Benjamin Harrison

At 67 years old, Benjamin Harrison has this physical status:

Benjamin Harrison, 1833–1843, 1901), was an American politician and advocate who served as the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893.

He was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, who established the only grandfather-grandson pair to have ruled the house.

He was also a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, the founding father who signed the United States Declaration of Independence.

Harrison was born on a farm by the Ohio River and studied law at the University of Cincinnati.

Harrison, who moved to Indianapolis, established himself as a well-known local lawyer, Presbyterian church leader, and politician in Indiana.

He served in the Union Army as a colonel during the American Civil War and was recognized by the US Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865.

Family and education

Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, the second of Elizabeth Ramsey's (Irwin) and John Scott Harrison's ten children. Benjamin Harrison, an emigrant who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, circa 1630 from England, was among his ancestors. Harrison was of solely English ancestry, with all of his ancestors immigling to America during the early colonial period.

Harrison was the grandson of U.S. President William Harrison and the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence and named Thomas Nelson, Jr. as governor of Virginia.

Harrison was seven years old when his grandfather was elected president of the United States, but he did not attend the inauguration. His family was respected, but his parents were not wealthy. John Scott Harrison, a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio, spent a significant portion of his farm income on his children's education. Despite the family's modest incomes, Harrison's boyhood was amusing, with a major portion of it spent outside fishing or hunting.

Harrison's early education began in a log cabin near his house, but his parents later hired a tutor to assist him with college preparations. In 1847, fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, were enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended the college for two years, and while there, he met Caroline "Carrie" Lavinia Scott, the school's science professor who was also a Presbyterian minister.

Harrison attended Oxford University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for a large portion of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that allowed dual membership. John Alexander Anderson, a six-term congressman from the United States, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison's vice presidential running mate in 1892, were among the classmates. History and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop had a major influence on Harrison's arrival in Miami. At college, he attended a Presbyterian church and became a lifelong Presbyterian.

Source

Marriage and early career

Harrison studied law with Judge Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati in 1852, but before finishing his studies, he returned to Oxford, Ohio, to marry Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. The father of Caroline's father, a Presbyterian minister, officiated the service. Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 – December 13, 1936) and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison (April 3, 1858 – October 28, 1930) Harrison had two children.

When Harrison and his wife finished their law studies, they returned to live at The Point, his father's farm in southwestern Ohio. In early 1854, Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar for the first time after selling property he had inherited after an aunt's death for $800 (equivalent to $24,127 in 2021) and he moved with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison began practicing law in John H. Ray's office in 1854 and became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis, for which he was fined $2.50 per day. He also served as a Commissioner for the United States Court of Claims. Harrison was 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 took over leadership positions at First Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis.

Harrison grew up in a Whig family but soon joined the Republican Party shortly after its inception in 1856 and campaigned for Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. Harrison was elected city attorney in 1857, a sum equal to $11,633 in 2021).

Harrison formed the law office of Wallace and Harrison in 1858 when he joined William Wallace in a law partnership. He was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court in 1860. Harrison was a vocal promoter of the Republican Party's platform and served as the secretary of the Republican State Committee. In 1860, Wallace, his law partner, was elected county clerk, and Harrison formed a new company with William Fishback, Fishback, and Harrison. Before Harrison joined the Union Army at the start of the American Civil War, the new partners worked together until he was drafted into the Union Army.

Post-war career

Harrison was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court in October 1864 when he was stationed in the Union Army in October 1864, but he did not apply for the position and spent four years as the Court's reporter. Harrison did not have a career in politics, but it did have a steady income for his work preparing and publishing court opinions, which he sold to the legal profession. Harrison has also begun to work in Indianapolis. He began as a competent orator and is known as "one of the state's top attorneys."

President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 named Harrison to represent the federal government in a civil case brought by Lambdin P. Milligan, whose tumultuous wartime conviction in 1864 culminated in the historic US Supreme Court decision Ex parte Milligan. The civil lawsuit was related to the United States. Milligan vs. Hovey was a circuit court in Indiana, where it developed into Milligan vs. Hovey. Despite the fact that the jury supported Milligan's recommendation and that he had requested hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, state and federal legislation limited the amount the federal government could pay to Milligan to five hundred dollars in court costs.

