Benjamin Harrison V was a planter and merchant who became a
Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress and presided over the final debate
on the Declaration of Independence and signed it on 4 July 1776.
He was Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates 1778-81
and Governor of Virginia 1781-84.
His son William H. Harrison governed the Indian Territory in 1801-12,
and he defeated the Shawnee in the battle of Tippecanoe in November 1811
and the British at the battle of Thames River in October 1813.
He was elected President as a Whig and inaugurated on 4 March 1841,
and he died of pneumonia 31 days later.
His son John Scott Harrison was a farmer who married Elizabeth Ramsey
and became a member of Ohio’s House of Representatives 1853-57.
Their son Benjamin Harrison was born in Ohio on 30 August 1833,
and he was raised as a strict Presbyterian.
He liked to read history and biographies,
and his mother made him read Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
Tutors helped educate the children,
and in 1847 Benjamin went to Farmer’s College near Cincinnati.
Robert H. Bishop was a Presbyterian minister who taught him history and
political economy with lessons from Congressional reports
he got from his former students.
In an essay Benjamin Harrison wrote that a good way of judging the
“true state of society” is by how well women are treated, and they are
are appreciated in proportion as society is advanced.
In America a woman is considered as a superior being,
and in the eyes of many as an angel.
This, however, is the case only when
we behold them through the telescope of love.1
In Cincinnati he met Caroline Lavinia Scott.
When she went to a girls school in Oxford, Ohio, Benjamin transferred there
to attend Miami University and graduated in the fall of 1850.
He admired Henry Clay and the Compromise he worked out that year.
Harrison studied political economy and favored trade,
and he believed that American manufacturing needed to be built up.
At a religious revival he answered the call and joined the Presbyterian Church.
He believed that politics should have moral energy and purpose.
At his graduation on 24 June 1852 he gave a lecture on “The Poor of England.”
Carrie Scott heard this, and they became engaged.
She taught piano and nursed her ill piano teacher.
They were married on 20 October 1853, and they decided to live in Indianapolis.
While his father was in the legislature, Benjamin studied law
and became a partner with William Wallace in the spring of 1855.
Although his father decided to join the anti-immigrant “Know Nothing” American Party,
Benjamin became an anti-slavery Republican
and supported John C. Frémont for President in 1856.
In the spring of 1857 he was elected the Indianapolis city attorney
and was paid $400 per year.
He became the secretary of the Republican state committee,
and in the 1858 elections the Republicans won a majority in the state legislature
and seven of the eleven Congressional seats.
In 1860 Benjamin ran for the position as the reporter for the state supreme court,
and he also campaigned for Lincoln while his father worked
for John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party.
Benjamin was elected the reporter, and Lincoln carried Indiana.
In July 1862 President Lincoln called for 300,000 more troops.
Benjamin Harrison agreed to recruit, enlisted,
and was made colonel of the 70th Indiana Volunteer Regiment.
In the next 18 months they had garrison duty in Kentucky and Tennessee
while he studied military strategy and trained his men with strict discipline,
banning liquor from the camp.
Some complained that he held religious services.
They joined the Army of Cumberland for General Sherman’s Atlanta campaign.
Harrison in May 1864 led an assault at Resaca that captured a Confederate battery,
and he was put in command of four more regiments.
In the drive to Atlanta that summer they fought many battles.
After Atlanta’s fall in September he was ordered to report to Indiana’s
Governor Oliver P. Morton to recruit soldiers and campaign for Republicans.
He criticized the Democrats’ state sovereignty as “a deadly poison to the national life.”
He supported the Emancipation Proclamation and praised black soldiers.
After the election in November he rejoined his men in Georgia,
and they defended Nashville and then marched to the sea with Sherman’s army.
Harrison got scarlet fever and was given a furlough.
He was promoted to a brigadier general in February 1865.
When he returned to his regiment in April,
he learned that Lincoln had been assassinated.
Harrison worked as a supreme court reporter and also practiced law,
increasing his annual income to over $10,000 by 1867.
He defended military commissioners in 1871 trials at the request of President Grant.
In 1872 Harrison attempted to get the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana,
but the powerful U. S. Senator Oliver P. Morton favored another candidate.
His law work prospered even during the depression that began in 1873,
and he and his wife had a spacious house built
in a fashionable district for over $21,000.
Harrison agreed with Grant’s veto of an “inflation bill” that would have
put $44 million in retired greenbacks back into the economy, saying,
It is better to have a little less currency than we need
than it would be to have more;
for whenever we have an excess,
speculation is stimulated to an excessive degree,
and the currency becomes depreciated....
He also believed in a moral dimension and said,
There is in this country perhaps too much haste to be rich.
We have almost forgotten the old, slow way, and can hardly
be content with a fortune that it takes
a life time of honest toil to accumulate.
Men who are poor today think they must put on
tomorrow the equipage and style of wealth.
This is all wrong, and an admonition such as
we had last fall was a good thing for us.2
During the Whiskey Ring scandal in early 1876 Harrison led the defense
of the internal revenue officer Hiram Brownlee by discrediting the testimony
of the distiller John Bingham who was alleged to have given Brownlee a $500 bribe.
In August the Republicans in Indiana needed to replace their nominee for governor.
Harrison agreed to run; and he lost by 1% to the
Democrat James D. Williams, a rural congressman.
After the October election the Republican National Committee asked Harrison
to go on a speaking tour for the presidential candidate Rutherford Hayes.
Harrison was a skillful and popular speaker, and he helped the Hayes campaign.
During the great railroad strike in July 1877 Harrison worked
on the Committee of Arbitration, and he criticized the strikers for
“destroying property by stopping the movement of freight.”
Oliver P. Morton died on November 1,
and Harrison became the leader of many Indiana Republicans.
President Hayes appointed him to the Mississippi River Commission in 1879.
In March 1880 he spoke to young Republicans and called their party
“the moral conscience” of the American people for aiding
the efforts of men who strive to improve their conditions.
During the Republican National Convention in June he persuaded the
Indiana delegation to switch most of their votes from Blaine to Garfield,
and in the campaign he gave speeches for the nominated Garfield.
In January 1881 the Indiana legislature elected Harrison their U. S. Senator.
He said he supported civil service reform, and he also believed that
Federal employees have a right to contribute money to their political party.
He supported Federal aid to primary schools,
and he voted against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Yet the next year he acquiesced with the U. S. Supreme Court’s invalidating
the 1875 Civil Rights Act interpreting that the 14th amendment
outlawed state discrimination but not that of individuals.
His Republican rival in Indiana was Walter Q. Gresham
who was appointed Postmaster General in 1883.
Harrison attended the 1884 Republican convention as a delegate-at-large,
and he helped James G. Blaine get the nomination.
Harrison in the U. S. Senate criticized President Cleveland
for vetoing so many pensions for veterans and their families.
In 1885 Democrats used gerrymandering to regain a majority in the Indiana Assembly,
and in 1886 they defeated Harrison’s re-election as U. S. Senator by one vote.
He supported high tariffs to protect American industries.
At the Republican convention in June 1888 their platform favored eliminating
internal taxes to reduce the surplus while keeping tariff rates high to reduce imports.
In the South they called for “effective legislation
to secure the integrity and purity of elections,”
though this would have very little influence
where most black Republicans were unable to vote.
Although Senator John Sherman of Illinois was the leading candidate,
Harrison’s convention manager Louis T. Michener persuaded delegates that
Harrison had more strength in the critical states of New York and Indiana.
Harrison gained the lead on the seventh ballot,
and he was nominated on the next ballot with 544 votes.
As a compromise candidate he was the second choice of most delegates.
He was notified by telegraph.
Hundreds gathered outside his house,
and he gave four speeches that day from his front porch.
Blaine’s touring campaign in 1884 had failed.
Harrison in 1888 followed the tradition of staying home;
and he gave over 90 speeches there.
A stenographer took down his words,
and copies were sent to the Associated Press for national distribution.
General Lew Wallace, author of the novel Ben-Hur,
wrote a campaign biography for Harrison.
Some formed Tippecanoe Clubs in memory of his grandfather
who was elected President in 1840, and Benjamin accepted their support.
On October 25 he gave a long speech in a large auditorium at Indianapolis,
and he asked,
There are two very plain facts that I have often stated—
and others more forcibly than I—that it seems to me
should be conclusive with the wage-earners of America.
The policy of the Democratic party—the revision of our
tariff laws as indicated by the Democratic party,
a revenue-only tariff, or progressive free trade—
means a vast and sudden increase of importations.
Is there a man here so dull as not to know that
this means diminished work in our American shops?
If some one says that labor is not fully employed now,
do you hope it will be more fully employed
when you have transferred one-third of the work
done in our shops to foreign workshops?
If someone tells me that labor
is not sufficiently rewarded here,
does he hope to have its rewards increased
by striking down our protective duties
and compelling our workmen
to compete with the underpaid labor of Europe?3
After the corrupt campaign led by the Republican chairman Matthew W. Quay,
Republicans responded to the charges by noting that black Republicans in the
deep South were systematically kept from voting which accounted for
Cleveland winning the popular vote and not the electoral college vote.
In the 1888 election Harrison won the key swing states of New York by
only 14,373 votes out of 1,319,748 and Indiana by a mere 2,348 out of 536,949.
He lost Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia by less than one percent.
He won in 20 states that were north and west of the 18 states Cleveland had,
giving Harrison an Electoral College victory 233-166.
In the U. S. Senate the Republicans retained a 38-37 advantage, and in the House
of Representatives the Republicans turned a 15-seat deficit into a 27-seat majority.
President-elect Harrison believed he had not made any promises or bargains
that obligated cabinet appointments, and he would be accountable for his selections.
James Blaine expected to be Secretary of State again,
and
Harrison appointed him on 17 January 1889.
They agreed to have confidence in each other.
The New York boss Thomas C. Platt thought he was owed the Treasury Department,
and
Harrison’s advisor Michener denied that.
Harrison chose Benjamin F. Tracy of New York as Navy Secretary,
and they became friends.
The former Senator William Windom of Minnesota had been Treasury Secretary
briefly for President Garfield,
and Harrison named him after an interview in February 1889.
Harrison knew John W. Noble in college, and he practiced law in Missouri;
Harrison made him Interior Secretary.
Redfield Proctor had led the Vermont delegation that supported Harrison
at the convention, and he became Secretary of War.
Harrison appointed his law partner William Henry Harrison Miller
as Attorney General, knowing he could trust him.
The Philadelphia department store magnate John Wanamaker had helped raise
about $3 million for the campaign and was made Postmaster General.
