Benjamin Harrison.
Mr. Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, great grandson, therefore, of Governor Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, the ardent revolutionary patriot, signer of the Declaration of Independence. An older scion of the family had served as major-general in Cromwell’s army and been executed for signing the death-warrant of King Charles I. The Republican candidate was born on a farm at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1883. The boy’s earliest education was acquired in a log schoolhouse. He afterward attended Miami University, in Ohio, where he graduated at the age of nineteen. The next year he was admitted to the bar. In 1854 he married, and opened a law office in Indianapolis. In 1860 he became Reporter of Decisions to the Indiana Supreme Court. When the civil war broke out, obeying the spirit that in his grandfather had won at Tippecanoe and the Thames, young Harrison recruited a regiment, of which he was soon commissioned colonel. Gallant services under Sherman at Resaca and Peach Tree Creek brought him the brevet of brigadier. After his return from war, owing to his high character, his lineage, his fine war record, his power as a speaker and his popularity in a pivotal State, he was a prominent figure in politics, not only in Indiana, but more and more nationally. In 1876 he ran for the Indiana Governership, but was defeated by a small margin. In 1880 he was chairman of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention. In 1881 he was elected United States Senator, declining an offer of a seat in Garfield’s Cabinet. From 1880, when Indiana presented his name to the Republican National Convention, General Harrison was, in the West, constantly thought of as a presidential possibility. Eclipsed by Blaine in 1884, he came forward again in 1888, this time to win.
In the East General Harrison was much underrated. Papers opposing his election fondly cartooned him wearing “Grandfather’s hat,” as if family connection alone recommended him. It was a great mistake. The grandson had all the grandsire’s strong qualities and many besides. He was a student and a thinker. His character was absolutely irreproachable. His information was exact, large, and always ready for use. His speeches had ease, order, correctness, and point. With the West he was particularly strong, an element of availability which Cleveland lacked. In the Senate he had won renown both as a debater and as a sane adviser. As a consistent protectionist he favored restriction upon Chinese immigration and prohibition against the importation of contract labor. He upheld all efforts for reform in the civil service and for strengthening the navy.
In the presidential campaign of 1888 personalities had little place. Instead, there was active discussion of party principles and policies. The tariff issue was of course prominent. A characteristic piece of enginery in the contest was the political club, which now, for the first time in our history, became a recognized force. The National Association of Democratic Clubs comprised some 3,000 units, numerous auxiliary reform and tariff reform clubs being active on the same side. The Republican League, corresponding to the Democratic Association, boasted, by August, 1887, 6,500 clubs, with a million voters on their rolls. Before election day Indiana alone had 1,100 Republican clubs and New York 1,400.
During most of the campaign Democratic success was freely predicted and seemed assured. Yet from the first forces were in exercise which threatened a contrary result. Federal patronage helped the administration less than was expected, while it nerved the opposition. The Republicans had a force of earnest and harmonious workers. Of the multitude, on the other hand, who in 1884 had aided to achieve victory for the Democracy, few, of course, had received the rewards which they deemed due them. In vain did officeholders contribute toil and money while that disappointed majority were so slow and spiritless in rallying to the party’s summons, and so many of them even hostile. The zeal of honest Democrats was stricken by what Gail Hamilton wittily called “the upas bloom” of civil service reform, which the President still displayed upon his lapel. To a large number of ardent civil service reformers who had originally voted for Cleveland this decoration now seemed so wilted that, more in indignation than in hope, they went over to Harrison. The public at large resented the loss which the service had suffered through changes in the civil list. Harrison without much of a record either to belie or to confirm his words, at least commended and espoused the reform.
Democratic blunders thrust the sectional issue needlessly to the fore. Mr. Cleveland’s willingness to return to their respective States the Confederate flags captured by Union regiments in the civil war; his fishing trip on Memorial Day; the choice of Mr. Mills, a Texan, to lead the tariff fight in Congress; and the prominence of southerners among the Democratic campaign orators at the North, were themes of countless diatribes.
A clever Republican device, known as “the Murchison letter,” did a great deal to impress thoughtless voters that Mr. Cleveland was “un-American.” The incident was dramatic and farcical to a degree. The Murchison letter, which interested the entire country for two or three weeks, purported to come from a perplexed Englishman, addressing the British Minister at Washington, Lord Sackville-West. It sought counsel of Her Majesty’s representative, as the “fountainhead of knowledge,” upon “the mysterious subject” how best to serve England in voting at the approaching American election. The seeker after light recounted President Cleveland’s kindness to England in not enforcing the retaliatory act then recently passed by Congress as its ultimatum in the fisheries dispute, his soundness on the free trade question, and his hostility to the “dynamite schools of Ireland.” The writer set Mr. Harrison down as a painful contrast to the President. He was “a high-tariff man, a believer on the American side of all questions, and undoubtedly, an enemy to British interests generally.” But the inquirer professes alarm at Cleveland’s message on the fishery question which had just been sent to Congress, and wound up with the query “whether Mr. Cleveland’s policy is temporary only, and whether he will, as soon as he secures another term of four years in the presidency, suspend it for one of friendship and free trade.”
Lord L. S. Sackville-West.
The Minister replied: