrison

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   Benjamin Harrison
   Benjamin Harrison
     __________________________________________________________________

   23rd President of the United States
   In office
   March 4, 1889 –  March 4, 1893
   Vice President(s)   Levi P. Morton
   Preceded by Grover Cleveland
   Succeeded by Grover Cleveland
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born August 20, 1833
   North Bend, Ohio
   Died March 13, 1901
   Indianapolis, Indiana
   Political party Republican
   Spouse Caroline Scott Harrison (1st wife)
   Mary Scott Lord Dimmick (2nd wife)
   Religion Presbyterian
   Signature

   Benjamin Harrison ( August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was the 23rd
   President of the United States, serving one term from 1889 to 1893. He
   had previously served as a senator from Indiana. Nicknames such as "Kid
   Gloves" and "Little Ben" were mocking titles given by his political
   rivals.

Biography

   Official White House portrait of Benjamin Harrison
   Enlarge
   Official White House portrait of Benjamin Harrison

   A grandson of President William Henry Harrison and great-grandson of
   Benjamin Harrison V, Benjamin was born on August 20, 1833, in North
   Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio as the second of eight children of John
   Scott Harrison (later a U.S. Congressman from Ohio) and Elizabeth
   Ramsey Irwin. He attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he was
   a member of the fraternity Phi Delta Theta, (later in life, he joined
   Delta Chi) and graduated in 1852. He studied law in Cincinnati, Ohio,
   then moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1854. He was admitted to the bar
   and became reporter of the decisions of the Indiana Supreme Court.

   Harrison served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and was
   appointed Commander of the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment in
   August 1862. The unit performed reconnaissance duty and guarded
   railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee until Sherman's Atlanta Campaign in
   1864. Harrison was brevetted as a brigadier general, and commanded a
   Brigade at Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw
   Mountain, Marietta, Peach Tree Creek, and the Siege of Atlanta.
   Harrison was later transferred to the Army of the Cumberland and
   participated in the Siege of Nashville and the Grand Review in
   Washington D.C. before mustering out in 1865.

   While in the field in October 1864, he was re-elected reporter of the
   Ohio State Supreme Court and served four years. He was an unsuccessful
   Republican candidate for governor of Indiana in 1876. He was appointed
   a member of the Mississippi River Commission, in 1879, and elected as a
   Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from March 4,
   1881, to March 4, 1887. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on
   Transportation Routes to the Seaboard ( 47th Congress) and U.S. Senate
   Committee on Territories ( 48th and 49th Congresses).

   Harrison was married twice. On October 20, 1853, he married Caroline
   Lavina Scott (1832-1892). They had two children who lived to adulthood,
   Russell Benjamin Harrison (1854-1936) and Mary Harrison McKee
   (1858-1930), as well as a daughter who died very shortly after birth in
   1861. After Caroline Harrison's death of tuberculosis in 1892 while
   Harrison was in office, he married his wife's widowed niece and former
   secretary Mary Scott Lord Dimmick (1858-1948) on April 6, 1896. They
   had one daughter, Elizabeth Harrison (1897-1955).

Presidency 1889-1893

   Benjamin Harrison
   Enlarge
   Benjamin Harrison

Policies

   "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?"
   Enlarge
   "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?"

   After beating John Sherman for the Republican presidential nomination,
   Harrison was elected President of the United States in 1888. In the
   Presidential election, Harrison received 100,000 fewer popular votes
   than incumbent President Grover 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
   Matthew 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." He was inaugurated on March 4,
   1889, and served through March 4, 1893. Harrison was also known as the
   "centennial president" because his inauguration was the 100th
   anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington.

   For Harrison, Civil Service reform was a no-win situation. Congress was
   split so far apart on the issue that agreeing to any measure for one
   side would alienate the other. The issue became a popular political
   football of the time and was immortalized in a cartoon captioned "What
   can I do when both parties insist on kicking?"

   Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy which he helped
   shape. The first Pan-American Congress met in Washington, D.C. in 1889,
   establishing an information centre 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.

   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 per pound bounty on their production.

