Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)

Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 - March 13, 1901) was the twenty-third President of the United States. He had previously served as a senator from Indiana. His administration is best known for a series of legislation including the McKinley Tariff and federal spending that reached one billion dollars. Democrats attacked the "Billion Dollar Congress" and defeated the GOP in the 1890 mid-term elections, as well as defeating Harrison's bid for reelection in 1892. He is to date the only president from Indiana.

Benjamin HarrisonAfter beating John Sherman for the Republican presidential nomination, Harrison was elected President of the United States in 1888 in notoriously fraudulent balloting in New York and Indiana. In the Presidential election, Harrison received nearly 100,000 fewer popular votes than incumbent President Grover Cleveland but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although he had made no political bargains, his supporters had given innumerable pledges upon his behalf. When Boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach...the penitentiary to make him President." He was inaugurated on March 4, 1889, and served through March 4, 1893. Harrison was also known as the "centennial president" because his inauguration was the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington.¹

Quotes

"I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process."
"This Government has found occasion to express, in a friendly spirit, but with much earnestness, to the Government of the Czar, its serious concern because of the harsh measures now being enforced against the Hebrews in Russia."

"When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law?"

"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."

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