The 23th President of The United States, Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin Harrison: Nominated for President on the eighth ballot at the Republican convention of 1888, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first campaigns of "front balcony" giving short delegations that visited him in Indianapolis speeches. 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 taught 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 70.ma Volunteer Infantry - Harrison became a pillar of Indianapolis, enhancing its reputation as a brilliant lawyer. Democrats defeated him for Governor of Indiana in 1876 by unfairly stigmatizing him as "The Kid Gloves" Harrison. In the 1880's, he served in the United States Senate, where he defended the Indians, Creoles and veterans of the civil war. In the presidential election, Harrison received 100,000 fewer votes than Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had made no political deal, his supporters had given innumerable commitments on their behalf.

When Boss Matt Quay of Pennsylvania heard Harrison attributed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how closed a number of men was needed to vote ... in the penitentiary to make him president." Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy he helped form. The First Pan American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center that 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. Substantial appropriation bills were signed by Harrison for internal improvements, naval expansion, and subsidies for steamship lines. The first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "Congress trillion dollars," spokesman Thomas B. Reed said, "This is a country of a billion dollars." President Harrison also signed the Sherman Act Anticompetitive, "to protect the exchange and trade against unlawful restraints and monopolies", this was the first federal act that sought to regulate treaties.

The most perplexed domestic problem Harrison faced him was the tariff issue. The high tariff rates in effect had created excess money in the treasury. Lawyers argued that the low rate excess hurt business. Republican leaders in Congress successfully solved the challenge. Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson Aldrich W. framed a bill of an even higher rate; some rates were intentionally prohibitive. Harrison tried to make the writing more acceptable rate reciprocal provisions. To cope with the excess of the treasure, the tariff was removed from imported raw sugar; sugar growers in the United States were given two cents per pound of production. Long before the end of administration of Harrison, the

Treasure excess had evaporated, and prosperity seemed to disappear too. The congressional elections in 1890 were distinctly against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to abandon President Harrison, although he had cooperated with Congress on party legislation. However, his party redesignated in 1892, but defeated Cleveland. After he completed in office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis, and married the widow Maria Dimmick in 1896. A dignified old man of state, died in 1901.