The new Department of Agriculture was to be run by
Wisconsin’s Gov. Jeremiah Rusk whose third term had ended on January 7.
On March 4 Inauguration Day rain fell on Washington DC continuously.
Cleveland kindly held an umbrella over Harrison as he gave his inaugural address.
Learning from his grandfather’s mistake, Benjamin Harrison
dressed for the weather and gave this speech that was only half as long.
Fellow-Citizens:
There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the
President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people,
but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public
induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation
that from the beginning of the Government the people,
to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer,
have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial.
The oath taken in the presence of the people
becomes a mutual covenant.
The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people
by a faithful execution of the laws so that they may be the
unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe
them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of
combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties
or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose
to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.
My promise is spoken; yours unspoken,
but not the less real and solemn.
The people of every State have here their representatives.
Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit of the occasion when
I assume that the whole body of the people covenant
with me and with each other today to support and defend the
Constitution and the Union of the States,
to yield willing obedience to all the laws and each to
every other citizen his equal civil and political rights.
Entering thus solemnly into covenant with each other,
we may reverently invoke and confidently expect the
favor and help of Almighty God—that He will give
to me wisdom, strength, and fidelity, and to our people
a spirit of fraternity and a love of righteousness and peace.
This occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact
that the Presidential term which begins this day
is the twenty-sixth under our Constitution.
The first inauguration of President Washington
took place in New York, where Congress was then sitting,
on the 30th day of April, 1789, having been deferred
by reason of delays attending the organization of the
Congress and the canvass of the electoral vote.
Our people have already worthily observed the centennials
of the Declaration of Independence, of the battle of Yorktown,
and of the adoption of the Constitution, and will shortly
celebrate in New York the institution of the second great
department of our constitutional scheme of government.
When the centennial of the institution of the judicial
department, by the organization of the Supreme Court,
shall have been suitably observed, as I trust it will be,
our nation will have fully entered its second century.
I will not attempt to note the marvelous and in great part
happy contrasts between our country as it steps over the
threshold into its second century of organized existence
under the Constitution and that weak but wisely ordered
young nation that looked undauntedly down the first century,
when all its years stretched out before it.
Our people will not fail at this time to recall the incidents
which accompanied the institution of government under the
Constitution, or to find inspiration and guidance in the
teachings and example of Washington and his great associates,
and hope and courage in the contrast which thirty-eight
populous and prosperous States offer to the thirteen States,
weak in everything except courage and the love of liberty,
that then fringed our Atlantic seaboard.
The Territory of Dakota has now a population greater than
any of the original States (except Virginia) and greater than
the aggregate of five of the smaller States in 1790.
The center of population when our national capital was located
was east of Baltimore, and it was argued by many
well-informed persons that it would move eastward
rather than westward; yet in 1880 it was found to be near
Cincinnati, and the new census about to be taken will show
another stride to the westward.
That which was the body has come to be
only the rich fringe of the nation's robe.
But our growth has not been limited to territory,
population and aggregate wealth, marvelous as it has been
in each of those directions.
The masses of our people are better-fed, clothed,
and housed than their fathers were.
The facilities for popular education have been vastly
enlarged and more generally diffused.
The virtues of courage and patriotism have given recent
proof of their continued presence and increasing power
in the hearts and over the lives of our people.
The influences of religion have been
multiplied and strengthened.
The sweet offices of charity have greatly increased.
The virtue of temperance is held in higher estimation.
We have not attained an ideal condition.
Not all of our people are happy and prosperous;
not all of them are virtuousand law-abiding.
But on the whole the opportunities offered to the
individual to secure the comforts of life are better than
are found elsewhere and largely better than they were
here one hundred years ago.
The surrender of a large measure of sovereignty to the
General Government, effected by the adoption of the
Constitution, was not accomplished until the suggestions
of reason were strongly reenforced by the more
imperative voice of experience.
The divergent interests of peace speedily
demanded a "more perfect union."
The merchant, the shipmaster, and the manufacturer
discovered and disclosed to our statesmen and to the
people that commercial emancipation must be added
to the political freedom which had been so bravely won.
The commercial policy of the mother country had not
relaxed any of its hard and oppressive features.
To hold in check the development of our commercial marine,
to prevent or retard the establishment and growth of
manufactures in the States, and so to secure the
American market for their shops and the carrying trade
for their ships, was the policy of European statesmen,
and was pursued with the most selfish vigor.
Petitions poured in upon Congress urging the imposition
of discriminating duties that should encourage the
production of needed things at home.
The patriotism of the people, which no longer found
a field of exercise in war, was energetically directed
to the duty of equipping the young Republic for the defense
of its independence by making its people self-dependent.
Societies for the promotion of home manufactures and
for encouraging the use of domestics in the dress of the
people were organized in many of the States.
The revival at the end of the century of the same patriotic
interest in the preservation and development of domestic
industries and the defense of our working people against
injurious foreign competition is an incident worthy of attention.
It is not a departure but a return that we have witnessed.
The protective policy had then its opponents.
The argument was made, as now, that its benefits
inured to particular classes or sections.
If the question became in any sense or at any time sectional,
it was only because slavery existed in some of the States.
But for this there was no reason why the cotton-producin
States should not have led or walked abreast with the
New England States in the production of cotton fabrics.
There was this reason only why the States that divide with
Pennsylvania the mineral treasures of the great
southeastern and central mountain ranges should have been
so tardy in bringing to the smelting furnace and to the mill
the coal and iron from their near opposing hillsides.
Mill fires were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery.
The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths
of the earth as well as in the sky; men were made free,
and material things became our better servants.
The sectional element has happily been eliminated
from the tariff discussion.
We have no longer States that are necessarily
only planting States.
None are excluded from achieving that diversification
of pursuits among the people which brings
wealth and contentment.
The cotton plantation will not be less valuable when the
product is spun in the country town by operatives
whose necessities call for diversified crops and create
a home demand for garden and agricultural products.
Every new mine, furnace, and factory is an extension of
the productive capacity of the State more real and
valuable than added territory.
Shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to
hang upon the skirts of progress?
How long will those who rejoice that slavery no longer exists
cherish or tolerate the incapacities
it put upon their communities?
I look hopefully to the continuance of our protective
system and to theconsequent development of
manufacturing and mining enterprises in the State
hitherto wholly given to agriculture as a potent influence
in the perfect unification of our people.
The men who have invested their capital in these enterprises,
the farmers who have felt the benefit of their neighborhood,
and the men who work in shop or field will not fail to find
and to defend a community of interest.
Is it not quite possible that the farmers and the promoters
of the great mining and manufacturing enterprises which
have recently been established in the South may yet find
that the free ballot of the workingman, without distinction
of race, is needed for their defense as well as for his own?
I do not doubt that if those men in the South who now accept
the tariff views of Clay and the constitutional expositions
of Webster would courageously avow and defend their real
convictions they would not find it difficult, by friendly
instruction and cooperation, to make the black man their
efficient and safe ally, not only in establishing correct
principles in our national administration, but in preserving
for their local communities the benefits of social order and
economical and honest government.
At least until the good offices of kindness and
education have been fairly tried the contrary
conclusion can not be plausibly urged.
I have altogether rejected the suggestion of a special
Executive policy for any section of our country.
It is the duty of the Executive to administer and enforce
in the methods and by the instrumentalities pointed out
and provided by the Constitution
all the laws enacted by Congress.
These laws are general and their administration should
be uniform and equal.
As a citizen may not elect what laws he will obey, neither
may the Executive eject which he will enforce.
The duty to obey and to execute embraces the Constitution
in its entirety and the whole code of laws enacted under it.
The evil example of permitting individuals, corporations,
or communities to nullify the laws because they cross some
selfish or local interest or prejudices is full of danger,
not only to the nation at large, but much more to those
who use this pernicious expedient to escape their just
obligations or to obtain an unjust advantage over others.
They will presently themselves be compelled to appeal
to the law for protection, and those who would use the law
as a defense must not deny that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe
their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause
to complain of the unlaw full imitations of their rights or of
violent interference with their operations.
The community that by concert, open or secret, among its
citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain rights
under the law has severed the only safe bond
of social order and prosperity.
The evil works from a bad center both ways.
It demoralizes those who practice it and destroys the faith
of those who suffer by it in the efficiency
of the law as a safe protector.
The man in whose breast that faith has been darkened is
naturally the subject of dangerous and uncanny suggestions.
Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no higher
motive than the selfishness that prompted them, may well
stop and inquire what is to be the end of this.
An unlawful expedient can not become a
permanent condition of government.
If the educated and influential classes in a community either
practice or connive at the systematic violation of laws that
seem to them to cross their convenience, what can they
expect when the lesson that convenience or a supposed class
interest is a sufficient cause for lawlessness has been well
learned by the ignorant classes?
A community where law is the rule of conduct and where courts
not mobs, execute its penalties is the only attractive field
for business investments and honest labor.
Our naturalization laws should be so amended as to make
the inquiry into the character and good disposition of persons
applying for citizenship more careful and searching.
Our existing laws have been in their administration an
unimpressive and often an unintelligible form.
We accept the man as a citizen without any knowledge of his
fitness, and he assumes the duties of citizenship without any
knowledge as to what they are.
The privilegesof American citizenship are so great and its duties
so grave that we may well insist upon a good knowledge of
every person applying for citizenship and a good knowledge
by him of our institutions.
We should not cease to be hospitable to immigration,
but we should cease to be careless as to the character of it.
There are men of all races, even the best, whose coming is
necessarily a burden upon our public revenues
or a threat to socialorder.
These should be identified and excluded.
We have happily maintained a policy of avoiding all
interference with European affairs.
We have been only interested spectators of their contentions
in diplomacy and in war, ready to use our friendly offices to
promote peace, but never obtruding our advice and never
attempting unfairly to coin the distresses of other powers
into commercial advantage to ourselves.
We have a just right to expect that our European policy will
be the American policy of European courts
It is so manifestly incompatible with those precautions for
our peace and safety which all the great powers habitually
observe and enforce in matters affecting them that a shorter
waterway between our eastern and western seaboards should
be dominated by any European Government that we may
confidently expect that such a purpose will not be
entertained by any friendly power.
We shall in the future, as in the past, use every endeavor
to maintain and enlarge our friendly relations with all the
great powers, but they will not expect us to look kindly upon
any project that would leave us subject to the dangers of a
hostile observation or environment.
We havenot sought to dominate or to absorb any of our
weaker neighbors, but rather to aid and encourage them to
establish free and stable governments resting upon the
consent of their own people.
