President’s Day

In recognition of President’s Day, our own Veritas Omnia Vincit has penned an essay on one of the lesser lights that inhabited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Interesting fellow, that Benjamin Harrison. Here’s VOV:

Veritas Omnia Vincit
Great American, or obscure footnote of history?

One of the most interesting aspects of the United States is the large variety of characters who have roamed our political landscape and altered the course of history in oh so many subtle, and some not so subtle ways. Everyone knows the big names, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR…and those who’ve come after as most of us alive learned of the more recent presidents.

In another life I might have become an educated man in the pursuit of historical data to find the facts behind the legends or to simply find the reality of the lesser known men of our past who did their jobs without a lot of fanfare but nevertheless contributed to the continued success of this great nation of ours for better or worse as it may be.

So taking a turn away from today’s headlines, let’s take a quick look at some comments by one of those lesser known men in our past.

The bud of victory is always in the truth.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

When, and under what conditions, is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in the law?

He was a little fellow by all accounts, only about five feet six inches tall but he wasn’t afraid to step up when the civil war broke out and join the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment serving as a Union Army Lieutenant ultimately reaching the rank of Brevet Brigadier General by 1865. When the war was over, he went back to Indiana and against his father’s advice entered politics losing a couple of governor’s races in 1872 and 1876 before becoming a Senator from the great state of Indiana serving from 1881-1887 whereupon he ran for the presidency. He was a principled man, often a rarity then as now in the Senate, and fought for the rights of homesteaders and Native Americans against the corporate greed of the railroad industry. Property rights and taking care of our veterans were important issues for him, in fact his principles in defending Native Americans also led him to break with his own party and oppose the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It was his opinion that the act as proposed violated the rights already given previously to Chinese Immigrants in an earlier treaty. Even without his support the Act did pass however.

He lost his seat in the Senate in 1887 but became the Republican nominee for president the following year in 1888 where his Democratic opponents showing the same level of class as all politicians took advantage of his stature and called him “Little Ben” during the campaign. However like Trump over a century later, “Little Ben” won the electoral college while losing the popular vote by some 90,000 ballots to defeat Grover Cleveland and become the 20th President of these United States. If you’ve guessed Benjamin Harrison you’re correct and kudos for being an astute student of our Presidential history.

William Henry Harrison the ninth president of the United States who was also a military officer and is mostly noted for dying thirty one days into his term from pneumonia was “Little Ben’s” grandfather making them the only grandfather/grandson presidential duo in our nation’s history.

Benjamin Harrison’s presidency receives mixed reviews depending on which historians you like to read, for me he was a competent, principled man. I can always respect an adherence to principle even when I disagree with the man or woman holding those principles. He favored tariffs and had the first billion dollar appropriation in our history and his support for the McKinley Tariff Act created some tension with the public who felt these Republicans were too heavily invested in corporate interests that would benefit only the wealthy (sound familiar?). However he also supported the Sherman Antitrust Act which was theoretically designed to prohibit monopolies from arising and dominating the economic landscape of the nation. As president he also continued to push for veteran’s benefits and supported an expansion of the US Navy.

With respect to foreign policy he has the distinction of holding the first Conference of American States in 1889 and he set the terms for the American protectorate in the Samoan Islands.

He lost to Grover Cleveland in 1892, his wife had become gravely ill with tuberculosis and died two weeks before the election. No doubt her illness kept him from campaigning as seriously as he might have under different circumstances. He remarried at 62 and fathered a child with his late wife’s niece and caretaker and then died at 68 from pneumonia, once again following in his grandfather’s footsteps.

So why do I think this obscure 20th president had some vision? I love his desire for truth to be certain, understanding that truth could stand on its own was something out of place then as it is now with so many liars in politics, but more than that his sense of anger at people being denied their basic rights always impresses me. Whether they were white homesteaders out west, Native Americans with whom we had treaties, Chinese immigrants, he appears to me to be a man who truly believed we are all of us created equal under the law. He put his life on the line to defend those principles, and when that war ended he was angered that what he fought for still hadn’t truly come to fruition in all parts of this nation.

He understood that we needed to talk to foreign nations and that we could not afford to police the world. That there was no long term profit in policing the world at our expense and that action would do nothing but hurt our economy and our citizens far more than benefit our interests. I think he understood foreign wars of aggression and entanglement were seldom beneficial to the long term economic health of any Republic.

For me, Benjamin Harrison certainly qualifies as one of more obscure presidents from history based on how little he’s taught in school and how little most of us really know of his presidency. What he represents though is something far greater in my mind. Benjamin Harrison was an American in the truest sense of the word, he believed his job was to make America better, better for all of us including those disenfranchised in his time. That didn’t make him popular at the time, and being a man of principle he didn’t care he did what he believed was right anyway. That’s what makes America great to me, millions of people working in relative obscurity, their voices and faces unknown to the world at large but each of them committed to making this nation better. Service to the nation takes many forms, as does selflessness and sacrifice on behalf of our fellow Americans.

Before I render my verdict on obscure or Great American I’ll leave you one last quote,

“Let those who would die for the flag on the field of battle give a better proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to their country by promoting fraternity and justice.” Benjamin Harrison, Inaugural Address, 1889

A great quote about the value of service beyond the military, service to one’s nation with a continued commitment to doing the right thing in concert with one’s fellow citizens. So my verdict in answer to the question posed in the headline is, Great American. Benjamin Harrison might not be a household name, but he was a damn fine American and I am ever grateful that he’s not as rare as some would have us believe.

A little different post from me this time, hope it makes sense to you.
VoV

Maybe not such a lesser light after all. Thanks again, VoV.

Category: Guest Post, Historical, Politics, Veterans in politics