Don’t Know Much About® Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison (c1896)– 23rd President of the United States (Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Div.)
Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third President of the United States, was born in North Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio, on Aug. 20, 1833. His father, John Scott Harrison, was the third son of William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States and the grandson of Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
You may know him as the answer to a presidential trivia question about the only president who was the grandson of a president. “Little Ben” Harrison is one of those somewhat faceless Ohio-born Republican presidents of the late 19th century. A Civil War veteran –almost a requisite for the office at the time– he was the beneficiary of the controversial 1888 election tainted by accusations of fraud and ballot box stuffing. Harrison lost the popular vote to the incumbent Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote.
Fast Facts:
-More states were admitted under Harrison than any president since Washington: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming.
-Electric lights were installed in the White House during Harrison’s term. The Harrisons, like many people of the time, did not trust electricity as early wiring often led to shocks.
-First Lady Caroline Harrison died of tuberculosis on October 25, just weeks before Harrison lost the 1892 election to Cleveland.
-Among Harrison’s appointments was a young Theodore Roosevelt as civil service commissioner.
-During Harrison’s terms, the Oklahoma Land Rush opened nearly two million acres of land once ceded to Indians to white settlers in 1889. And in 1890, the massacre at Wounded Knee took place.
-The period also saw some of the most violent labor strife at such places as the Homestead steel plant in Pennsylvania and the Coeur d’Alene silver mine in Idaho, where federal troops were used to break a strike.
-Following the overthrow of Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, Harrison sent Marines to Hawaii in January 1893 to protect the new government established under Sanford Dole.
-During the 1892 campaign, the Populist, or People’s Party, sprang up. Its candidate, running on the slogan that “Wall Street owns the country,” was James B. Weaver. In a surprising show of strength, he won more than one million votes and twenty-two electoral votes.
Benjamin Harrison died on March 13, 1901. (New York Times obituary.)
Read more about Benjamin Harrison’s life and presidency in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® History.
Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (2012)
(From Hyperion and Random House Audio)
Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)
