Review of Benjamin Harrison by Charles W. Calhoun

Among the small minority of Americans who can identify Benjamin Harrison, most tend to view him as the last of a long series of hirsute “do-nothing” Gilded Age American presidents.  In Benjamin Harrison, however, biographer and historian Charles W. Calhoun argues that Harrison does not at all fit this stereotype. Harrison, Calhoun writes, “governed energetically” and “was a legislative president far more than most other nineteenth-century chief executives” (3).  Calhoun further argues that if, as modern scholars often claim, William McKinley was the first modern president, “a careful review of Harrison’s performance demonstrates that McKinley and his successors owed much to the example set by Benjamin Harrison” (6).

After briefly outlining Harrison’s pre-presidential career, including distinguished service as an attorney, a Union officer during the Civil War, and a United States Senator, Calhoun begins his “careful review of Harrison’s performance” as president.  Unlike his more passive predecessors, Harrison had a planned program of legislation that he wanted enacted as quickly as possible. In fact, he was so eager to begin that he seriously considered calling the Congress into an early special session.  Because newly-elected Congresses at that time did not convene until several months after the president was inaugurated, Harrison’s domestic agenda had to wait.

In the meantime, Harrison was confronted with a dangerous dispute with Germany over the island of Samoa.  Harrison and his Secretary of State James Blaine negotiated a settlement which essentially created a three-nation (Britain, Germany, and the U. S.) protectorate over the island. This diplomatic victory was, in Calhoun’s words, “a momentous step,” for it marked the first time the United States “accepted responsibility for the government of a people beyond its own continent” (79).  Harrison made other significant contributions to the growth of American global power, including vastly expanding the U. S. Navy and championing a trans-isthmian canal across Nicaragua.

Harrison’s domestic agenda was bold.  He championed increased pensions to veterans, sought increased government regulation of big business, promoted a bill to protect black voting rights in the South, injected 50 million dollars into the economy to prevent a financial panic, set aside 13 million acres of federal land as forest reserves, and gave federal assistance to provide relief for a Pennsylvania flood (a new practice at the time).  Harrison also was the first president to attack lynchings.  Under Harrison’s prompting, Congress passed several key pieces of legislation, including the McKinley Tariff Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and the Forest Reserve Act.  In all, the 51^st Congress passed 531 public laws, the most in history to that point, and an amount that would not be equaled until Theodore Roosevelt’s second term.

Although he is largely forgotten today, Harrison’s presidency was widely praised during his lifetime.  Henry Adams called him the greatest president since Lincoln.  Frederick Douglass went still further, writing that “To my mind, we never had a greater president.”  Despite this acclaim, Harrison served in a time of great political polarization and fickleness, and as a result, he was defeated after serving one term and returned to private life.

In Benjamin Harrison, Charles Calhoun has presented an engaging and surprisingly comprehensive (given the book’s brevity) account of Harrison’s life and, especially, his presidency.  He succeeds admirably in demonstrating that Harrison should receive more credit not only for being an effective chief executive, but also for setting a key precedent for future progressive presidents like Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.  Anyone wanting to learn more about this generally forgotten president would do well to begin their study with this outstanding introduction.