Benjamin Harrison was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Ohio; he grew up on a farm located near the Ohio River below Cincinnati. His father, John Harrison, was a farmer, and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was elected as the ninth president of the United States in 1840, but died of pneumonia only one month after he took office in 1841. Benjamin Harrison graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1852 and married Caroline Lavinia Scott the following year; the couple would go on to have two children. After studying law in Cincinnati, Harrison moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1854 and set up his own law practice.
Harrison became actively interested in politics, joined the Republican party. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harrison joined the Union Army as a lieutenant in the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and he would attain the rank of brevet brigadier general by 1865. Back in Indiana after the war, he campaigned for nomination as governor. He was unsuccessful, but tried again four years later and lost by a very slim margin.
In 1881 he was elected as a U.S. Senator. He worked for the rights of homesteaders and Native Americans against the expanding railroad industry and campaigned for generous pensions for Civil War veterans, among other issues. A highly principled and devoutly religious man, he worked against legislation that seemed to denigrate human rights.
Harrison lost his Senate seat after a Democratic victory in the Indiana state legislature in 1887, only to gain the Republican nomination for president the following year. Rather than travel around the country during the campaign, he gave numerous speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis-an early example of so-called “front-porch campaigning.” In a controversial general election, Harrison lost the popular vote to the incumbent President Grover Cleveland by 90,000 votes but carried the electoral college, gaining 233 electoral votes to Cleveland’s 168 thanks to victories in the key swing states of New York and Indiana.
He worked with Congress on many projects, some of which were controversial in the eyes of his enemies, but all were intended by him to make life better for all. He lost his bid for re-election, returned to Indianapolis where he continued to practice law and serve as elder statesman and public speaker. He died March 13, 1901.
Benjamin Harrison – President 1889-1893