Benjamin Harrison --- Republican
Twenty-Third President
1889-1893

Married to Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison
Nominated for President on the eighth ballot at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front-porch" campaigns, giving campaign speeches to reporters from his own home. Since 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, a great general and president known as "Old Tippecanoe."
Born in 1833 on a farm by the Ohio River below Cincinnati, Harrison attended Miami University in Ohio and studies to be a lawyer 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 of the 70th Volunteer Infantry--Harrison became a pillar of Indianapolis, enhancing his reputation as a brilliant lawyer.
The Democrats defeated him for Governor of Indiana in 1876 by unfairly making fun of him for being too kind to Indians, pioneers, and Civil War veterans when he was a U.S. Senator.
In the Presidential election, Harrison received 100,000 fewer popular votes than his opponent Grover Cleveland, but he won the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had not asked for illegal help, some of the people in his political party cheated on his behalf.
Harrison was proud of his foreign policy. He called the first Pan American Congress which met in Washington in 1889 forging new ties among the countries in South America and North America. At the end of his term in office Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to take over Hawaii (which wasn't a state then).
Harrison signed many appropriations bills for internal improvements, a bigger navy, and money to build steamship lines. For the first time except in war, Congress spent a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country." President Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act "to protect trade and commerce against unlawful monopolies," the first Federal law that regulated big companies.
The biggest domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue. The tariff taxed all kinds of goods imported from other countries. The U.S. Treasury made a lot of money from this tax. But some people argued that the money that the Treasury collected was hurting American business.
Congressional elections in 1890 went against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to abandon President Harrison although he had cooperated with the Republican-led Congress on party legislation. Nevertheless, his party renominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Cleveland.
After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis, and married the widowed Mrs. Mary Dimmick in 1896. A dignified elder statesman, he died in 1901.