We have a clear right to expect, therefore, that no European
Government will seek to establish colonial dependencies upon
the territory of these independent American States.
That which a sense of justice restrains us from seeking they
may be reasonably expected willingly to forego.
It must not be assumed, however, that our interests are so
exclusively American that our entire inattention to any events
that may transpire elsewhere can be taken for granted.
Our citizens domiciled for purposes of trade in all countries
and in many of the islands of the sea demand and will have our
adequate care in their personal and commercial rights.
The necessities of our Navy require convenient coaling stations
and dock and harbor privileges.
These and other trading privileges we will feel free to obtain
only by means that do not in any degree partake of coercion,
however feeble the government from which
we ask such concessions.
But having fairly obtained them by methods and for purposes
entirely consistent with the most friendly disposition toward all
other powers, our consent will be necessary to any modification
or impairment of the concession.
We shall neither fail to respect the flag of any friendly nation
or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact the like
treatment for our own.
Calmness, justice, and consideration should
characterize our diplomacy.
The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly
arbitration in proper cases should be adequate to the
peaceful adjustment of all international difficulties.
By such methods we will make our contribution to the world's
peace, which no nation values more highly, and avoid the
opprobrium which must fall upon the nation that
ruthlessly breaks it.
The duty devolved by law upon the President to nominate and,
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint
all public officers whose appointment is not otherwise
provided for in the Constitution or by act of Congress ha
become very burdensome and its wise and
efficient discharge full of difficulty.
The civil list is so large that a personal knowledge of any large
number of the applicants is impossible.
The President must rely upon the representations of others,
and these are often made inconsiderately and without any
just sense of responsibility.
I have a right, I think, to insist that those who volunteer
or are invited to give advice as to appointments shall
exercise consideration and fidelity.
A high sense of duty and an ambition to improve the service
should characterize all public officers.
There are many ways in which the convenience and comfort
of those who have business with our public offices may be
promoted by a thoughtful and obliging officer, and I shall
expect those whom I may appoint to justify their selection
by a conspicuous efficiency in the discharge of their duties.
Honorable party service will certainly not be esteemed by me
a disqualification for public office, but it will in no case be
allowed to serve as a shield of official negligence,
incompetency, or delinquency.
It is entirely creditable to seek public office by proper methods
and with proper motives, and all applicants will be treated
with consideration; but I shall need, and the heads of
Departments will need, time for inquiry and deliberation.
Persistent importunity will not, therefore, be the best support
of an application for office.
Heads of Departments, bureaus, and all other public officers
having any duty connected therewith will be expected to
enforce the civil-service lawfully and without evasion.
Beyond this obvious duty I hope to do something more to
advance the reform of the civil service.
The ideal, or even my own ideal, I shall probably not attain.
Retrospect will be a safer basis of judgment than promises.
We shall not, however, I am sure, be able to put our civil service
upon a nonpartisan basis until we have secured an incumbency
that fair-minded men of the opposition will approve for
impartiality and integrity.
As the number of such in the civil list is increased removals
from office will diminish.
While a Treasury surplus is not the greatest evil
it is a serious evil.
Our revenue should be ample to meet the ordinary annual
demands upon our Treasury, with a sufficient margin for
those extraordinary but scarcely less imperative demands
which arise now and then.
Expenditure should alwaysbe made with economy and
only upon public necessity.
Wastefulness, profligacy, or favoritism in public
expenditures is criminal.
But there is nothing in the condition of our country or of
our people to suggest that anything presently necessary
to the public prosperity, security, or honor should be
unduly postponed.
It will be the duty of Congress wisely to forecast
and estimate these extraordinary demands, and,
having added them to our ordinary expenditures,
to so adjust our revenue laws that no considerable
annual surplus wilremain.
We will fortunately be able to apply to the redemption
of the public debt any small and unforeseen excess of revenue.
This is better than to reduce our income below our
necessary expenditures, with the resulting choice between
another change of our revenue laws and an increase
of the public debt.
It is quite possible, I am sure, to effect the necessary
reduction in our revenues without breaking down our
protective tariff or seriously injuring any domestic industry.
The construction of a sufficient number of modern war ships
and of their necessary armament should progress as rapidly
as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and
workmanship.
The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and
seamen have many times in our history given to weak ships
and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of the navallist.
That they will again do so upon occasion I do not doubt;
but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to be left
to the risks and exigencies of an unequal combat.
We should encourage the establishment of American
steamship lines.
The exchanges of commerce demand stated, reliable, and rapid
means of communication, and until these are provided the
development of our trade with the States lying south of us
is impossible.
Our pension laws should give more adequate and discriminating
relief to the Union soldiers and sailors
and to their widows and orphans.
Such occasions as this should remind us that we owe
everything to their valor and sacrifice.
It is a subject of congratulation that there is a near prospect
of the admission into the Union of the Dakotas and Montana
and Washington Territories.
This act of justice has been unreasonably delayed in the case
of some of them.
The people who have settled these Territories are intelligent,
enterprising, and patriotic, and the accession these new States
will add strength to the nation.
It is due to the settlers in the Territories who have availed
themselves of the invitations of our land laws to make homes
upon the public domain that their titles should be speedily
adjusted and their honest entries confirmed by patent.
It is very gratifying to observe the general interest now being
manifestein the reform of our election laws.
Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing
necessity of throwing about the ballot box and about the
elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not
only be free and pure, but might clearly appear to be so,
will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon
discover the need of reform.
TheNational Congress has not as yet taken control of
elections in that case over which the Constitution gives it
jurisdiction, but has accepted and adopted the election laws
of the several States, provided penalties for their violation
and a method of supervision.
Only the inefficiency of the State laws or an unfair partisan
administration of them could suggest a departurefrom this policy.
It was clearly, however, in the contemplation of the framers
of the Constitution that such an exigency might arise,
and provision was wisely made for it.
The freedom of the ballot is a condition of our national life,
and no power vested in Congress or in the Executive to secure
or perpetuate it should remain unused upon occasion.
The people of all the Congressional districts have an equal
interest that the election in each shall truly express the views
and wishes of a majority of the qualified electors residing within it.
The results of such elections are not local, and the insistence
of electors residing in other districts that they shall be pure
and free does not savor at all of impertinence.
If in any of the States the public security is thought to be
threatened by ignorance among the electors,
the obvious remedy is education.
The sympathy and help of our people will not be withheld
from any community struggling with special embarrassments
or difficulties connected with the suffrage if the remedies
proposed proceed upon lawful lines and are promoted by
just and honorable methods.
How shall those who practice election frauds recover that
respect for the sanctity of the ballot which is the first condition
and obligation of good citizenship?
The man who has come to regard the ballot box as a
juggler's hat has renounced his allegiance.
Let us exalt patriotism and moderate our party contentions.
Let thosewho would die for the flag on the field of battle
give a better proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to
their country by promoting fraternity and justice.
A party success that is achieved by unfair methods or by
practices that partake of revolution is hurtful and
evanescent even from a party standpoint.
We should hold our differing opinions in mutual respect, and,
having submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot, should
accept an adverse judgment with the same respect that we
would have demanded of our opponents if the decision
had been in our favor.
No other people have a government more worthy of their
respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent,
so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion
to enterprise and labor.
God has placed upon our head a diadem and has laid at our feet
power and wealth beyond definition or calculation.
But we must not forget that we take these gifts upon the
condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power
and thathe upward avenues of hope shall be free to all the people.
I do not mistrust the future.
Dangers have been in frequent ambush along our path,
but we have uncovered and vanquished them all.
Passion has swept some of our communities, but only to
give us a new demonstration that the great body of our peopl
are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding.
No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense
of public honor or by rude and indecent methods without
protest and fatal disaffection in its own body.
The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing
the necessary unity of all our communities, and the increasing
intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect.
We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation which our next
census will make of the swift development of the great resources
of some of the States.
Each State will bring its generous contribution to the great
aggregate of the nation's increase.
And when the harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills,
and the ores of the earth shall have been weighed, counted,
and valued, we will turn from them all to crown with the highest
honor the State that has most promoted education, virtue
,justice, and patriotism among its people.4
Then in the rain President Harrison and Vice President Morton
watched the parade for four hours.
About 11,000 people attended the Inaugural Ball.
Harrison did not approve of alcohol or dancing,
and the Marine Band led by John Philip Sousa played mostly marches.
On March 5 the U. S. Senate met for 23 minutes to confirm
all eight of Harrison’s cabinet officers before adjourning until December.
President Harrison allowed the families of his children to live in the White House.
He selected the journalist Elijah Halford to be his private secretary.
He worked with his cabinet secretaries actively and knew their business well.
He refused to appoint a list of men given him by the Republican National
Chairman Matthew Quay until he had more information about them.
To many Harrison seemed cold and detached in political business,
though he had warm feelings in personal relationships.
In his first year and a half he spent about five hours a day on patronage matters
that were difficult because most applicants had to be rejected.
He ended up replacing about as many Federal employees as his
Democratic predecessor Cleveland who had replaced Republicans.
The U. S. Congress on March 2 had authorized the President
to declare American rights and jurisdiction in the Bering Sea.
On the 21st Harrison warned that anyone who hunted fur-bearing animals unlawfully
could be arrested as their vessels were seized.
The U. S. Navy would capture eight Canadian ships in 1889.
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley Matthews died on March 22,
and Harrison nominated the conservative Circuit Court Judge David J. Brewer
whose uncle Stephen J. Field was already on the court.
The President sent Brewer’s name to the U. S. Senate until December 4,
and he was confirmed two weeks later.
The two relatives would serve together until Field retired in December 1897.
Cleveland on March 3 had approved the Indian appropriations bill that set aside
nearly two million acres in the middle of the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) for settlement.
On March 23 Harrison proclaimed that eligible settlers would have access to that land
which had belonged to 75,000 Indians from 22 tribes.
At noon on April 22 the first Oklahoma land rush was called “Harrison’s Horse Race.”
About 50,000 people entered that territory to make claims,
and on that day the new town of Guthrie had about 10,000 residents.
Those who entered the territory early were called “Sooners,”
and fights broke out over their premature claims.
The United States jurisdiction of the Oklahoma Territory
would be proclaimed on 2 May 1890.
Harrison went to New York to celebrate the centennial
of George Washington’s inauguration there on April 30.
The Episcopal Bishop Henry Potter gave a sermon that described the political
degeneration from the dignity of Washington to Jefferson’s simplicity,
Jackson’s vulgarity, and then to materialism and practical politics.
