Benjamin Harrison

Harrison, Benjamin (1833–1901), 23rd president of the United States. Harrison, the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, gained the presidency at a time when labor unrest, agricultural depression, and fiscal controversies were beginning to shake the Republican party's hold over national affairs.

Early life

After graduating from Miami University of Ohio in 1852, Harrison studied law in Cincinnati; the following year, he married Caroline Lavinia Scott. In 1854, Harrison was admitted to the bar and set up practice in Indianapolis, where he became active in the newly formed Republican party. During the Civil War, Harrison helped recruit the 70th Indiana Volunteers and fought in General William Tecumseh Sherman's Atlanta campaign. After the war, Harrison resumed his Indianapolis practice, becoming a well-known corporation attorney.

Politics

Harrison lost Indiana's 1876 gubernatorial race but, in 1881, was elected to the U.S. Senate by the Indiana legislature. As a senator, Harrison supported high tariffs, civil-service reforms, generous veterans' pensions, and the admission of new states to the Union. In 1887, he missed reelection by a single vote. As Indiana's favorite-son candidate at the 1888 Republican convention, Harrison won the presidential nomination. He won by a majority of electoral votes, although Grover Cleveland, the incumbent president, had more popular votes.

President

Under Harrison, U.S. expansionism took important strides forward. U.S. claims to Samoa were established, the first Pan-American Conference was held in Washington, and a long-standing dispute with Britain over fur-seal hunting in the Bering Sea was arbitrated. During Harrison's first 2 years in office, the Republicans held a majority in both houses of Congress. However, Harrison could exercise little executive leadership because the party was controlled by political leaders and bosses over whom he lacked influence. He signed an act that nearly doubled the pensions of incapacitated Civil War veterans. He also signed the McKinley Tariff Act, which imposed the highest duties on imported goods the nation had ever experienced. The cost of living shot up, causing widespread discontent.

A growing agricultural depression and drought in the Great Plains caused farmers to organize into Farmers' Alliances that evolved into the People's, or Populist, party. To help raise farm prices, Harrison signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. He also aided passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which declared illegal all trusts or monopolies that restrained trade. But farmers' discontent continued to grow and, in 1890, the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives. The second 2 years of Harrison's term were largely barren of results.

Growing Populist unrest and such bitter labor disputes as the Homestead Strike probably cost Harrison the 1892 election. Grover Cleveland won a solid victory, while James Weaver, the Populist candidate, received more than a million votes.

Retirement

Harrison returned to his Indianapolis law practice. His first wife had died 2 weeks before his electoral defeat; in 1896, he married her widowed niece, Mary Dimmick. Harrison, who continued to gain distinction as a lawyer, died at his home in Indianapolis in 1901.