BENJAMIN HARRISON . 1889-1893

Nominated for president at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front porch" campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Born in North Bend, Ohio, on August 20, 1833, Harrison, grandson of "Old Tippecanoe," attended Miami University in Ohio. He moved to Indianapolis, where he practiced law and campaigned for the Republican Party. In the Civil War, he was colonel of the 70^th Volunteer Infantry. He served in the United States Senate throughout the 1880s, championing the rights of Indians, homesteaders and Civil War Veterans.

Once elected president, Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy he helped shape. The first Pan American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan American Union. At the end of his administration, Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii. President Cleveland later withdrew it.

Substantial appropriations bills were signed by Harrison for internal improvements, naval expansion and steamship lines. For the first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country."

President Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust act, the first federal act attempting to regulate trusts by protecting trade and commerce against "unlawful restraints and monopolies."

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue - some rates were intentionally prohibitive. He tried to make the high rates more acceptable by writing in reciprocity agreements. To cope with the Treasury surplus that the high rates had created, he removed the tariff from imported raw sugar and gave sugar growers in the United States two cents a pound bounty on their production. Long before the end of his term, the Treasury surplus had evaporated, and prosperity seemed about to disappear as well. The Congressional elections of 1892 went stingingly against the Republicans, and party leaders moved to abandon Harrison. Nevertheless, his party re-nominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Grover Cleveland.

After he left office, Harrison, a widower, returned to Indianapolis and married his first wife’s former secretary. A dignified elder statesman, he died in 1901.

GROVER CLEVELAND . 1885-1889, 1893-1897

The first Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only president to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18,1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he was known for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. He emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Cleveland won the presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his Republican opponent.

Cleveland pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. He vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it. After vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, the president wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . "

Cleveland angered the railroads by forcing them to return 81,000,000 acres of western lands they held by government grant. He then signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting federal regulation of the railroads. Calling on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs, he was told that he had given Republicans an issue for the next campaign. He retorted, "What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?" Cleveland was defeated in 1888 by Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced a depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. With the aid of Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve. When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent federal troops to enforce it.

His blunt treatment of the railroad strikers stirred the pride of many Americans. So did the vigorous way in which he forced Great Britain to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. But his policies during the depression were generally unpopular. The Democratic Party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY . 1897-1901

At the 1896 Republican Convention, in time of depression, wealthy Ohio businessman Marcus Alonzo Hanna ensured the nomination William McKinley as "the advance agent of prosperity."

Born in Niles, Ohio, on January 29, 1843, McKinley briefly attended Allegheny College, and was teaching in a country school when the Civil War broke out. A private in the Union Army, he was mustered out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunteers. He studied law, opening an office in Canton, Ohio.

At 34, McKinley won a seat in Congress. His attractive personality, exemplary character, and quick intelligence enabled him to rise rapidly. He was appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee. During his 14 years in the House, he became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving his name to the measure enacted in 1890. The next year he was elected governor of Ohio, serving two terms.

When McKinley became president, he called Congress into special session to enact the highest tariff in history. In this friendly atmosphere, industrial combinations developed at an unprecedented pace. Newspapers caricatured McKinley as a little boy led around by "Nursie" Hanna, the representative of the trusts. However, McKinley was not dominated by Hanna; he condemned the trusts as "dangerous conspiracies against the public good."

Reporting the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba, newspapers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffering acutely. Public indignation brought pressure upon McKinley for war. He delivered a message of neutral intervention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba. In the 100-day war, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico.

Undecided on what to do about Spanish possessions other than Cuba. McKinley toured the country and detected an imperialist sentiment. Thus the United States annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. In 1900, Democratic nominee Willliam Jennings Bryan inveighed against imperialism; McKinley quietly stood for "the full dinner pail."

His second term, which had begun so auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later.