Harrison also spoke and said,
Those who would associate their names with events
that shall outlive a country
can only do so by high consecration to duty.
Self-seeking has no public observance or anniversary.5
Harrison in May appointed the former governor Hugh S. Thompson of South Carolina
and young Theodore Roosevelt to join Charles Lyman on the Civil Service Commission.
Roosevelt complained that the President ignored his recommendations especially in the
Post Office where Harrison usually took the side of Postmaster General Wanamaker
and his first assistant James S. Clarkson of Iowa.
Clarkson had appointed about a thousand Negroes to rural post offices
and hundreds more as letter carriers and mail clerks.
Blaine wanted his son Walker to be First Assistant Secretary of State,
and Harrison would not agree to that.
They worked together on Samoan issues that involved
the interest there of Britain and Germany.
On March 15 U. S., British, and German warships confronted each other in the
Apia harbor, and a cyclone destroyed all the ships except the British Calliope.
Robert Louis Stevenson later wrote,
Both had time to recognise that
not the whole Samoan Archipelago was worth
the loss in men and costly ships already suffered.6
The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had invited the other two powers
to a conference at Berlin on April 29, and on June 14 they created
a shared protectorate over Samoa.
They claimed they were respecting the independence of Samoa.
Yet the three powers appointed the chief justice, the president of the Apia municipal
council, and other officials, though they reinstated King Malietoa Laupepa
as the titular sovereign.
The great flood at Johnstown, Pennsylvania started on May 31.
The death toll of 2,208 was the largest in the U. S. up to that time,
and 1,600 homes were destroyed.
Harrison visited the scene and offered Federal assistance, and he led the effort
to raise a relief fund and contributed $300 himself.
Clara Barton with 50 volunteers of the Red Cross arrived on June 5,
and she stayed there for over five months working on the disaster relief.
On July 1 Harrison appointed the 72-year-old Frederick Douglass
the U. S. Resident Minister and Consul General to Haiti, and in September
he was also made the Chargé d’Affaires to Santo Domingo.
The Federal surplus from the fiscal year that had just ended was $105 million.
On July 20 the range detective George Henderson accused the rancher
Ella Watson of stealing cattle from Albert John Bothwell in the Powder River region
of Wyoming, and this escalated to the Johnson County range war
that killed about thirty people and lasted until May 1893.
Blaine had health problems, and during the summer
he left hot Washington to go home to Maine.
He invited Harrison to visit him there for ten days in August.
Then Harrison went to Indianapolis for a Soldiers’ and Sailors Monument celebration
on August 22, and he spoke to a crowd of 40,000 people.
Harrison had appointed as commissioner of pensions the popular Corporal
James Tanner who had lost both legs in the second battle at Bull Run.
Interior Secretary John Noble in July complained that
Tanner stretched the rules and refused to cooperate.
Noble in September finally said he would resign unless Tanner was removed.
Harrison replaced Tanner with Green B. Raum
who was also popular and more compliant.
The United States on October 2 hosted a conference in Washington
for Latin American diplomats from every independent country in the
western hemisphere except the Dominican Republic.
Also attending were Andrew Carnegie, Clement Studebaker, the bankers
Cornelius Bliss and Thomas J. Coolidge, and the shipping mogul Charles Flint.
Secretary of State Blaine opened the first business session,
and in his speech he said,
We believe that hearty cooperation based on hearty
confidence will save all American States from the
burdens and evils which have long and cruelly
afflicted the older nations of the world.
We believe that a spirit of justice, of common equal
interest between the American States will leave
no room for an artifical balance of power like
unto that which has led to wars abroad
and drenched Europe in blood....
We believe that standing armies,
beyond those which are needful for public order
and the safety of internal administration,
should be unknown on both American continents.
We believe that friendship and not force,
the spirit of just law and not the violence of the mob,
should be the recognized rule of administration
between American nations and in American nations.7
After the Latin American envoys were taken on a tour of U. S. manufacturing
for six weeks, they met from November until 19 April 1890.
A proposed customs union was rejected,
and they approved negotiating reciprocity agreements.
They also designed a plan for arbitrating disputes,
but the governments declined to ratify that.
They formed the International Bureau of the American Republics that would
eventually become the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948.
During a power struggle in Haiti the U. S. helped General Florvil Hyppolite
get control in October 1889 by not recognizing the naval blockade
proclaimed by General François Légitime.
Harrison and Blaine wanted Le Mole St. Nicolas for a coaling station,
and Frederick Douglass arrived as minister to Haiti in November;
the U. S. Navy would spoil his negotiation in 1891.
On October 15 Carl Schurz spoke to the Forestry Associations
on the future of American forests and the need for conservation
based on his experience in Germany.
When he was Secretary of the Interior 1877-81, he urged President Hayes
to preserve the nation’s forests so that they could continue to be useful
as building materials and places for recreation.
To do this they needed to prevent soil erosion.
In his lecture he predicted and wrote,
The more study and thought I have given the matter,
the firmer has become my conviction that
the destruction of the forests of this country
will be the murder of its future prosperity and progress....
I observed a most lively export trade going on
from Gulf ports as well as Pacific ports,
with fleets of vessels employed in carrying timber
stolen from the public lands to be sold in foreign countries,
immense tracts being devastated
that some robbers might fill their pockets.8
He warned that careless tourists, hunters, and mining prospectors leave fires
without extinguishing them, resulting in many square miles of forest being destroyed.
Yet he found that Congressmen dismissed his warnings at first and eventually
brought some violators to justice for the stolen timber.
Then they passed new laws that favored the taking of timber from public lands.
He thanked the Forestry Associations for their effort
to bring about a rational forestry system.
He concluded that mountain forests must be preserved
because once they are destroyed, they cannot be renewed.
On November 2 Harrison signed the proclamation admitting North Dakota and
South Dakota as states, followed by Montana on the 8th and Washington on the 10th.
Republicans dominated these four states which resulted in eight more
Republican Senators and all five of the new House members
with South Dakota having two representatives and the others one.
In his First Annual Message to Congress on December 3
President Harrison described his ambitious legislative agenda.
The document was sent to news organizations throughout the nation,
and clerks read its 15,000 words to a joint session of the Congress.
He wanted tariffs revised to preserve protection, a silver law that would not cause inflation,
railway regulation to ensure worker safety, increased veteran pensions, aid to schools,
internal improvements, expanding the merchant marines, and more Navy ships.
The U. S. Attorney General William Miller in 1889 had ordered southern states
to prosecute those interfering with Federal elections;
but this was resisted, or juries failed to convict violators.
Harrison had praised the efforts of black people in the South,
and he wanted a strong law to protect the right of black Americans to vote in the South.
He noted,
In many parts of our country where the colored population
is large the people of that race are by various devices
deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights
and of many of their civil rights.
The wrong does not expend itself
upon those whose votes are suppressed.
Every constituency in the Union is wronged.
It has been the hope of every patriot
that a sense of justice and of respect for the law
would work a gradual cure of these flagrant evils….
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?
When is that equality of influence
which our form of government was intended
to secure to the electors to be restored?
This generation should courageously
face these grave questions,
and not leave them as a heritage of woe to the next….
I earnestly invoke the attention of Congress
to the consideration of such measures
within its well-defined constitutional powers as will secure
to all our people a free exercise of the right of suffrage
and every other civil right under the Constitution
and laws of the United States.9
At first Democrats obstructed voting on issues by refusing to provide a quorum.
They did this by not answering the roll call.
The state of Mississippi instituted a poll tax, literacy tests,
and other restrictions to prevent black people from voting.
This example would be followed by other southern states creating similar Jim Crow laws.
On December 9 President Harrison attended the opening of the Chicago Auditorium
seating 3,500 to hear Adelina Patti sing “Home Sweet Home” in the 17-story building
that architect Louis Sullivan was constructing.
Jacob Riis published the article “How the Other Half Lives” in the
December issue of Scribner’s magazine illustrated by his photographs.
He criticized the tenements in New York as shanties
that nurtured the evils of epidemics, poverty, and crime.
He described the Italians on the lower east side,
the Irish in the west, and the Jews in the middle.
Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia also had many immigrants.
Andrew Carnegie calculated that the immigrants added $1 billion
to the U. S. economy each year.
On December 18 the influenza pandemic from Europe arrived
in the United States and would reach a lethal peak in January 1890.
President Harrison on 10 February 1889 proclaimed,
This commission was specially instructed to present to
the Sioux Indians occupying the Great Sioux Reservation
for their acceptance thereof and consent thereto
in manner and form as therein provided the act of Congress
approved on March 2, 1889, entitled
“An act to divide a portion of the reservation
of the Sioux Nation of Indians in Dakota
into separate reservations and to secure
the relinquishment of the Indian title to the remainder,
and for other purposes.”10
Thus the U. S. Government opened to settlement by its citizens 11 million acres of land
that had been ceded by the Sioux the previous year.
President Cleveland on March 2 had signed another Indian Appropriation Act
that created the Cherokee Commission and opened unassigned land to white settlers.
The five civilized tribes asked for a Sequoyah state next to an Oklahoma state,
and the U. S. Congress rejected that.
Instead they opened two million acres, and on April 22 about 50,000 people
competed in the land rush for 12,000 land tracts.
On May 2 Congress passed the Organic Act which created the Oklahoma Territory
that consolidated Oklahoma and Indian Territories.
On December 15 the U. S. Indian Agent James McLaughlin ordered the arrest
of the Lakota Chief Sitting Bull.
Lt. Bullhead led 39 police that included Lakota.
Those near Sitting Bull were aroused, and the Lakota Catch-the-Bear
with his rifle mortally wounded Bullhead who shot Sitting Bull in the chest.
After the police officer Red Tomahawk shot Sitting Bull in the head, killing him,
Lakota warriors killed six policemen and mortally wounded another.
On December 19 General Nelson Miles sent a telegram to
General John Schofield in Washington complaining that the U. S. Congress
was not fulfilling its treaty obligations to the Indian tribes
who had been “coerced into signing” them.
They lacked supplies and had only reduced rations.
Crops in the region had failed for two years.
The Sioux were dissatisfied, and the Cheyenne were starving.
On the 28th the half-Sioux interpreter John Shangreau advised
Major Samuel Whiteside and the U. S. 7th Cavalry not to try to disarm the Sioux.
The troops escorted Spotted Elk and about 350 Lakota
to Wounded Knee Creek where they camped.
That night Col. James Forsyth arrived, increasing the number of troops to about 500.
At dawn on December 29 Forsyth ordered the Indians to turn over their weapons
and leave the “zone of military operations.”
