Essay prepared by IHS staff
Image Copyright IHS
Born North Bend, Ohio, 1833;
Died Indianapolis, Ind., 1901
Benjamin Harrison was elected
president of the United States in 1888 while living on North Delaware
Street in Indianapolis.
The grandson of a former president,
William Henry Harrison, Benjamin
Harrison was an Ohio-born and educated attorney who began his legal
practice in Indianapolis in 1854. An official in the newly established
Republican party during the 1850s, Harrison was elected reporter
of the Indiana Supreme Court in 1860, a position he continued to
fill while serving as an officer in the Civil War.
He was the GOP candidate for
Indiana governor in 1876, opposing the denim-clad farmer and politician
James D. Williams--a race described as one between "blue blood
and blue jeans." Unsuccessful in this effort, Harrison was
elected to the United States Senate in 1881, where he remained until
1887. The following year, he was the Republican choice to unseat
incumbent President Grover Cleveland and did so, even though his
popular vote was 100,000 less than that of the Democrats. Despite
an inauspicious beginning, President Harrison signed into law much
significant legislation, including the Sherman Antitrust Act and
the McKinley Tariff, and presided over the admission of six new
western states into the Union in 1889 and 1890. Defeated for reelection
by his old foe Cleveland in 1892, Harrison returned to Indianapolis
and a lucrative law practice. |