   Long before the end of the Harrison Administration, the Treasury
   surplus had evaporated and prosperity seemed about to disappear.
   Congressional elections in 1890 went 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. Just 2 weeks
   earlier, on October 25, 1892, Harrison's wife, Caroline died after a
   long battle with tuberculosis.

Significant events

     * Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
     * Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890)
     * McKinley Tariff (1890)
     * Ocala Demands (1890)
     * Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

Administration and Cabinet

   OFFICE                    NAME                 TERM
   President                 Benjamin Harrison    1889–1893
   Vice President            Levi P. Morton       1889–1893
   Secretary of State        James G. Blaine      1889–1892
                             John W. Foster       1892–1893
   Secretary of the Treasury William Windom       1889–1891
                             Charles Foster       1891–1893
   Secretary of War          Redfield Proctor     1889–1891
                             Stephen B. Elkins    1891–1893
   Attorney General          William H. H. Miller 1889–1893
   Postmaster General        John Wanamaker       1889–1893
   Secretary of the Navy     Benjamin F. Tracy    1889–1893
   Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble        1889–1893
   Secretary of Agriculture  Jeremiah M. Rusk     1889–1893

Supreme Court appointments

   Harrison appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * David Josiah Brewer - 1890
     * Henry Billings Brown - 1891
     * George Shiras, Jr. - 1892
     * Howell Edmunds Jackson - 1893

States admitted to the Union

     * North Dakota – November 2, 1889
     * South Dakota – November 2, 1889
     * Montana – November 8, 1889
     * Washington – November 11, 1889
     * Idaho – July 3, 1890
     * Wyoming – July 10, 1890

   When North and South Dakota were admitted to the Union, Harrison
   covered the tops of the bills and shuffled them so that he could only
   see the bottom. Thus, it is impossible to tell which was signed first,
   and which was the 39th and the 40th.

Post-presidency

   After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis and remarried.

   He went to the First Peace Conference at The Hague.

   He served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in the boundary
   dispute between Venezuela and the United Kingdom in 1900.

   Harrison developed the flu and a bad cold in February 1901. Despite
   treatment by steam vapor inhalation, Harrison's condition only
   worsened. Benjamin Harrison eventually died from influenza and
   pneumonia on Wednesday, March 13, 1901 and is interred in Crown Hill
   Cemetery.

Legacy

   The Benjamin Harrison Law School in Indianapolis was named in his
   honour. In 1944, Indiana University acquired the school and renamed it
   Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis.

   At Miami University, Harrison Hall houses the political science
   department and the Harrison Scholarship is school's most prestigious
   academic award.

   In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Benjamin Harrison
   was launched. She was torpedoed and scuttled in 1943.

   A U.S. Army base, Fort Benjamin Harrison, was established after
   Harrison's death in Indianapolis, but it was closed in the 1990s.

   Harrison Hall, a co-educational dormitory at Purdue University, is
   named after President Harrison, who served on the Board of Trustees of
   Purdue University from July 1895 to March 1901.

Trivia

     * Benjamin Harrison is the only President with the distinction of
       being a grandson of a past President.
     * Benjamin Harrison might be the first President whose voice was
       recorded. This recording, which was originally made on a phonograph
       cylinder, can be accessed here.
     * Harrison was the last President to wear a beard while in office but
       not the last to sport facial hair. Grover Cleveland, Theodore
       Roosevelt and William Howard Taft all had moustaches.
     * Harrison had electricity installed in the White House for the first
       time, but he and his wife reportedly would not touch the light
       switches for fear of electrocution.
     * In April 1891, Harrison became the first President to travel across
       the United States entirely by train.
     * On June 7, 1892, Harrison became the first President to ever attend
       a baseball game.
     * Harrison's roommate at Miami University, John Alexander Anderson,
       became a six-term U.S. Congressman from Kansas and the second
       President of Kansas State University. Harrison appointed him
       general consul to Cairo, Egypt.
     * In 1892, Harrison and Whitelaw Reid formed the only U.S.
       presidential ticket composed of candidates that were also alumni of
       the same university, Miami University. Like Harrison, Reid also has
       a building on Miami's campus named for him. Reid Hall is a
       dormitory.
     * Benjamin Harrison was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Harrison"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
