Download Benjamin Harrison - The Man

Benjamin Harrison - The Man
Years - 1833 - 1901
Presidency - 1889 - 1893
Material taken from Pictorial History of American Presidents by John and Alice Durant @
1955. And True Stories of our Presidents by Charles Morris @ 1903.
Benjamin Harrison, our 23rd President, was born at North Bend, Ohio on his
Grandfather’s homestead, seven years before his Grandfather became President. His
Great Grandfather was:
Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the
Continental Congress through the Revolutionary War, Governor of the State of
Virginia, and helped create the Constitution of the United States.
His Grandfather, William Henry Harrison was 9th President of the United States.
Benjamin Harrison drifts through the four-year interlude between the two
Cleveland administrations. He was a cautious little man (5’ 6”) who was content to
sit in the White House and let Congress run the country. The men who put him in
office – the rich manufacturers seeking high-tariff benefits – contributed the largest
campaign fund in history up to that time and did not expect their man to shape the
policies of the government, as Cleveland had done. He did not disappoint them.
He was born in North Bend, Ohio, graduated from Miami College and studied
law for two years in Cincinnati. In 1853 he married Caroline Scott, a preacher’s
daughter. The couple moved to Indianopolis where he took his first job as court
crier for $2.50 a day. Later he became city attorney, court reporter, and when the
Civil War came he was a commissioned Colonel of an Indiana regiment and rode
with Sherman.
His men were proud and fond of him. To them he was “Little Ben.” After the
battle of New Hope Church he went to the little frame house which had been made a
hospital for his wounded men, and there threw off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and
set to work dressing their wounds in the dim candlelight. For hour after hour he
worked on gently and tenderly, till midnight came, and with it the surgeons.
Near the end of the war, when his regiment was in camp near Nashville a cold
night of snow and sleet came. Some of the men on picket duty froze stiff at their
posts while others were frostbitten by the intense cold. Out from his quarters came
Colonel Harrison carrying a can of hot coffee to the men on picket duty. “I was
afraid the men would freeze,” he said, “and I knew the hot coffee would keep them
alive.”
Returning to Indianopolis after the war, he was nominated as the Republican
candidate for Governor, but met defeat. In 1881 the Indiana legislature elected him
to the United States Senate where he served one term. Defeated for re-election he
left Washington in 1887, convinced that his political career was behind him. Two
years later he was President of the United States.
Life in the White House with the Harrisons was plain and uneventful. There was
little entertaining, no glamorous dinners. They systematic President never varied his
daily habits: breakfast at eight followed by a half hour of prayer by the entire
family closeted in one room, at one o’clock lunch, early dinner and early to bed.
The new electric lights, installed in 1891, baffled the Harrisons. They let the lights
burn all night in the halls and parlors, fearing that if they turned them off they would
get a shock. They were extinguished by the White House electrician when he came
on duty in the morning. For a long time the Harrisons did not use the lights in their
bedrooms, and were even fearful of pushing the electric bell buttons.
When his term ended, on March 4, 1893, Harrison went home to his law office in
Indianapolis. He was afterward appointed a lecturer on law at Leland Stanford
University in California. He did not live long and died on March 13, 1901.