#25 William McKinley Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about William McKinley
1. He was the self-imposed journalist of the Poland Guards during the war. “As the appointed ‘correspondent’ of the Poland Guards company, Private McKinley began writing letters that were published in the Mahoning Register, the newspaper in nearby Youngstown” (p. 21).
2. In one of those odd historical coincidences, it was due to the influence of Rutherford Hayes that McKinley was promoted at all during the war. “When the Twenty-third again suffered heavy casualties, its commander, Colonel Rutherford B Hayes, the future president, recommended McKinley for a vacant lieutenancy, and he received the commission personally from Ohio Governor David Tod in November. In January 1863, Hayes, now commanding a brigade of Ohioans, made Lieutenant McKinley the brigade quartermaster, supervising clerks, a carpenter, a forage master, a wagon master, a harness master, two blacksmiths, and five teamsters” (p. 21-22).
3. McKinley was the last veteran of the Civil War to be president of the United States.
4. He was a proponent of women’s rights throughout his political tenure. “McKinley, alone among nineteenth-century presidents, received an honorary doctorate from two women’s colleges, Smith and Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts” (p. 47).
5. His reelection as governor of Ohio was a major victory for the Republicans. “His record, together with the popular economic reaction against Cleveland and the Democrats, reelected him in 1893 with the highest share of the total vote given any Ohio governor since the Unionist coalition of the Civil War” (p. 67).
6. Yellow Journalism was at its height during this period in history, pitting William Randolph Hearst against Joseph Pulitzer. In fact, many claimed that it was due to the yellow press that the Spanish-American War occurred at all.
7. As mentioned earlier, the Spanish-American War was the shortest war in United States history.
8. I have to admit something here—I was wrong. That’s right, folks. Make a note. I erroneously stated in the Benjamin Harrison blog that he was the president who annexed Hawaii. However, that was incorrect—it was actually McKinley. What confused me was that Harrison really did send the treaty of annexation to Congress but Cleveland, upon taking office, removed it from congressional consideration. McKinley then had to send it back to Congress where it eventually was passed. “Even before the peace protocol with Spain, McKinley used his new popularity and support in Congress to promote his agenda for US expansion. The Senate approved annexation of Hawaii on July 7 [1898]” (p. 99).
9. McKinley, unlike Cleveland, understood the growing power of the press. “Cultivation of the press began in June, a month after the battle of Manila Bay, when efforts were made by the Vanderbilts to bar reporters from a McKinley visit to one of the family mansions. The word came back: no press, then no presidential visit. Six months later, the first official White House reception for the press was schedule shortly after Christmas” (p. 146).
10. Medically, there were still plenty of mistakes when, after being shot, McKinley was treated by the doctors. It seemed like American doctors back then were pathetically afraid of technological advances in their field. With Garfield’s medical staff, they were wary of antisepsis while McKinley’s doctors looked askance at the new-fangled x-ray machine. This relatively new invention was on display at the very Pan-American Exposition that McKinley was attending when he was shot. The technology was right there and possibly could have saved the president’s life (they couldn’t find the bullet, remember?) but the doctors didn’t want to use it because they didn’t know how it would affect the president’s body. Their wariness is highly understandable but if they had taken that risk, especially since the president would die shortly thereafter, could have been a boon to the evolution of medical science. And might have saved McKinley’s life. History is simply filled with what-ifs, right?

I thought Kevin Phillips was a very witty author with a very keen eye into the McKinley era but I was not hot about the layout of this book. Like all the other books in the American Presidents Series I assumed that this would be a biography of McKinley when in reality it was more of an in-depth essay into the character and times of McKinley. Needless to say, this format made it extremely difficult for me to not only gather concrete information about our 25th president but also to get any sort of chronological idea of what was going on. Phillips just schmoozed over McKinley’s early years (you’ll notice that I barely have anything to write) and the next thing I know—we’re at the Civil War. What the…! I have to shamefacedly admit here that I wiki’d McKinley a good deal just so that I could piece together the important events in his life.

