Harrison, Benjamin (Administration)

BENJAMIN HARRISON WAS born on Tuesday, August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio. His father, John Scott Harrison, was a congressman from Ohio and his mother, Elizabeth Ramsey, was a homemaker. Harrison attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduating in 1852. He then moved to Cincinnati where he studied law for two years before moving to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he was admitted to the bar and then got a job as a recorder of decisions for the state supreme court.

While in Indianapolis, Harrison worked with the Republican Party trying to get candidates elected. He also gained a reputation as a very good lawyer. During the Civil War, Harrison served in the Union Army, briefly reaching the rank of brigadier general. In 1864, while serving in the army, he was reelected recorder of the state supreme court.

In 1876 Harrison ran unsuccessfully for governor of Indiana. In 1879 he was appointed to the Mississippi River Commission before being elected to the U.S. Senate on March 4, 1881. He served in the Senate until March 4, 1887, as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard and the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories. In 1888 Harrison was nominated by the Republican Party as its candidate for president. Harrison's handlers limited his campaigning, organizing the first truly front-porch campaigns. Harrison's campaigning consisted of short direct speeches delivered to delegates who came to visit him at his home.

The Democrats viciously attacked Harrison, referring to him as “Little Ben,” an obvious reference to his short 5-foot-6-inch stature. Harrison retorted by arguing that he was big enough to wear the hat of his grandfather, “Old Tippercanoe,” who held the president's office in 1840. Even though Harrison received more than 100,000 fewer votes than Grover Cleveland, his Democratic opponent, he won the election by winning the electoral college 233 to 168. Harrison served from March 4, 1889, to March 9, 1893.

Called the “centennial president” because he was inaugurated on the 100th anniversary of George Wash-ington's inauguration Harrison spent much of his time on foreign affairs, setting in place the mechanism for creating the Pan American Union. He negotiated a treaty to annex Hawaii, even though Cleveland backed out of the treaty. Also, American soldiers, stationed in the west, massacred 153 Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890.

[Page 462]Domestically, Harrison had a rough start, as Democrats utilized congressional rules to implement the “disappearing quorum,” which allowed congressmen to debate an issue and then not answer the roll-call vote, stalling legislation for nearly two years. Nevertheless, Harrison was credited with several congressional victories including providing funds for internal improvements, expansion, and modernization of the navy, and subsidies for steamship lines.

Possibly his most controversial piece of legislation was his Dependent Pension Act, which provided a pension to dependents of Civil War veterans. This legislation provided $6 to $12 monthly pensions. By 1893, with more than one million people getting pensions, this cost the government nearly $160 million.

Harrison was also noted for signing the Sherman Antitrust Act, protecting the country from monopolies and trusts. It made all contracts, combinations in the form of trusts, and conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce illegal. This was the first federal attempt to regulate trusts. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act, passed in 1890, forced the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month while issuing legal tender in the form of treasury notes that could be used to buy gold or silver.

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