The old men were not armed, and Yellow Bird began the Ghost Dance.
Deaf Black Coyote did not give up his rifle.
When two soldiers attacked him, his rifle went off.
Yellow Bird threw dust in the air, and about five Lakota men
began shooting their rifles at the troops.
In the fighting about 90 Lakota warriors were killed, and four were wounded.
The troops lost 25 killed and had 33 wounded.
The battle became a massacre with about 200 Lakota women and children killed
while 46 were wounded.
On December 30 Lakota and Brulé Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation
ambushed the 7th Cavalry led by Forsyth and Guy Henry,
and the cavalry lost one killed and seven wounded.
General Miles then had 3,500 troops surround the hostile Sioux.
On 15 January 1891 the Sioux formally surrendered at White Clay Creek.
President Harrison ordered an investigation, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Thomas J. Morgan reported that the Indians
have a right to expect sympathy, help, and justice.
Harrison regretted the massacre and dismissed the Pine Ridge Indian agent.
General Miles suspended Forsyth, but Harrison reinstated him.
He believed the Indians needed to be civilized, and he met with Sioux leaders
and urged them to take the allotments of land offered and learn how to earn a living.
Harrison’s views were similar to those in the Indian Rights Association
which was founded in 1882 by non-Indians whose aim was
to help Indians to develop civilization and become citizens.
Commissioner Morgan was one of their advocates.
Wounded Knee was the last major Indian battle.
Railroads reduced the need for so many forts in the West
which declined from 82 in 1889 to 62 by 1891.
The U. S. Army had 25,582 enlisted men in 1889 with a high desertion rate of 11%.
According to the U. S. Census reports the number of Native Americans
had decreased from 400,764 in 1850 to 248,253 in 1890.
The Oklahoma Territory ceded lands of the Sauk, Fox, and Potawatomie
to the United States which opened 900,000 acres to white settlers in September 1890.
On 29 January 1890 the Republican Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives,
Thomas B. Reed of Maine, had the clerk recognize the Democrats who were present
but refused to answer to their name or vote.
When they complained, he ruled their motions out of order.
The House confirmed Reed’s rules on February 14.
Republican Senator Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire had been trying
for several years to pass his bill for Federal aid to schools, and it was not going well.
In January the Afro-American League at Chicago endorsed Blair’s bill
that would help fund for eight years public schools that did not discriminate
between white and black children, though they did not have to be integrated.
The Senate debated the bill from February 5 to March 20.
The Nation magazine called it a “Bill to Promote Mendicancy,”
and it was defeated 36-42.
On March 3 the U. S. Supreme Court in Louisville, New Orleans & Texas Ry. Co.
v. Mississippi decided 7-2 that the Mississippi constitution
could require railroads to have segregated and equal carriers.
Justice John Marshall Harlan in dissent argued that the statute
was an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce.
On March 24 the U. S. Supreme Court in Chicago, Milwaukee,
St. Paul Railroad v. Minnesota overruled the 1877 Munn v. Illinois decision
by denying the state of Minnesota’s right to regulate a railroad company’s rate
if they were obstructing their right to make a “reasonable profit.”
The Republicans passed the Dependent Pension Act,
and Harrison signed it on June 27.
During his presidency pension spending increased
from $81 million per year to $144 million.
By 1893 the U. S. would have 966,012 pensioners,
and between 1890 and 1907 the U. S. would spend $1 billion on the Pension Act.
At this time the U. S. Army had only 28,000 men
while Germany had over 500,000 soldiers.
Some southern states had granted pensions or benefits to a few Confederate veterans.
The Republicans worked on their bills in committees,
and Chairman William McKinley’s Ways and Means Committee
held hearings for weeks.
He proposed duties on wool and other agricultural products
that Harrison recommended.
McKinley put sugar on the free list to please consumers and the Sugar Trust
that had been incorporated in 1887 and was making large profits.
Secretary of State Blaine opposed this because he wanted to use sugar duties
to negotiate reciprocal agreements for
U. S. wheat and hogs with Cuba and other Latin Americans.
A duty of two cents per pound was put on refined sugar
to aid the American Sugar Company and cane producers in Louisiana.
The McKinley bill increased duties on articles that competed with U. S. products,
and it was introduced in April.
After a two-week debate the House passed the McKinley Tariff bill
164-142 on 21 May 1890.
Blaine and Harrison hoped that the Senate version would include reciprocity.
Both major parties in 1888 had advocated controlling trusts and combinations,
and Senator John Sherman introduced the influential Anti-Trust Act.
The Sherman Antitrust Act, which is still considered important in 2022,
outlawed every contract, combination, trust, or conspiracy that restrained trade
or commerce in the states or with foreign nations
with the penalty up to $5,000 and one year in prison.
Sherman warned that they must respond to popular appeals
“or be ready for the socialist, the communist, the nihilist.”
Harrison’s friends, Senators Edmunds of Vermont and Hoar of Massachusetts,
had written most of the bill which the Senate passed 52-1,
and President Harrison signed it on 2 July 1890.
In a few months the Justice Department with a small budget managed
to prosecute coal companies in Tennessee for price fixing,
and others brought three criminal and four civil suits during Harrison’s term.
Also on July 2 the Convention Relative to the Slave Trade and Importation
into Africa of Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors
was signed in Brussels, and the United States became a party to this agreement.
Idaho was admitted as a state on July 3 followed by Wyoming one week later.
A special House committee led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts
had drafted the Federal Elections bill in March that focused on the election
of representatives in Congress allowing a U. S. Federal judge who received
a petition signed by 500 voters in a congressional district to order
Federal officials to manage a pending election for the representative.
The Lodge bill authorized Federal circuit courts to arbitrate election disputes
only in congressional races, and Federal troops and marshals were not mentioned.
Harrison invited several senators to the White House and suggested providing
Federal supervision of all phases of the election, and that was added to the bill.
The U. S. judge in each state was to appoint a Federal board of canvassers
to declare the winners.
Southern Democrats fought furiously against this, calling it the “Lodge Force Bill”
while Harrison considered it a “civil rights bill.”
On July 2 the House passed it 155-149, and the U. S. Senate used a filibuster
to defeat the bill in February 1891.
Harrison advocated preserving the gold standard,
and westerners wanted more silver coins in circulation.
Treasury Secretary William Windom advised buying silver with new Treasury certificates.
Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado complained about that to Harrison
who warned him that he would veto a free-coinage bill.
The Republican House had approved a version of Windom’s plan on June 7
that allowed for purchasing silver for $4.5 million each month,
and only what was needed for redemption was to be in silver coins.
Senators called “silverites” passed 42-25 a free-coinage amendment
with a 16 to 1 silver-gold ratio, and the House rejected that 135-152.
In the conference Senator Sherman worked out a compromise with the
4.5 million ounces of silver paid for by certificates,
and Republicans passed it without any Democrats’ votes in both houses.
Harrison signed Silver Purchase Act into law on July 14.
The ratio of silver to gold was less than 20 to 1 in 1890,
and by 1893 it climbed to 26.5 to 1.
The Senate authorized buying 12 million more ounces of silver in 1891.
On July 29 President Harrison sent a special message to Congress asking for
legislation to remove anything related to a lottery
in the mail which he justified by writing,
It is not necessary, I am sure, for me to attempt to portray
the robbery of the poor and the widespread corruption
of public and private morals which are
the necessary incidents of these lottery schemes.11
European nations were banning the importing of American meat
because of disease, and in August the U. S. Congress passed
the Meat Inspection Act to be administered by the Agriculture Department.
The President was authorized to stop imports from nations
that discriminated against U. S. products.
The Congress authorized six new ships for the Navy for $6 million each.
Republicans promised to take up that bill at the start of the new session,
and they passed McKinley’s Tariff bill on September 10.
Tariffs on average were raised nearly 50%, and Harrison signed it into law on October 1.
The black leader Frederick Douglass complained,
“What if we gain the tariff and many other good things
if in doing it the soul of the party and nation is lost?”12
A difficult financial situation in England caused a tight money market,
and Harrison had the Treasury inject $50 million into the economy
by purchasing bonds and early payment on their interest and by dispersing pensions.
Within a week this relieved the economy.
The United States established in California the Sequoia National Park
on September 25 and Yosemite National Park on October 1.
Before adjourning on that day the Congress had authorized the President
to negotiate trade agreements and to modify tariff duties.
Salesmen in the rural U. S. asked for higher prices on tin goods
and blamed them on the new protective tariff.
Many women urged their husbands and fathers
to vote against Republicans in the 1890 elections.
The public did not like the increasing prices,
and the sugar price was not reduced until after the elections.
Canada’s government wanted to negotiate reciprocity.
Harrison and Blaine realized that Canadian agriculture would compete
with American farmers while Canadians would continue
to buy manufactured goods from Britain instead of the US.
Blaine also warned that Canada might ask to join the United States,
and Harrison opposed its annexation.
On June 30 the Republican Congress passed the Naval Act,
approving three new battleships.
During the election campaigning the Democrats condemned
the Republicans for its “billion-dollar Congress.”
They criticized the Lodge bill that failed to pass because the Democrats voted
for the silver bill in exchange for westerners’ help in defeating the Force Bill.
Democrats in Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, and Tennessee
had vigorously gerrymandered their congressional districts.
The fall elections shocked Republicans as Democrats gained a 238-86 advantage
over them in the House of Representatives while eight new Populists were elected.
With the four new western states Republicans
increased their advantage to 47-39 in the Senate.
A few days after the November election the Barings Bank in England
collapsed from losing investments in Argentine debts.
This triggered a financial panic that caused a severe recession.
The New York Clearing-House eased this some by providing
loan certificates to endangered banks.
The Harrison administration once again responded to the crisis
by purchasing bonds and increasing pension payments.
The U. S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel F. Miller had died on October 13.
President Harrison nominated the 54-year-old District Court Judge Henry Billings Brown
on December 23, and the U. S. Senate confirmed the moderate conservative six days later.
Mississippi revised their constitution
that resulted in disenfranchising most blacks and poor people.
Frederick Douglass visited President Harrison
and pleaded with him to get anti-lynching legislation passed.
The U. S. Census counted 62,979,766 people in 1890
up from 50,189,209 in 1880.
The 1890 Census showed that the greatest increase of foreigners
in the previous decade was from Hungary, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Poland.
The nine states with more than 2 million people were New York (6,003,174),
Pennsylvania (5,258,113), Illinois, Ohio, Missouri,
Massachusetts, Texas, Indiana, and Michigan.
The only cities with more than 300,000 were New York, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Brooklyn, St. Louis, Boston, and Baltimore.