But I’m certainly not saying that this is a terribly written book. On the contrary, I though Phillips, like I mentioned earlier, was witty and knowledgeable. Here’s just a sample of what I liked about Phillips’ writing style. “Pennsylvania and Ohio, the American seat of Vulcan, also represented a monetary transition zone where Eastern financial support for the gold standard gave way to Midwestern and Western demand for currency expansion friendly to borrowers and continued fast growth” (p. 49). I liked the allusion to “the American seat of Vulcan.” Here’s another one. “However, Republican national platforms straddled to cater to the Midwest and West—and in 1896, as chapter 5 will pursue, McKinley’s own platform, guided by himself and Mark Hanna, evolved through straddlebug nuances to a final-hour bimetallic-hedged gold commitment that Niccolo Machiavelli himself would have found suitably Florentine in its timing and effect” (p. 52-53).

Phillips also gives quite a good amount of background information on typically archaic political issues such as the gold/silver standard and tariffs. I have to admit that I’ve read about tariffs a good deal in these presidential bios and it wasn’t until this book that I got a decent understanding of what each one does!

I also wondered why McKinley, who is credited as being the first modern president, is ranked in the lower portion of the presidential spectrum. Phillips addresses this issue immediately in the introduction. “The recent consensus of historians has pegged him somewhere in the ho-hum midsection of presidential ratings, and small wonder. Too many dismissive paragraphs, thoughtless sentences, and inaccurate descriptions still nuture the false public impression of a cultural and intellectual mediocrity, however popular, who toadied to business as a puppet of Wall Street” (p. 2). So, according to Phillips, it was due to the bad press surrounding McKinley while he was alive that has since impugned his reputation to this day. It also didn’t help that right as he started his 2nd term—who knows what would have happened—he is assassinated and various questions about McKinley remain unanswered.

#25 William McKinley (1843-1901)

“He was an enormously popular Republican, a successful war president, a man of seemingly amiable, unthreatening demeanor, and a middle-class Mason and Methodist who most nights read the Bible to his wife” (Phillips, p. 143).

No offense to William McKinley or anything but I am heartily sick of the presidents! Not only have I already read 24 biographies and countless other books about the presidency but all these one-termers were beginning to wear on me mentally. It doesn’t help that Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison have, in my mind, already lost their individuality and are currently melding together into one big presidential olio. Sigh. This slow ebbing of presidential distinctiveness means I’m already looking greedily ahead at the big fat Teddy Roosevelt bio waiting for me at my friendly neighborhood library. It’s the little things that make me happy apparently.

However, without unduly skipping ahead to the Rough-Riding cowboy, there are a couple of things that make me marginally excited about McKinley. Actually, “excited” is too strong a word—let’s just say McKinley makes me smile wanly. Anyho, what gives me a little joy about McKinley is that he was elected to two (consecutive!) terms and that he died in office. I don’t mean to imply that I am glad he was assassinated but I have to admit, on a readability level, assassinations are thrilling. Of course, I can only make this assumption after a good century has gone by. Other than that and other than what I’ve garnered about him from the Harrison and Cleveland bios, I don’t have much of a clue about McKinley and so I turn to William McKinley: American Presidents Series by Kevin Phillips (New York: Times Books, 2003).

William McKinley Jr was born on January 29, 1843 in Niles, OH. The family was up-rooted nine years later when they all moved to Poland, Ohio and there William was placed in a private academy. In 1859, he graduated from the academy and was baptized at a camp meeting. In 1860, William went on to Allegheny College in Pennsylvania but dropped out after only one term. There is no evidence as to why McKinley left college but the author believes it was due to depression. He moved back home and did various jobs such as teaching and working at a post office. While he was home, McKinley became the president of the Canton YMCA.

When the Civil War did not end after a couple months as most in the North thought it would, McKinley, in June 1861, volunteered as a private in the Poland Guards. His troop was sent to West Virginia where he was made a clerk in the quartermaster department. The very next year he was promoted to quartermaster sergeant and after Antietam, he was promoted again. After a particular act of bravery, McKinley became a captain and then became a brevet major. In 1864, he voted for the first time in a presidential election.

After the war ended, McKinley moved to New York to attend Albany Law School. Like his other college experience he only stayed one term and then moved to Canton, Ohio to read law under Judge Charles Glidden. Soon he had passed the bar and had his own law practice. In 1869, he was elected as the Stark County Prosecutor and in 1871, he married Ida Saxton, the daughter of a prominent Canton family. Unfortunately, after a hard pregnancy in which the baby died only a few months later, she “developed convulsions that suggested brain damage. She became an epileptic with seizures” (p. 25). Ida would remain this way the rest of her life so William made changes to spend more time with her and to take care of her himself. His lifelong devotion to his wife was something that most contemporary peers admired about him.

