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Hall of American Presidents
Benjamin Harrison
23rd president; Sherman Antitrust Act
- 1833 – 1901
- American Presidents · 6 of 10
Hall of American Presidents
23rd president; Sherman Antitrust Act
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was the 23rd president of the United States, serving from 1889 to 1893. He was a member of the Harrison family of Virginia—a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founding Father. A Union army veteran and a Republican, he defeated Democratic Party incumbent Grover Cleveland to win the presidency in the 1888 United States presidential election by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. He was defeated by Cleveland in the 1892 United States presidential election, becoming the first president to be succeeded in office by his predecessor.
Harrison was born on a farm by the Ohio River and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After moving to Indianapolis, he established himself as a prominent local attorney, Presbyterian church leader, and politician. During the American Civil War, he served in the Union Army as a colonel, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865. Harrison unsuccessfully ran for governor of Indiana in 1876. In 1881, the Republican-controlled Indiana General Assembly elected Harrison to a six-year term in the Senate, where he served from 1881 to 1887.
Hallmarks of Harrison's administration were unprecedented economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff, which imposed historic protective trade rates, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Harrison also facilitated the creation of the national forest reserves through an amendment to the Land Revision Act of 1891. During his administration six western states were admitted to the Union. In addition, Harrison substantially strengthened and modernized the U.S. Navy and conducted an active foreign policy. His proposals to secure federal education funding as well as voting rights enforcement for African Americans were unsuccessful.
Due in large part to surplus revenues from the tariffs, federal spending reached $1 billion for the first time during his term. The spending issue in part led to the Republicans' defeat in the 1890 midterm elections. Cleveland defeated Harrison for reelection in 1892, due to the growing unpopularity of high tariffs and high federal spending. Harrison returned to private life and his law practice in Indianapolis. In 1899, he represented Venezuela in its British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. Harrison traveled to the court in Paris as part of the case and after a brief stay returned to Indianapolis. He died at his home in Indianapolis in 1901 of complications from influenza.
Harrison was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Ohio, the second of Elizabeth Ramsey (Irwin) and John Scott Harrison's ten children. His ancestors included immigrant Benjamin Harrison, who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, c. 1630 from England. Harrison was of entirely English ancestry, all of his ancestors having emigrated to America during the early colonial period. Harrison was a grandson of U.S. president William Henry Harrison and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence and succeeded Thomas Nelson Jr. as governor of Virginia.
Harrison was seven years old when his grandfather was elected U.S. president, but he did not attend the inauguration. His family was distinguished, but his parents were not wealthy. John Scott Harrison, a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio, spent much of his farm income on his children's education. Despite the family's modest resources, Harrison's boyhood was enjoyable, much of it spent outdoors fishing or hunting.
Harrison's early schooling took place in a log cabin near his home, but his parents later arranged for a tutor to help him with college preparatory studies. Fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847. He attended the college for two years and while there met his future wife, Caroline "Carrie" Lavinia Scott. She was a daughter of John Witherspoon Scott, who was the school's science professor and also a Presbyterian minister.
Harrison transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for much of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that permitted dual membership. Classmates included John Alexander Anderson, who became a six-term U.S. congressman, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison's vice presidential running mate in 1892. At Miami, Harrison was strongly influenced by history and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop. He also joined a Presbyterian church at college and, like his mother, became a lifelong Presbyterian.
After his college graduation in 1852, Harrison studied law with Judge Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati, but before he completed his studies, he returned to Oxford, Ohio, to marry Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. Caroline's father, a Presbyterian minister, performed the ceremony. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison.
Harrison and his wife returned to live at The Point, his father's farm in southwestern Ohio, while he finished his law studies. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar in early 1854, the same year he sold property he had inherited after the death of an aunt for $800 (equivalent to $28,667 in 2025), and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison began practicing law in the office of John H. Ray in 1854 and became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis, for which he was paid $2.50 per day. He also served as a Commissioner for the U.S. Court of Claims. Harrison became a founding member and first president of both the University Club, a private gentlemen's club in Indianapolis, and the Phi Delta Theta Alumni Club. Harrison and his wife became members and assumed leadership positions at Indianapolis's First Presbyterian Church.
Having grown up in a Whig household, Harrison initially favored that party's politics, and joined the Republican Party shortly after its formation in 1856 and campaigned on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. In 1857 Harrison was elected Indianapolis city attorney, a position that paid an annual salary of $400 (equivalent to $13,821 in 2025).
In 1858, Harrison entered into a law partnership with William Wallace to form the law office of Wallace and Harrison. In 1860, he was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. Harrison was an active supporter of the Republican Party's platform and served as Republican State Committee's secretary. After Wallace, his law partner, was elected county clerk in 1860, Harrison established a new firm with William Fishback, Fishback and Harrison. The new partners worked together until Harrison entered the Union Army after the start of the American Civil War.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for more recruits for the Union Army; Harrison wanted to enlist, but worried about how to support his young family. While visiting Governor Oliver Morton, Harrison found him distressed over the shortage of men answering the latest call. Harrison told the governor, "If I can be of any service, I will go."
Morton asked Harrison if he could help recruit a regiment, although he would not ask him to serve. Harrison recruited throughout northern Indiana to raise a regiment. Morton offered him the command, but Harrison declined, as he had no military experience. He was initially commissioned as a captain and company commander on July 22, 1862. Morton commissioned Harrison as a colonel on August 7, 1862, and the newly formed 70th Indiana was mustered into federal service on August 12, 1862. Once mustered, the regiment left Indiana to join the Union Army at Louisville, Kentucky.