The population of Los Angeles increased from 11,183 in 1880 to 50,395.
Most of the 1890 Census data was destroyed by a fire
in the Commerce Department Building in January 1921.
President Harrison wanted the U. S. Congress to vote on Lodge’s civil rights bill
for black voters in the South, and the Democrats were blocking that with filibusters
and criticizing the massacre at the last Indian battle at Wounded Knee.
Democrats wanted a vote on free coinage so that they could trade their votes
for that to help the westerners in exchange for their aiding
to defeat the elections bill, a legislative tactic called “logrolling.”
On 5 January 1891 Senator Stewart of Nevada proposed taking up
the silver coinage bill, and the Senate agreed to do that by a 34-29 vote.
After debating it for over a week the Senate passed the silver bill.
Harrison made it known that he would veto it
even if it were part of an appropriation bill.
On January 29 Treasury Secretary Windom told an audience in New York
that free coinage would be “extremely disastrous,”
and at the end of the speech he collapsed and died.
During his last year in office Windom had bought 1,145,577 acres from a railroad
for 3 cents an acre while others had to pay $5 per acre.
Windom’s portrait was engraved on the $2 silver certificates from 1891 to 1896.
Harrison appointed the former Gov. Charles Foster of Ohio
as Treasury Secretary because he also opposed the silver coinage.
On January 16 Vice President Morton broke a tie so that the Senate
could start to discuss the civil rights bill, and on the 22nd
four silver-state Republicans and two others helped
Democratic senators block the elections bill 34-35.
Senator Stewart accused Harrison of trying the pass the Force bill
that would put “the colored population” in power in the South.
In an unusual newspaper interview Harrison said,
That the majority shall rule
is an underlying principle of our institutions….
It will not do for the people of any section
to say that they must be let alone,
that it is a local question to be settled by the States
of whether we shall have honest elections or not.13
Harrison became the first U. S. President to criticize severely the lynching
that was being used to prevent black people from voting,
and he said they “shame our Christian civilization.”
He asked the Congress to pass strong legislation to end the practice,
and Democrats were set against that.
Frederick Douglass defended Harrison’s effort to pass the elections bill saying,
“To my mind we never had a greater President.”14
Grover Cleveland wrote a letter on February 10 to E. Ellery Anderson,
chairman of the Reform Club, expressing his opposition to the
“dangerous and reckless experiment of free, unlimited, and independent silver coinage.”
The New Orleans Police Chief David M. Hennessey had been murdered
on October 15 for having investigated and arrested the Mafia leader
Giuseppe Esposito in 1881 and for refusing to accept bribes.
Before dying the next day he was asked who shot him, and he replied, “The Dagos.”
Nineteen Italians were arrested and indicted for murder.
The trial began on 16 February 1891,
and during it charges against ten defendants were dismissed.
On March 13 the jury found six not guilty and could not agree on the others,
and the judge declared a mistrial.
The next day about 8,000 people gathered and stormed the prison.
Two Italians were taken outside and lynched
while nine others were shot or clubbed to death in the prison.
The frightened consul wired Baron Fava, the Italian ambassador, in Washington.
He appealed to Secretary of State Blaine who discussed the crisis with Harrison.
He disseminated his regret to the U. S. Minister Albert Porter in Rome and to others.
Italian-Americans in Chicago threatened violence.
The press spread the story and the war talk.
The rumor of an Italian squadron coming alerted Americans that the Italian navy
had 19 armored ships compared to the U. S. which had only three.
On June 30 the Republican Congress passed the Naval Act,
approving three new battleships.
In New Orleans a U. S. Treasury agent explained that it is easy to go
“from the killing of Negroes to the killing of Dagos.”
Harrison and Blaine negotiated an indemnity payment
of 125,000 francs ($25,000) to Italy, and diplomatic relations were resumed.
On February 13 Admiral David Dixon Porter died,
and the next day General William Tecumseh Sherman also passed on.
Sherman had retired in 1883, and Porter remained the top Navy officer until his death.
Harrison had served under Sherman in Georgia and sent a brief eulogy of him to the Congress.
On March 3 a major Judiciary Act sponsored by Senator Evarts of New York
created nine United States Circuit Courts of Appeal to relieve the burden
on the U. S. Supreme Court of traveling to hear those cases,
reducing their case load by about half.
The Supreme Court could still hear appeals from these new courts.
On the same day Congress created a Superintendent of Immigration,
and the next day they accepted the International Copyright Act that protected
foreign authors from pirate editions by American publishers.
The United States also transferred the Weather Bureau from the
Department of War to the Agriculture Department
and funded improving the Mississippi River channel
that had been promised to farmers and shipping interests.
This Congress passed a record 531 public laws which would not be surpassed
until the second term of Theodore Roosevelt.
The U. S. Congress passed a bill to subsidize steamships carrying mail overseas.
Harrison also persuaded them to designate public land as national forests,
and during his administration 13 million acres became forest reserves.
The Congress approved the Land Revision Act on March 3 before adjourning that day.
Forest reserves were created in Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Oregon,
and California as well as in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico,
and 14 more reserves in Alaska which would increase them to 22 million acres.
On March 30 after a two-year campaign by the American Forestry Association
the United States established 1.2 million acres as the
Yellowstone Timberland Reserve adjacent to the Yellowstone National Park.
On April 14 Harrison and his wife with Postmaster General Wanamaker
in a party of 15 left on a five-week journey by railway through the South
to the Pacific Coast and back that covered 9,232 miles during which
the President gave 140 speeches.
Wire-service reporters sent these to newspapers around the country.
He gave a long speech at Galveston, Texas where a federal subsidy
had improved the harbor.
At San Francisco his wife Caroline christened the USS Monterey,
and Harrison spoke about how new Navy ships would protect American commerce.
His administration would make eleven contracts for mail service
which was enhanced by subsidies for 41 mail steamers.
The minister Frederick Douglass was negotiating a naval base with Haiti;
and Navy Secretary Benjamin Tracy was influenced by New York businessmen
with commercial interests, and Harrison agreed
to send Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi as a special commissioner.
He commanded nine ships that intimidated the Haitians
who then refused to lease the U. S. a base.
Secretary of State Blaine on May 7 collapsed while visiting Andrew Carnegie
in New York, and he was convalescent until the end of October.
During that time President Harrison supervised the work of the State Department.
He also did work for Interior Secretary Noble while he was ill.
On October 16 the USS Baltimore at Valparaiso, Chile put on leave 117 sailors
who got into a bar-room fight that left two Americans dead,
over a dozen wounded, and 36 arrested.
Many believed that this quarrel was caused by Americans supporting
Chile’s authoritarian President Balmaceda who in September
had been defeated in the Chilean civil war.
An investigation discovered that some sailors had been wounded by bayonets,
indicating that police had been fighting them.
Harrison’s government demanded reparations, and the U. S. Navy prepared for war;
Chileans considered it a drunken brawl.
On 21 January 1892 Harrison threatened to break off diplomatic relations
unless Chile apologized.
After several months the Chilean government paid a $75,000 indemnity
to the injured men and relatives of the dead sailors.
This incident damaged relations with Latin American nations
that had been improved by the Blaine meeting.
Some Republican leaders such as Thomas Platt of New York
and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania still resented Harrison’s rejecting them
for the jobs they wanted, and they were favoring Blaine for President.
Quay quit as party chairman in July,
and Harrison accepted another Blaine supporter James S. Clarkson as his replacement.
Harrison sought reconciliation by agreeing to appoint the Blaine partisan
Stephen B. Elkins to replace Secretary of War Proctor who had resigned
because Vermont had elected him as their U. S. Senator.
In his long Third Annual Message to Congress on December 9 Harrison reported
that imports increased by over 20%, and during his tenure
the U. S. Navy launched 25 new vessels.
The U. S. Congress approved a charter with the private Maritime Canal Company
which got a concession from Nicaragua and had begun work in 1889.
He recommended how to finance the canal.
He noted that their meat inspections of cattle and pork had persuaded
Germany, Denmark, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and France to repeal their prohibition
of imported pork from the United States,
and the U. S. canceled the new duty on German beet sugar.
Agriculture Secretary Jeremiah Rusk had calculated that the European restrictions
of the pork had cost the U. S. $20 million annually.
Because control of the U. S. Congress by Democrats prevented
passing Republican legislation, this message was mostly about foreign policy.
Harrison discussed the incident with the U. S. Navy at Valparaiso, Chile,
Chinese laborers, a treaty with Mexico, trade with Hawaii and Queen Liliuokolani,
concern about the persecution of Jews in Russia, trade with Latin America,
and the European international copyright agreement.
He boasted that the total U. S. imports and exports in the year ending
on 30 September 1891 was the largest ever at about $1,750 million
of which imports were $824,715,270.
In regard to the U. S. Army the President reported that
the number of desertions was decreasing.
He admitted that many Chinese laborers had entered the U. S.
from Canada and Mexico despite efforts to prevent this.
About 8,000 more miles of railroads were improving the postal service,
and overseas mail was using German steamers.
He urged the building of more ships with improved steel.
Harrison praised the schools for Indian children, and he hoped to see
a change in the situation of the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory.
He hoped that the Cherokee Commission would open an additional 800,000 acres
for settlement in Oklahoma.
He wrote,
Since March 4, 1889, about 23,000,000 acres
have been separated from Indian reservations
and added to the public domain for the use of those who
desired to secure free homes under our beneficent laws.
It is difficult to estimate the increase of wealth
which will result from the conversion
of these waste lands into farms,
but it is more difficult to estimate the betterment
which will result to the families that have found
renewed hope and courage in the ownership of a home
and the assurance of a comfortable subsistence
under free and healthful conditions.15
In creating new legislative districts after the census
Harrison warned against the baneful influence of the “gerrymander.”
William A. Peffer of Kansas was a populist
and became a U. S. Senator in March 1891.
That year he reviewed the development of farmers’ organizations in The Farmer’s Side.
The Grange had begun in 1867, and in 1875 a Farmers’ Alliance was started in Texas
to oppose land speculators because land was being given away to wealthy corporations.
A Northern Alliance began in Illinois about 1877.
In the years 1889 to 1893 more than 11,000 farm mortgages
were foreclosed in Kansas.
Farmers in Kansas and Nebraska on loans had to pay interest
ranging from 18% to 30%.
An Alliance in Kansas led to the founding in 1890 of a People’s Party
called “Populists” which went national with representatives from 32 states
and two territories at the National Union Conference in Cincinnati on 19 May 1891.
