My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies
Of the forty-three (and counting) presidents whose biographies I&#;m reading on this journey, none have caused me quite as much apprehension as Benjamin Harrison.
I expected to meet an extremely decent man with all the personality of a napkin holder whose presidency was unremarkable&#;but tedious to re-live. Oddly enough, that&#;s almost exactly what I got.
I might well have described Rutherford B. Hayes similarly (and approached him with equal anxiety) but where Hayes provided me with just two books and pages, Ben Harrison came to the party with five biographies totaling almost 1, pages.
Fortunately, although Harrison&#;s presidency was no more interesting than I feared, his biographies provided a better reading experience than I had expected. And while nothing leads to a pleasant surprise like setting expectations low from the beginning, Harrison is fortunate to have attracted a small but worthy band of biographers.
* * *
* My first biography of Harrison was “Benjamin Harrison” by Charles Calhoun. As a member of the American Presidents Series, this comprehensive but brief biography of Harrison seemed a great place t
Benjamin Harrison
(Aug. 20, Mar. 13, ). Born in North Bend, Ohio, Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. He came from a long line of Harrisons named Benjamin, who had been prominent in the development of colonial Virginia. The best-known was his great-grandfather Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The son of Elizabeth Irwin and John Scott Harrison, he grew up on a acre North Bend, Ohio farm called The Point, which had belonged to his grandfather. Harrison attended Farmers’ College in Cincinnati, where he met Caroline Lavinia Scott, the daughter of one of his professors. Scott’s father moved to Oxford, Ohio, and Harrison followed. In Oxford, he attended and graduated from Miami University. Harrison married Scott in October The couple had their first child, Russell, 10 months later in April The couple also had one daughter—Mary Harrison McKee.
After reading law in Cincinnati, Harrison was admitted to the bar in and moved to Indianapolis. He later stated that he left Cincinnati “to cut his leading strings and acquire an identity of [his] own.” When he visited Indianapolis, he received a warm reception with the
Benjamin Harrison
Birthplace: North Bend, Ohio
Benjamin Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, on Aug. 20, , the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. A graduate of Miami University in Ohio, he took up the law in Indiana and became active in Republican politics. In , he married Caroline Lavinia Scott. During the Civil War, he rose to brigadier general. A sound-money Republican, he was elected senator from Indiana in In , he received the Republican nomination for president on the eighth ballot. Though behind on the popular vote, he won over Grover Cleveland in the electoral college by to
As president, Harrison failed to please either the bosses or the reform element in the party. In foreign affairs he backed Secretary of State Blaine, whose policy foreshadowed later American imperialism. Harrison was renominated in but lost to Cleveland. His wife died in the White House in and Harrison married her niece, Mary Scott (Lord) Dimmick, in After his presidency, he resumed law practice. He died in Indianapolis on March 13,
See also Encyclopedia: Benjamin Harrison.
Died: 3/13/Stephen Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Benjamin Harrison: Impact and Legacy
Coffee-table history books depict Benjamin Harrison as a lightweight puppet of political party bosses. He is often viewed as little more than a "human iceberg" who sleepwalked through the presidency. We are told that while he could sway a crowd of 30, with powerful speeches, he could not talk for two minutes in a room of five people. Because of his lack of personal passion and the failure of anything truly eventful, such as a major war, during his administration, Harrison, along with every other President from the post-Reconstruction era to , has been assigned to the rankings of mediocrity. He has been remembered as an average President, not among the best but certainly not among the worst.
Since the s, however, historians have given Harrison higher marks. In foreign affairs, Harrison is now credited with having done more to move the nation along the path to world empire than any previous President, serving as a model for the young Theodore Roosevelt to admire and emulate. His commercial reciprocity treaties, support for the annexation of Hawaii, establishment of the first American protectorate in Samoa, and push for a trans-isthmus cana
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