Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was the 23rd President of the United States (1889–1893). Harrison, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, at age 21, eventually becoming a prominent politician there. During the American Civil War, he served the Union as a brigadier general in the XX Corps of the Army of the Cumberland. After the war, he unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of Indiana and was later elected to the U.S. Senate by the Indiana legislature.
Harrison, a Republican, was elected to the presidency in 1888, defeating the Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland. His administration is remembered most for economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Antitrust Act, and for annual federal spending that reached one billion dollars for the first time. Democrats attacked the "Billion Dollar Congress." They used the issue, along with the growing unpopularity of the high tariff, to defeat the Republicans, in both the 1890 mid-term elections and in Harrison's bid for re-election in 1892. Harrison advocated, although unsuccessfully, for federal education funding and legislation to protect voting rights for African Americans. He also saw the admittance of six states into the Union.
Defeated by Cleveland in his bid for re-election in 1892, Harrison returned to private life in Indianapolis. He later represented the Republic of Venezuela in an international case against the United Kingdom. In 1900, he traveled to Europe as part of the case and, after a brief stay, returned to Indianapolis.
He died the following year from complications from influenza. He is to date the only U.S. president from Indiana and the only one to be the grandson of another president.
Read more about Benjamin Harrison: Marriage and Family, Post-presidency and Death, Historical Reputation and Memorials
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“It is essential that none of the other great powers shall secure these islands [Hawaii]. Such a possession would not consist with our safety and with the peace of the world.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“I am advised that there is an unexpended balance of about $45,000 of the fund appropriated for the relief of the sufferers by flood upon the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and I recommend that authority be given to use this fund to meet the most urgent necessities of the poorer people in Oklahoma.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)