By then the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Unio
had 1,250,000 members with organizations in twelve states.
Harrison and Blaine sent John Watson Foster to negotiate reciprocity treaties.
The first one with Brazil was signed on 5 February 1891 and became effective on April 1.
There followed treaties with Spain signed on July 31,
with the Dominican Republic on August 1,
and a provisional treaty with El Salvador on December 31.
Harrison paid for improvements to the White House
and got Congress to cover the installation of electricity.
Because Harrison would not touch the switch, an employee was responsible
for turning on the lights each evening and then turning them off in the morning.
Following the example of Mississippi, the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia,
and Tennessee enacted Jim Crow laws of racial segregation and voter suppression.
The U. S. Congress passed the Ocean Mail Subsidy Act
to aid the U. S. merchant marines.
During 1891 the Barge Office processed 430,884 immigrants to New York City
including 74,496 Germans, 65,084 Italians, 51,022 Russians, and 32,426 Swedes.
In January 1892 Harrison supporters were selected for the Indiana state party,
and two weeks later Secretary of State Blaine wrote to Republican chairman Clarkson
that he would not be a candidate at the national convention.
The United States declared February 12,
the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, as a national holiday.
The U. S. made reciprocity treaties with the British West Indies on 1 February 1892,
and Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala signed those between March and May 1892.
Tariffs were imposed on three Latin American countries that would not cooperate.
The United States and the British argued over the hunting of seals
in the Bering Sea off the Pribilof Islands that are part of Alaska.
In March 1890 the U. S. had granted a 20-year lease
to the North American Company to hunt seals on the islands.
Stephen Elkins owned the corporation and
would became Secretary of War on December 17.
Americans claimed that the seals’ rookeries were on American land,
and the British negotiating for Canada claimed that
the U. S. could not ban seal hunting in international waters.
Harrison wanted to protect the seals and agreed to arbitration
on the facts but not on the monetary liability.
The arbitrators in Paris decided against the U. S. while Harrison had his language
accepted in the treaty signed on 29 February 1892.
On April 19 President Harrison proclaimed that 3 million acres which had belonged
to the Arapaho and Cheyenne in the Oklahoma Territory would be opened to settlers.
In May a Democratic newspaper in New York published that Harrison’s son
Russell had said that Blaine should not be nominated
because he was “completely broken down mentally and physically.”
He and his father denied the story,
and the Blaines’ resentment against the Harrisons increased.
On May 23 Harrison decided to run for re-election.
Again he appointed Louis Michener to run his campaign, and he persuaded
party leaders to go to Minneapolis before the convention
to lobby delegates there and to raise money for the convention.
Blaine sent his resignation to Harrison on June 4,
and the President accepted it immediately.
The Republican national convention began at Minneapolis on June 7.
William McKinley had been elected governor of Ohio in 1891,
and his name was being mentioned as a candidate.
Michener and his allies got McKinley named as the convention chairman.
On June 10 Senator Wolcott of Colorado gave
the nominating speech for Blaine that was cheered.
The former Navy Secretary R. W. Thompson made the main nominating speech
for Harrison that was followed by several seconding speeches amidst much cheering.
On the first ballot Harrison got a majority with 536 votes to Blaine’s 183,
and McKinley got 182.
Harrison wanted Vice President Morton to continue on the ticket;
and in the evening New Yorkers offered the former New York Tribune
editor Whitelaw Reid for Vice President, and he was accepted by acclamation.
Reid’s only political experience was that he had been the minister to France
for nearly three years prior to his resignation in March 1892.
Harrison was concerned that Reid’s battle against the typographical union
at the Tribune would lose votes among organized labor,
and the Labor Educational Bureau of New York put out
a pamphlet against Reid called The Arch Enemy of Labor.
On June 22 the Democratic convention in Chicago easily nominated
Grover Cleveland for the third time.
He got 617 votes to 114 for New York’s Senator David B. Hill
and 103 for Governor Horace Boies of Iowa.
They nominated the First Assistant U. S. Postmaster General Adlai Stevenson
of Illinois for Vice President over Isaac P. Gray, the former governor of Indiana.
Cleveland accepted the nomination by making a speech
in July at Madison Square Garden to 20,000 people.
His former Navy Secretary William C. Whitney became his campaign manager
and began by working on winning in New York.
Compared to the dirty tricks of 1884 the 1892 campaign was fairly clean.
With two experienced Presidents running, most people realized that
either candidate would be acceptable.
Cleveland wrote many letters to political leaders asking them to support his campaign.
Chauncey Depew declined Harrison’s nomination as Secretary of State
advising that as head of the New York Central Railroad he might alienate farmers.
Harrison then selected his friend John W. Foster
who had experience in the State Department.
The party chairman Clarkson stepped aside and remained
on the executive committee and campaigned for Harrison
who replaced him on July 16 with Thomas H. Carter of Montana.
He was commissioner of the Land Office and might get western support
as a backer of the free coinage of silver.
Harrison was seriously preoccupied with caring for his very ill wife Caroline
who had been stricken again in April.
In early July they went to a cottage by Loon Lake, New York in the Adirondacks.
Harrison felt that his life had become a burden and his ambition a delusion.
He went back to Washington until Congress adjourned on August
and then returned to his wife.
He met with Thomas Platt at the end of the month, and they were reconciled.
An outbreak of cholera was threatening New York,
and Harrison went quickly to Washington and ordered
the mandatory quarantine of ships for twenty days.
The Treasury Department persuaded steamship companies
to stop immigration from European ports.
To get support from Republicans on the west coast
Harrison changed his position on Chinese immigration.
On May 5 he had signed the Geary Act to exclude Chinese workers for ten more years.
He had also approved the Immigration Act in March 1891
that excluded aliens who had contagious diseases or were convicted criminals,
paupers, polygamists, and those needing to be assisted by others during the passage.
The Farmers’ Alliance supported the Populist Party or People’s Party
which at Omaha on July 4 nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa for President
and James G. Field of Virginia for Vice President.
Their platform included in the “Expression of Sentiments” the following resolutions:
2. That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax
should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation
now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.
5. That we cordially sympathize with the efforts
of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor,
and demand a rigid enforcement
of the existing eight-hour law on Government work,
and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.
7. That we commend to the favorable consideration
of the people and the reform press the legislative system
known as the initiative and referendum.
8. That we favor a constitutional provision limiting
the office of President and Vice President to one term,
and providing for the election of Senators
of the United States by a direct vote of the people.
9. That we oppose any subsidy or national aid
to any private corporation for any purpose.16
They advocated unlimited coinage of silver at a 16-1 ratio to gold.
When Harrison opposed this at the opening of Congress,
the Colorado Republican Senator Henry Teller accused the President
of protecting Wall Street and the rich in that region.
In the West some Democrats combined with Populists.
Democrats claimed that the protective tariff was unconstitutional,
and some opposed reciprocity agreements.
The Populist Weaver published A Call to Action
denouncing monopolies and the creditor class.
He noted that in Chicago 13,000 people manufactured clothing;
over half were women, and 2,100 were children.
He wrote,
We must expect to be confronted by a vast
and splendidly equipped army of extortionists, usurers,
and oppressors marshaled from every nation under heaven.
Every instrumentality known to man—
the state with its civic authority,
learning with its lighted torch,
armies with their commissions to take life, instruments
of commerce essential to commercial intercourse,
and the very soil upon which we live,
move, and have our being—
all these things and more are being perverted and used
to enslave and impoverish the people.
The Golden Rule is rejected
by the heads of all the great departments of trade,
and the law of Cain, which repudiates the obligations
that we are mutually under to one another, is fostered
and made the rule of action throughout the world.
Corporate feudality has taken the place of chattel slavery
and vaunts its power in every state….
But thanks to the all-conquering strength
of Christian enlightenment,
we are at the dawn of the golden age of popular power.
We have unshaken faith in the integrity
and final triumph of the people.17
Harrison replied that he supported the free coinage of silver
as long as it was equally acceptable as the gold coins.
He also defended the McKinley Tariff Act and used statistics to argue
that workers’ pay had gone up while prices for wage earners went down.
Harrison spoke at the annual conference of the
National Educational Association in Saratoga, New York on July 14
and responded to the bloodshed at Homestead by calling for obedience to law
and deference to public authority which he described as
“a self-sacrificing purpose to stand by established
and orderly administration of government.”
The U. S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley had died on January 22.
Harrison did not appoint the corporate attorney George Shiras Jr. until July 19,
and the Senate confirmed him one week later.
During the summer there were several labor disputes.
Andrew Carnegie hired Henry C. Frick to manage
his Steel Company at Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Frick had made $1 million by the age of 30 by processing coke,
and unlike Carnegie he only cared about profits.
He reduced their pay to $22 a month, and they demanded $24.
Frick would not go above $23, and the contract expired on June 30.
Frick had barbed wire strung around the buildings,
shut down the plant, and hired deputized sheriffs.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union had 800 members
go on strike, and they were joined by about 3,000 unskilled workers.
They persuaded the sheriffs to leave, and Frick brought in 300 Pinkerton agents
who arrived by way of the Monongahela River on a barge during the lockout on July 6.
The strikers behind steel barricades attacked them in a 12-hour battle
that killed five agents and nine striking steelworkers.
The Pinkertons surrendered and were abused as they left.
On July 12 Gov. Robert E. Pattison sent 8,500 Pennsylvania militia to Homestead.
General George R. Snowden believed the strikers were communists
and wanted to suppress them.
Strikebreakers called “scabs” began arriving the next day,
and union men got many of them to leave.
As more came, the steel production was done by nonunion workers.
Conflicts in the mills between the new white and black workers became violent,
and in November a mob of whites attacked the blacks’ homes.
After almost five months the strikers called off the strike on November 20
and returned to their 12-hour shifts.
Carnegie’s income that year fell by $300,000, and he still made $4 million.
This failed strike against the Carnegie Steel Company
turned many workers against Harrison.
Cleveland’s comment on the Homestead conflict compared the
“hardships of the nation’s laborers” to
“those made selfish and sordid by unjust governmental favoritism.”
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
had 24,000 members in 1891, and after the Homestead strike
the membership decreased within two years to less than 10,000.
The strike in the silver mines at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho started
from a wage reduction from $3.50 to $3 a day in 1889.
A strike eventually led to the discovery of Pinkerton agents in 1890
and the dynamiting of a mill and a takeover of the mines.
Fighting on July 11 killed three people on each side.
Harrison had avoided sending soldiers,
and he changed his mind and sent in Federal troops.
The governor declared martial law, and 600 miners were imprisoned.
