Benjamin Harrison (20 August 1833–13 March 1901) was President of the United States from 4 March 1889 to 4 March 1893, interrupting Grover Cleveland's two terms; he previously served as a US Senator from Indiana (R) from 4 March 1881 to 3 March 1887 (succeeding Joseph E. McDonald and preceding David Turpie). Harrison's presidency coincided with the Gilded Age, and he was elected President on a pro-business platform of fiscal conservatism, high tariffs, and opposition to unions; while Harrison was politically a conservative, he was racially progressive, supporting African-American voting rights and opposing the Chinese Exclusion Act during his time in the US Congress.
Biography[]
Benjamin Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio in 1833, the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. He became a prominent local attorney, Presbyterian church elder, and politician in Indianapolis, Indiana before serving as a US Army colonel during the American Civil War. In 1876, he unsuccessfully ran for Governor of Indiana, but he went on to serve as a US Senate from 1881 to 1887. Harrison held racially progressive views, affiliating himself with the Radical Republicans, supporting African-American civil rights, and opposing the Chinese Exclusion Act, but he became a spokesman for fiscal conservatism in the 1870s, commanded troops to suppress the national railroad strike in 1877, supported big business against the unions during a pair of labor strikes in 1892, supported overseas imperialism, supported the assimilation of Native Americans, and presided over a conservative and business-oriented cabinet which included the New York businessman Levi P. Morton as Vice President and the department store magnate John Wanamaker as Postmaster General. In 1888, Harrison was elected to the presidency as a Republican, defeating the pro-business Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland, and he imposed historic trade rates and implemented an antitrust act to promote economic competition within the United States (while also supporting tariffs to shut out foreign competition). He also facilitated the creation of national forest reserves, admitted six western states to the union, and strengthened and modernized the US Navy. Unfortunately, his efforts to secure federal education funding as well as voting rights enforcement for African-Americans were unsuccessful. Federal spending reached $1 billion for the first time during his term, and the growing unpopularity of the high tariff and high spending led to his defeat at the hands of his Democratic predecessor, Grover Cleveland, who returned to the presidency. Harrison returned to his law practice, and he represented Venezuela in an 1899 boundary dispute with British Guyana. He died of influenza in 1901.