So much had been said to her on the question of her dress for this event that, in making her decision against the low-cut and sleeveless gown, she said, in an interview on February 22, 1889:
“If there is one thing above another I detest and have detested all my days it is being made a circus of, and that is what has come to me in my old age, as it were. I’ve been a show, the whole family’s been a show since Mr. Harrison was elected. All last fall I sat in my sewing room and watched the procession of feet pass across the parlour floor wearing their path into the nap, and disappear like the trail of a caravan into the General’s room beyond. Day by day, I watched the path grow wider and deeper, and at last the caravan spread out and engulfed us all. But I don’t propose to be made a circus of forever! If there’s any privacy to be found in the White House, I propose to find it and preserve it.”
Photo. by Brady
MRS. BENJAMIN HARRISON
Showing her pin of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of which she
was the first President General
With the inauguration festivities over, President Harrison gave first attention to those who were to be his immediate advisers in his administration.
He was fortunate in his running mate, Levi P. Morton, a Vermonter by birth, who had risen from a position as country store clerk to that of partner in a Boston firm. Later, he founded banks in New York and abroad in England, heading Morton Bros. and Company, later the Morton Trust Company. He served with credit in Congress during 1878 and 1880, and from 1885 to 1887 rendered valued service as Minister to France. His influence and prestige counted for much.
President Harrison chose the following as his official family: James G. Blaine, of Maine, was named Secretary of State, the same post he had filled in Garfield’s Cabinet. Mr. William Windom, of Minnesota, Secretary of the Treasury, was another Garfield cabineteer. Redfield Proctor, of Vermont, as Secretary of War; William H. H. Miller, of Indiana, for Attorney General; John Wanamaker, of Pennsylvania, for Postmaster General; Benjamin F. Tracy, of New York, for Secretary of the Navy; John W. Noble, of Missouri, for Secretary of the Interior; and Jeremiah M. Rusk, of Wisconsin, for Secretary of Agriculture, gave general satisfaction.
Although the President was reserved to a marked degree—so much so that he was accused of haughtiness—those who knew him in his home life, or as a soldier or a legal adviser, saw another side to his nature. He was a man who had always had before him the example of distinguished forbears, that served to inspire him with the ambition to achieve and curbed any tendency toward letting his life run along with the tide of least resistance.