On July 23 the miners were sent back to work
without the restoration of their 15% pay cuts.
In northeastern Tennessee Coal Creek miners
began protesting convict labor in 1891.
The conflict escalated in the middle of August 1892
when 27 people were killed, and about 500 were arrested.
Railway switchmen in Buffalo, New York went on strike for two weeks in August.
On the 13th and 14th rail cars were set on fire.
The next day Gov. Roswell Flower sent 8,000 New York State Guard troops.
An explosion on an unmanned train killed three soldiers.
The railroad companies sent in hundreds of strikebreakers.
Strike leaders met on August 23, and they ended the strike on the 25th.
The Republican Senate had passed the Stewart Free Coinage bill,
and the Democrats in the House of Representatives had defeated it on July 13.
A threatening cholera epidemic overshadowed the campaign,
and the first boxing title-match using padded gloves on September 7
between John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett was a distraction
from Harrison’s letter accepting the nomination.
He wrote that 6,000-word document appealing to workers and farmers
while he was nursing his wife Caroline.
He believed that his policies would bring new factories, markets, and ships,
and he called Cleveland’s views on the protective tariffs “destructive and un-American.”
He also defended the reciprocity treaties that Cleveland opposed.
He claimed that he had increased the honor and influence of the United States.
On the same day that letter came out,
Blaine published his letter defining issues much differently than the President.
After doctors diagnosed that Caroline Harrison had tuberculosis
on September 14, they received many telegrams.
When Cleveland learned of her illness, he announced in a letter
that he would not campaign either.
The Harrisons went back to the White House on September 21.
On October 12 schoolchildren recited the pledge of allegiance
to the United States for the first time.
On October 15 about 1.8 million acres of land in Montana,
which had belonged to the Crow people, was opened to white settlers.
October 21 was the proclaimed date, adjusted for the calendar change,
for the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving in America,
and two days later the World Columbian Exposition opened in Chicago.
Vice President Morton welcomed 100,000 people at Jackson Park.
George W. G. Ferris had invented a great wheel 250 feet in diameter
that cost $300,000 to build and gave people a ride in 36 cars
holding 40 passengers up to that height and back down.
In October the former U. S. Attorney General Wayne McVeagh
and Judge Walter Q. Gresham endorsed Cleveland
even though they were Republicans.
Michener wanted Harrison to make speeches,
and he refused to leave his wife who died on October 25.
After a simple funeral in the White House on the 27th
he went with her body to Indianapolis for the burial.
He stayed there until election day.
About 12 million Americans voted on November 8.
The Democrat Cleveland got 46%, Republican Harrison 43%,
and the Populist James B. Weaver 8.5%.
Cleveland won in the Electoral College with 277 to 145 for Harrison and 22 for Weaver.
Cleveland had all the southern states again, and this time he also won New York,
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and all but one of California’s electors.
Weaver won in Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.
In the U. S. Senate the Republicans lost 10 seats,
and the Democrats gained 4 giving them a 43-37 advantage.
Also added were one Populist and one Silver Republican.
In the House of Representatives the Democrats lost 20 seats from their huge advantage
while Republicans gained 38; the Democrats still had a 218-124 majority.
There were also 3 Populists, 2 Independents, and one Silver.
In his Fourth Message to Congress on December 6 Harrison
once again reviewed the accomplishments of his administration.
He claimed that the total wealth in the United States had increased from
about $16,160 million in 1860 to $62,610 million in 1890
while railroad mileage went from 30,626 to 167,741 miles.
The census of 1890 showed that manufacturing capital grew from
$1,232,839,670 in 1880 to $2,900,735,884.
He reported that U. S. imports increased by over 20%,
and during his tenure the U. S. Navy launched 25 new vessels.
He presented many more statistics to show how much progress
had occurred in various ways.
He argued that the “protective system” of tariffs aided this.
He reviewed foreign policy again, and he gave a detailed financial report.
His Navy Department had increased the number of modern steel ships from 3 to 19.
He concluded his last message by warning, “Retrogression would be a crime.”
During his four years the Harrison Administration reduced the national debt
by about $73 million.
Since then the only Presidents who reduced the U. S. debt
would be Warren Harding in 1921-23 and Calvin Coolidge 1923-29.
On 4 January 1893 the U. S. Government granted amnesty
to polygamists who in the future respect the laws against the practice.
Utah statehood would follow in exactly three years.
The United States Supreme Court Justice Lucius G. C. Lamar died on January 23.
U. S. President Benjamin Harrison appointed the U. S. Circuit Appeal judge
Howell Edmunds Jackson on February 2.
With only a month of his term remaining Harrison hoped that by selecting
a southern Democrat from Tennessee,
the Senate would confirm him before Cleveland’s second inauguration.
The Senate did so on the 18th, and he took his seat on the Supreme Court on March 4.
The former Secretary of State James G. Blaine died on January 27.
President Harrison in his last message to Congress had advised the Congress
to plan the improvement of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
American sugar planters and descendants of missionaries
had gained control of Hawaiian land and the economy.
Americans had brought to the Hawaiian islands syphilis,
measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, smallpox, mumps, and liquor,
and by the end of the 19th century the native Hawaiians lost 80% of their people.
Because of suffrage restrictions the white aliens dominated the elections.
In 1893 there were in Hawaii only about 2,000 Americans of which 637 were voters.
Even though they were not citizens, they had 90% of the private property.
The Hawaiian cabinet resigned on January 12,
and two days later Queen Liliʻuokalani proclaimed a new constitution
that would restore Hawaiian control; and she announced that all white men
would be disenfranchised except those who were married to native women.
At this time Hawaii had about 40,000 Hawaiians and half castes,
almost 30,000 Chinese and Japanese, 9,000 Portuguese,
and less than 2,000 Americans.
The Annexation Club formed a 13-member Committee of Safety
as a provisional government that overthrew the Queen on January 14.
The new U. S. minister John Leavitt Stevens was on the USS Boston,
and he returned to Honolulu and landed with Captain G. C. Wiltse and 162 marines
on January 16 to protect the U. S. legation and consulate.
Stevens met with Sanford Ballard Dole, who was a son of missionaries,
and Lorrin Thurston to plan the United States takeover of Hawaii.
The next day the American rebels proclaimed a new government led by Dole.
The U. S. minister Stevens sent three dispatches to Harrison on February 1 writing,
“The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour to pluck it.”18
The message had to go by ship to California
where it could be telegraphed to Washington DC.
Stevens recognized the provisional government, and on February 1
he proclaimed an American protectorate
and raised the American flag over the government buildings.
The revolutionary government sent commissioners who reached San Francisco
on January 28 and Washington DC on February 3.
Dole with the Hawaiian commissioners and the U. S. Secretary of State Foster
signed a treaty annexing Hawaii to the United States on February 14.
The next day Harrison sent it to the U. S. Senate,
and the Republicans did not have two-thirds of the votes needed for ratification.
Queen Liliʻuokalani’s representative claimed that Stevens aided her removal,
and Harrison denied that and told the Senate that her restoration was “undesirable.”
The Nation editor E. L. Godkin criticized Harrison’s policy
as “rash imperialism and colonialism.”
The incoming Senate would have a Democratic majority,
and President Cleveland would withdraw the treaty
and cancel the annexation proposal on March 9.
On February 23 the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad with a $125 million debt
declared bankruptcy, and this was soon followed by the Northern Pacific,
Union Pacific, Erie, and Santa Fe railroads
as the stock market and the price of silver both plummeted.
On March 1 the U. S. Congress passed the Diplomatic Appropriations Act
which authorized funds of varying amounts for envoys extraordinary
and ministers plenipotentiary in 35 nations and for ministers
resident and consuls-general in 5 nations.
After his presidency Benjamin Harrison went back to practicing law.
He blamed the financial panic on the impending reduction of tariffs, and he predicted
that repealing the Sherman Silver Purchase Act would not resolve the crisis.
He did little campaigning in 1893 and 1894,
and he called the Republican rebounding victories
“the most extraordinary political revolution the country has ever witnessed.”
Stanford University paid Harrison $25,000 for six lectures on law
which he gave in the spring of 1894.
They were also published in his Views of an Ex-President.
In 1895 he won a will case for a client and was paid $25,000.
He was paid $5,000 for nine articles on the working of national government
for the Ladies’ Home Journal that in 1897 he worked into the book
This Country of Ours.
In April 1896 he married Mary Lord Dimmick, the 37-year-old niece of his first wife,
whom he had known well for many years.
He declined to be a candidate for President in 1896, and he gave some speeches
denouncing the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan for his free-silver policy.
In 1898 Harrison criticized the U. S. intervention in the Philippines
as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine not to interfere with other parts of the world.
The Republic of Venezuela hired Harrison as their lawyer
in a boundary dispute with British Guiana.
He wrote an 800-page brief and presented the case at Paris in 1899,
arguing before the Tribunal of Arbitration for 25 hours over five days in September.
They unanimously gave most of the disputed territory to the British
whom he accused of always wanting to extend their dominion.
President McKinley named Harrison as an honorary member of the new
International Court of Justice at The Hague,
and he attended the first peace conference there in 1899.
In 1900 Harrison dissented when the Republicans passed a tariff
on Puerto Rican goods because it treated them unequally.
He was concerned about the “canker of greed”
that was spoiling this generation of Americans,
and he hoped that the teachings of Jesus would deliver them from their selfishness.
He condemned the corporations that exploited workers
while the wealthy avoided paying taxes.
In January 1901 he hoped that people would
“realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others.”19
Benjamin Harrison died of pneumonia at his home in Indianapolis on 13 March 1901.
1. Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun, p. 11.
2. Ibid., p. 30-31.
3. The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison
by Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, p. 12.
4. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908
ed. James D. Richardson, Volume 9, p. 3-14.
5. Benjamin Harrison Hoosier President: The White House and After
by Harry J. Sievers, p. 68.
6. A History of American Foreign Policy by Alexander DeConde, p. 322.
7. Benjamin Harrison Hoosier President, p. 110.
8. The Annals of America, Volume 11, p. 200, 201.
9. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908
ed. James D. Richardson, Volume 9, p. 55-56.
10. Ibid., p. 61.
11. Ibid., p. 81.
12. Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun, p. 104.
13. Ibid., p. 116.
14. Ibid., p. 117.
15. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908
ed. James D. Richardson, Volume 9, p. 203.
16. Documents of American History ed. Henry Steele Commager, p. 595.
17. The Annals of America, Volume 11, p. 373.
18. The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison
by Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, p. 205.
19. Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun, p. 165.
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