In 1876, McKinley won his first seat in Congress in the House of Representatives and he would keep his seat for nearly 15 years. His district was strongly Republican and he could always count on being returned to Congress. “Cautiousness, refusal to explain or discuss unpleasantness, and a skill in pleasing people were traits McKinley learned during these years and would display through his political career” (p. 26). In 1889, he ran for Speaker of the House but lost. Instead, he was appointed to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee and he became the Republican floor leader. He also took a vigorous interest in congressional financial matters and even put his name on the McKinley Tariff of 1890.

The Democrats did not like the way that McKinley was continuously elected to the House so they redrew his district. Thus, in 1890, he lost his congressional seat but in an odd quirk of fate, won the governorship of Ohio instead. As governor during this time, McKinley faced the Panic of 1893, miners striking, and tariff questions besetting his own state. He was elected to two terms as governor but he also played an increasingly important role in the Republican Party. For the 1880 election, McKinley was a representative to the Ohio state convention and in 1884 and 1888, he was delegate from Ohio to the national Republican convention. “Watching McKinley’s skilled 1884-96 ascent of Mount Nomination is impressive, a bit like seeing a first-rate climber move across a particularly challenging rock face. No other nineteenth-century Republican ever advanced so methodically, but careful preparation was a McKinley talent dating back to his wartime staff work” (p. 67).

One of the reasons that McKinley did not, in fact, run for a third term as governor was due to some legal and financial difficulties. McKinley co-signed a business deal with his friend Walker when, under the Panic of 1892, Walker went bankrupt. In the end, McKinley ended up owing, on behalf of his friend’s defunct business, $130,000. He was quite upset and even threatened to resign his final term as governor so that he could resume his law practice and pay back the amount. In the end though, his friends, specifically Mark Hanna, helped out. “Instead, they [Hanna, Herrick, and others] raised the money from private contributors, mostly in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, and paid off the cosigned notes so that McKinley—by now, the next president—did not need to go back to practicing law” (p. 68).

“Much of McKinley’s success in the presidency came from the rare strength and sophistication he showed in winning it” (p. 57). McKinley was nominated on the very first ballet at the Republican convention and was surprised to find himself opposite to the Democratic dark horse, William Jennings Bryan. McKinley, during the campaign, promised a ‘full dinner pail’ to help the nation recover from the economic chaos of the Panic of 1893 and won the presidency handily. He became the 25th President of the United States of America.

As president, McKinley, domestically, was dealing with an era of economic prosperity which totally aided the successes of his first term. He was a proponent of bimetallism and dealt with the gold and silver standards. There were also tariff issues that simply would not go away and of course, the rise of corporate trusts. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act had been recently passed by Congress, but McKinley did very little to wage war against the trusts. He also was a very socially conscious president, giving a voice to the voiceless. “McKinley was also far ahead of TR in supporting the franchise for women, black voting in the South, and direct election of US senators (which he backed in the House of Representatives” (p. 129).

The foreign policy arena was basically monopolized by the Spanish-American War, during McKinley’s first term, and it all began with the Maine mysteriously blowing up in Havana harbor. The US had a running issue with Cuba not only because it was very close to our borders but also because it was a bastion of Spanish power in the vaunted Western Hemisphere. One of the Republican platforms for the 1896 campaign had been Cuban independence and when the American warship exploded, killing several hundred Americans, McKinley could no longer look the other way. “He had hoped, through moderation and diplomatic attention to Spanish punctilio, or pride, to convince the government in Madrid that aroused US public and government opinion left Spain no alternative but to withdraw from Cuba” (p. 94). On April 24, 1898, only months after the Maine affair, a declaration of war was passed. The Rough Riders won several battles in Cuba itself and the American navy neutralized the Spanish fleet near the Philippines in several strategic battles.

By late July, only 113 days after the war began, Spain sued for peace and a treaty followed the next fall. “Hostilities were to conclude on the following terms: Spain was to free Cuba and cede Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and the United States was to occupy Manila pending the peace treaty’s final disposition of the Philippines. No other war declared by the United States has been shorter” (p. 96-97). The US also picked up Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba as a navy refueling station.

After a successful American victory against the Spanish and all that economic prosperity, it was really a foregone conclusion that McKinley would be re-nominated by the Republican Party. However, in 1899, the vice president, Hobart, had died in office and so this position needed to be filled. Theodore Roosevelt, the young, wildly-popular governor of New York was nominated as the vice presidential candidate. In the election of 1900, McKinley again faced off against William Jennings Bryan and won again.