For much of its first two years, the 70th Indiana performed reconnaissance duty and guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee. In May 1864, Harrison and his regiment joined General William T. Sherman's Atlanta campaign in the Army of the Cumberland and moved to the front lines. On January 2, 1864, Harrison was promoted to command the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the XX Corps. He commanded the brigade at the battles of Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta. When Sherman's main force began its March to the Sea, Harrison's brigade was transferred to the District of Etowah and participated in the Battle of Nashville. While encamped near Nashville, during a particularly cold winter, Harrison prepared coffee and brought it to his freezing men at night; his constant catchphrase as he took lead of his men was: "Come on, boys!" Harrison earned a reputation as a strong leader and an officer who did not abandon his soldiers in battle.
At the Battle of Resaca on May 15, 1864, Harrison faced Confederate Captain Max Corput's artillery battery, which occupied a position "some eighty yards in front of the main Confederate lines". Sherman, renewing his assault on the center of the Confederate lines begun the previous day, was halted by Corput's four-gun, parapet-protected artillery battery; the battery was well placed to bedevil the Union ranks, and became "the center of a furious struggle". Corput's artillery redoubt was fortified "with three infantry regiments in...rifle pits and four more regiments in the main trenches". Leading the 70th Indiana Infantry Regiment, Harrison massed his troops in a ravine opposite Corput's position, along with the rest of Brigadier General William Thomas Ward's brigade. Harrison and his regiment, leading the assault, emerged from the ravine, advanced over the artillery parapet, overcame the Confederate gunners, and eliminated the threat. The battery was captured by hand-to-hand combat, and intense combat continued throughout the afternoon. Harrison's unit, now exposed, found itself immediately subject to intense gunfire from the main Confederate ranks and was forced to take cover. Although no longer in Confederate hands, Corput's four 12-pound Napoleon cannons sat in a "no man's land" until nightfall, when Union soldiers "dug through the parapet, slipped ropes around the four cannons, and dragged them back to [their] lines".
During the Battle of Peachtree Creek, on July 20, 1864, Harrison commanded his brigade against General W. S. Featherston's Mississippi Brigade, stopping the latter's "fierce assault" over Collier Road. At Peachtree Creek, Harrison's brigade comprised the 102nd, 105th, and 129th Illinois Infantry Regiments, the 79th Ohio Infantry Regiment, and his 70th Indiana Regiment; his brigade deployed in about the center of the Union line, engaging Major General William Wing Loring's Mississippi division and Alabama troops from General Alexander Stewart's corps. In his report after the battle, Harrison wrote that "at one time during the fight", with his ammunition dangerously depleted, he sent his acting assistant inspector-general Captain Scott and others to cut "cartridge-boxes from the rebel dead within our lines" and distribute them to his soldiers. According to Harrison's report, the losses from his brigade were "very slight" compared with those of Confederate forces. He thought this was because of battlefield topography, writing: "I believe, that the enemy, having the higher ground, fired too high." Harrison later supported the creation of an Atlanta National Military Park, which would have included "substantial portions" of the Peachtree battlefield, writing in 1900: "The military incidents connected with the investment and ultimate capture of Atlanta are certainly worthy of commemoration and I should be glad to see the project succeed."
After the conclusion of the Atlanta Campaign on September 2, 1864, Harrison was among the initial Union forces to enter the surrendered city of Atlanta; General Sherman opined that Harrison served with "foresight, discipline and a fighting spirit". After the Atlanta Campaign, Harrison reported to Governor Morton in Indiana for special duty, and while there he campaigned for the position of Indiana's Supreme Court Reporter and for President Lincoln's reelection; after the election he left for Georgia to join Sherman's March to the Sea, but instead was "given command of the 1st Brigade at Nashville". Harrison led the brigade at the Battle of Nashville in December, in a "decisive" action against the forces of General John Bell Hood. Notwithstanding his memorable military achievements and the praise he received for them, Harrison held a dim view of war. According to historian Allan B. Spetter, he thought "war was a dirty business that no decent man would find pleasurable". In 1888, the year he won the presidency, Harrison declared: "We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."
Several weeks after the Battle of Nashville, Harrison "received orders to rejoin the 70th Indiana at Savannah, Georgia, after a brief furlough in Indianapolis", but he caught scarlet fever and was delayed for a month, and then spent "several months training replacement troops in South Carolina".
On January 23, 1865, Lincoln nominated Harrison to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from that date, and the Senate confirmed the nomination on February 14, 1865. Harrison was promoted because of his success at the battles of Resaca and Peachtree Creek. He finally returned to his old regiment the same day that news of Lincoln's assassination was received. He rode in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. before mustering out with the 70th Indiana on June 8, 1865.
While serving in the Union Army in October 1864, Harrison was once again elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court, although he did not seek the position, and served as the Court's reporter for four more years. The position was not a politically powerful one, but it provided Harrison with a steady income for his work preparing and publishing court opinions, which he sold to the legal profession. Harrison also resumed his law practice in Indianapolis. He became a skilled orator and known as "one of the state's leading lawyers". His successful prosecution of Nancy Clem for the Cold Spring murders of 1868 brought him particular attention, although her conviction was twice overturned on appeal.
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