Local Republicans urged Harrison to run for Congress despite his growing fame. He began restricting his political activity to speaking out on behalf of other Republican candidates, a task for which he received acclaim from his coworkers. Harrison ran for governor of Indiana in 1872. Former governor Oliver Morton favored Thomas M. Browne over his successor, Thomas M. Browne, and Harrison lost his bid for statewide office. Despite the Panic of 1873, he returned to his law practice, and in 1874, he was able to build a grand new home in Indianapolis. He continued to make speeches on behalf of Republican candidates and policies.

Harrison accepted the party's invitation to run for a second term in 1876, when a scandal forced the original Republican nominee, Godlove Stein Orth, to drop out of the gubernatorial race. Harrison based his campaign on economic policy and favoured deflating the national currency. Harrison defeated him in a plurality by James D. Williams, losing by 5,084 votes out of 434,457 cast members, but he maintained his current fame in state politics. As the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 reached Indianapolis, he assembled a citizen militia to demonstrate his love for owners and management, as well as a pact between the workers and management to keep the strike from expanding.

When Senator Morton died in 1877, the Republicans nominated Harrison to run for the office, but the Republicans failed to secure a majority in the state legislature, which at the time was dominated by senators; instead, the Democratic majority elected Daniel W. Voorhees. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Harrison to the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which was designed to make internal improvements on the river. As a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention the following year, he was instrumental in breaking a deadlock on candidates, and James A. Garfield was nominated.

Harrison aided Indiana's Republican delegation at the 1880 Republican National Convention, making him the state's presumptive candidate for the Senate. He made speeches in favor of Garfield in Indiana and New York, raising his profile in the group. When the Republicans regained majority control in the state legislature, Harrison's election to a six-year term in the Senate was jeopardized by Judge Walter Q. Gresham, his intraparty rival, but Harrison was ultimately chosen. Following Garfield's aspirations as president in 1880, his administration offered Harrison a cabinet post, but Harrison declined to continue his service in the Senate.

Harrison served in the Senate from March 4, 1881 to March 3, 1887, chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard and the United States Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses).

Senator Harrison's biggest issue in 1881 was the budget surplus. Democrats wanted to reduce the tariff and limit the amount of money the government received; Republicans, on the other hand, wanted to invest the money on internal improvements and pensions for Civil War veterans. Harrison fought for veterans and widows' pensions, as well as their widows. He also rejected assistance for the education of Southerners, particularly young ones of the freedman; he believed that education was crucial to help the black race return to political and economic equality with whites. Harrison opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which his party supported, because he felt it violated existing treaties with China.

Harrison and Gresham vied for power at the 1884 Republican National Convention; the delegation ended up supporting Senator James G. Blaine, the eventual nominee. Harrison initially reacted angrily to Blaine's candidacy when reform Republicans were prompted to put his hat in the presidential race," but later, he embraced Blaine "with enthusiasm and enthusiasm." Harrison passed his Dependent Pension Bill in the Senate, but President Grover Cleveland blocked it. Democrats, who feared that the new states would elect Republicans to Congress, blocked his attempts to promote the admission of new western states.

Despite a statewide Republican majority, the Democrats redistricted the Indiana state legislature in 1885, resulting in an increased Democratic majority. Harrison was defeated in his bid for reelection in 1887, mainly as a result of Indiana's legislative districts' Democratic gerrymandering. Following a deadlock in the state legislature, the state legislature ultimately selected Democrat David Turpie as Harrison's successor in the Senate. Harrison returned to Indianapolis and resumed his law practice, but stayed involved in state and national politics. Harrison proclaimed his candidacy for the Republican nomination a year after his senatorial loss; he referred to his inability to lack of a power base. Following the slogan "Rejuvenated Republicanism" became the tag of his presidential campaign.

Source