As the first real Progressive Era president, McKinley was also very excited about Pan-Americanism and the end of American isolation. Thus in September of 1901, he and Ida attended the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. While he was shaking hands with a crowd, McKinley was shot twice by Leon Frank Czolgosz, a disaffected anarchist on September 6, 1901. Doctors were able to extract the bullet from his shoulder but the other bullet, the one that went through his stomach and kidney, they were unable to locate through surgery. He seemed to be getting better but on September 14th William McKinley died of gangrene from the wounds. On October 29th Czologsz was executed by electric chair.

#23 Benjamin Harrison Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Benjamin Harrison
1. You already know that Benjamin was William Henry Harrison’s grandson and that WHH was recognized as a celebrated general (Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!). What you probably don’t know is that Ben, during the Civil War, engaged in more battles than his famed grandfather.
2. In one of those quirky instances in history, Benjamin’s father’s dead body was experimented on by medical students. “On the eve of the party’s state convention, where he was scheduled to give the keynote address, Harrison received the news that the body of his recently deceased father had been discovered at a Cincinnati medical school where grave robbers had deposited it” (p. 35). I think it’s a testament to Harrison’s aplomb that he then went on to give a powerful speech at the convention. “He dashed to Ohio to investigate the grisly affair and then returned to Indianapolis to offer the convention a rousing speech, interrupted repeatedly by applause and laughter” (p. 35). Ha!
3. Modern campaigning was right around the corner but you can say that Harrison began it with the first ever use of front porch speeches. “For the nation’s first front-porch campaign, the rail hub Indianapolis proved ideal to accommodate visiting delegations from around the state and country” (p. 52).
4. And guess who we have popping up again? Old Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur! Campaign biographies were very popular back then as a means of introducing the candidates and their backgrounds to the public. Lew Wallace actually wrote Benjamin Harrison’s campaign bio! “The official campaign biography, written by Ben-Hur author and Harrison friend Lew Wallace, gave a benign account of Harrison’s actions during the 1877 railroad strike and underscored Harrison’s own economic struggles in his early professional life” (p. 55).
5. Benjamin Harrison’s cabinet was the first to include the new Secretary of Agriculture, Jeremiah Rusk.
6. Electricity was first used in the White House during Harrison’s presidency. “Although Congress refused to fund expansion, it did pay for major refurbishing including the installation of electricity” (p. 106).
7. During Harrison’s presidency, Frederick Douglas was the American minister to Haiti.
8. Four states were added to the Union under Harrison’s administration: Montana, Washington, and North and South Dakota. Only under Washington were more states admitted to the United States at one time. Plus it is interesting that we are not sure whether North or South Dakota was admitted 39th or 40th because Harrison never said.
9. Finally the US annexed Hawaii. “A delegation of commissioners soon set off for Washington, where by February 14, 1893, they and Secretary of State Foster had completed a treaty of annexation” (p. 152). On an interesting sidenote, John W. Foster’s grandson, John Foster Dulles, would be secretary of state in the 1950s. So I guess we’ll come across him again 
10. In retirement, Harrison wrote several articles for the Ladies Home Journal. These articles were eventually turned into a book named This Country of Ours. Also posthumously, Harrison’s wife published some of his speeches and other writings in the book Views of an Ex-President.
11. Harrison became a trustee of Purdue University, where they named Harrison Hall after him.

It couldn’t have been easy to be the guy sandwiched in between Grover Cleveland’s two terms. I mean, it would have been nice to beat him the first time but then, four years later, to be beaten by him? Ouch! On a scale of rejection, this one had to hurt. To think that the American public liked him so little that they put the man he had just beaten back into office, well that just sucks for Harrison. I was intrigued because what caused this strange ambivalence in minds of the masses?

Calhoun, the author (and the author of several books dealing with the Gilded and Progressive Ages), seems to believe that it was due to the political nature of the time and the equipoise between the political parties. Because the Republican and Democratic parties were almost exactly even in terms of voter turnout, Harrison did not win the popular vote but won in the Electoral College. “In 1888 the elements of this political universe worked in Harrison’s favor. He hailed from the doubtful state of Indiana and boasted an impressive record as soldier, lawyer, senator, and party spokesman—both of which helped him win the Republican nomination” (p. 3). However, just four years later, the American people turned against this president. “In 1890 the Republicans lost overwhelmingly in the midterm congressional elections. Their [and by extension Harrison’s] activist agenda offended and perhaps frightened many essentially conservative voters who held on to the traditional American notion that good government meant limited government” (p. 4-5). Calhoun goes on to state that “The conditions of the political universe that had allowed Harrison to win the presidency now worked against him, the balance in the party equilibrium shifted, and he lost his second election to Cleveland, the man he had defeated four years earlier” (p. 5).

Although Harrison seems to be merely a blip in the radar screen as far as presidents are concerned, he was, at the time, rather a radical president after all. McKinley is usually credited for being the first modern president, but Calhoun declares that Harrison was really the frontrunner that allowed McKinley to do what he did. “In defense of those ideas and in pursuit of what he thought to be his duty, he expanded the boundaries of presidential activism. Both publicly and behind the scenes, he effectively intervened in the deliberations of Congress and posted a remarkable record of legislative achievement. He resisted the dictation of the party bosses in the matter of appointments, thereby risking his own reelection for the sake of personal independence. He frequently operated as the nation’s chief diplomat and shaped its aspirations in foreign affairs. Through skillful use of the press and in widespread travels he took the presidency to the American people. In these and other ways, he unwittingly taught his successors new uses of power and techniques of leadership” (p. 165-66).

Clearly Benjamin Harrison should be remembered in his own right and not merely as William Henry Harrison’s grandson or as the placeholder for Grover Cleveland. It was due to Harrison’s authority that the modern age was ushered into American politics.

#23 Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901)

Thank goodness I have library cards for two different counties! If I didn’t then I would have had to purchase a Benjamin Harrison biography and there’s no point in that, is there? No, I simply went to Library #2 and there it was, the old tried and true from the American Presidents Series— Benjamin Harrison: American Presidents Series by Charles W. Calhoun (New York: Times Books, 2005). I was delighted to see it. Since William Henry Harrison was a pretty total loss as a president (meaning that he wasn’t around long enough to do anything), I was interested to see how his grandson would work out instead.

“Few American presidents have descended from lines more distinguished for public service than the one that produced Benjamin Harrison” (p. 7). In the WHH bio, I outlined the Harrison ancestry so just tack Benjamin onto the end of that and I think you’ll agree with Calhoun’s assessment. Benjamin was born at North Bend, Indiana on August 20, 1833 on the farm that his grandfather had built. Growing up, young Ben worked on the farm himself, aiding his father and doing chores.

In 1847, he went to Farmer’s College near Cincinnati where he fell in love with Caroline Scott, the daughter of one of the professors. Caroline’s family soon moved away to Oxford, Ohio so Benjamin had himself transferred to Miami University, also at Oxford. It was while he was there studying that his mother and two sisters died. He did well at school, becoming president of the Union Literary Society and in 1852, he placed third at graduation.

After college, Harrison read law under the famous lawyer, Bellamy Storer, and even though he was not able to support a family yet, he married Caroline on October 20, 1853. The very next year he was admitted to the bar, so he and Caroline moved to Indianapolis in an effort to establish his reputation there as a good lawyer with better opportunities. However, it took several years for this to be accomplished and the newly-wed Harrisons struggled financially. Things began to look up, however in 1855 when Harrison went into partnership with William Wallace, a stable, reputable lawyer.

The Harrisons were perennially Whigs (since WHH was elected on that banner) but with the demise of that party, Harrison took an unprecedented leap in the family and immediately became a Republican. In 1857, Harrison was elected as the city’s attorney from whence he became the Secretary to the Republican State Central Committee. He was also elected as reporter of the state supreme court.

When the Civil War came, Harrison did not volunteer right away, unsure of how to provide for his family. However, by 1862, he became colonel of the 70th Indiana Volunteer Regiment where he spent most of his time on guard duty in Kentucky until his unit was assigned to Sherman. He was involved in all the Union battles in Georgia and he distinguished himself accordingly. “In the first major fighting of the campaign at Resaca, Harrison led a frontal assault and captured a well-defended Confederate battery, netting a haul of four large guns and twelve hundred small arms” (p. 23). In the middle of the Atlanta campaign, Harrison was sent home to Indiana to recruit and then to make speeches for Lincoln in the 1864 campaign. He then returned to Tennessee and was made brevet brigadier general.

