The grandson of President William Henry Harrison(1773-1841) and the great-great grandson of Benjamin Harrison (1726—1791), who signed the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Harrison was little known outside Indiana before he ran for president in 1888. During his one term in office he was often overshadowed by his well-known secretary of state, James G. Blaine, and he lacked the political clout to hold his own in the sharply divided battles over tariffs and civil-service reform that dominated American politics in the 1880s and 1890s.

Background.

Benjamin Harrison was born on 20 August 1833 in North Bend, Ohio, and grew up on his family's nearby farm. Graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1852, Harrison began reading law in Cincinnati and married Caroline Scott on 20 October 1853. After he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1854, the couple settled in Indianapolis, where he established a law practice and became involved...