After the war, the Harrisons were in some trouble financially due to Benjamin’s absence away from work. Therefore, he ended up overworking himself to the point of collapse in order to obtain financial independence. The Harrisons finally became financially secure which allowed them to build a house for themselves on North Delaware Street in Indianapolis.

In 1872, Harrison put his name forward for governor but he did not win the Republican nomination and in 1876, he ran for governor but again lost. Instead he campaigned brilliantly for Rutherford Hayes and was rewarded by Hayes by being appointed to the Mississippi River Commission “formed to study navigation improvements and the problem of flooding on the great waterway” (p. 36). In 1877, he helped end the railroad strike due to his involvement on the Committee of Arbitration.

1880 was a big year for Harrison. It was during that time that he headed the Indiana state delegation to the Republican national convention where they chose Garfield as their presidential candidate. Also that same year, Harrison ran for the Senate and actually won! As a senator, Harrison concerned himself with patronage, the surplus, army pensions, and education.

He lost his senate seat in 1886 but in a surprise move, he was nominated as the Republican candidate for president in 1888 and won that too! He was the 23rd President of the United States and would be sandwiched in between Grover Cleveland’s two terms. Bless him, he almost immediately alienated his own party over patronage and appointments but he was strictly devoted to do his duty as he saw it and did not want to be under anyone’s thumb, especially the party bosses.

For only serving a single term as president, Harrison had his hand in a remarkable amount of international and domestic situations at the time. In the international arena, he sent emissaries to participate in the Berlin Conference where the peaceful resolution to the problem of the Somoan Islands was discussed and agreed upon by the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Also he was interested in hosting a Pan-American Conference which would eventually evolve into the Organization of American States.

Domestically, there were numerous issues for Harrison to mediate. There was tariff reform, an ever-present concern for industrializing America, and pensions for Union soldiers, culminating in the Dependent Pension Act. Also being signed into law was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act both written by John Sherman, the brother of the general, William Tecumseh Sherman. Finally there was an election bill meant to aid African Americans in the South and a Forest Reserve Act, which would precede Roosevelt’s penchant for conservationism. “All told, the Fifty-first Congress passed 531 public laws, representing an unprecedented level of legislative accomplishment unequaled until Theodore Roosevelt’s second term” (p. 117).

During these years, the Indian problem continued to manifest its inherent issues. In 1887, Harrison signed the Dawes Severalty Act, “which mandated the division of tribal lands into 160-acre allotments with the goal of putting each Indian, as Harrison said, ‘upon a farm’ as ‘a self-supporting and responsible citizen’” (p. 112). As the United States government was trying to work out this program, the Battle of Wounded Knee occurred in 1890. “Premeditated on neither side, the battle had erupted as soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry were attempting to disarm Indians in their control. It left twenty-five soldiers dead along with more than a hundred Indians, including many women and children” (p. 113). Popular opinion again veered against the Indians.

Harrison also took the time to tour the country, where he gave speeches in Texas and even christened a naval vessel in San Francisco. When he returned to Washington he discovered that he had been re-nominated as the Republican national candidate for the 1892 election. As much as Harrison welcomed this news, the times were against him as various strikes and cholera epidemics sprang up around the US, damaging the impact that Harrison had made on the populace. It did not help either that Caroline, Harrison’s wife and love of his life, died of tuberculosis during the election campaign. Afterwards, in a gentlemanly gesture, Cleveland agreed not to campaign either but, in the end, Harrison failed to win the election anyways.

In retirement, Harrison, alone, returned back to Indianapolis and to the N Delaware St house where he practiced law, wrote articles and even did a series of law lectures at Stanford in California. He also came down with influenza but recovered and in 1896 announced that he was engaged to Mame Dimmick, his wife’s niece and old friend of the family. Even though he went against the wishes of his two grown children, Benjamin and Mame were married on April 6, 1896 and almost nine months later, they had their first child.

“In 1897 Harrison undertook the most noted and arduous assignment of his entire legal career—service as chief counsel for Venezuela in its dispute with Great Britain over the boundary separating Venezuela from the British colony of Guiana” (p. 162). Not only did this legal matter eat up years and years of Harrison’s time but he also needed to travel to Paris for the arbitration. While in Europe, President McKinley appointed Harrison to the International Court at The Hague. It’s no wonder that Harrison became worn out and on March 13, 1901 he died of pneumonia and influenza.