Benjamin Harrison

Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was the twenty-third President of the United States, serving one term from 1889 to 1893. He had previously served as a senator from Indiana. His administration is best known for a series of legislation including the McKinley Tariff and federal spending that reached one billion dollars. Democrats attacked the "Billion Dollar Congress" and defeated the GOP in the 1890 mid-term elections, as well as defeating Harrison's bid for reelection in 1892. He is to date the only president from Indiana.

Early life and Civil War

A grandson of President William Henry Harrison and great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison, V, Benjamin was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio as the second of eight children of John Scott Harrison (later a U.S. Congressman from Ohio) and Elizabeth Ramsey Irwin. He attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he was a member of the fraternity Phi Delta Theta (later in life, he joined Delta Chi) and graduated in 1852. He studied law in Cincinnati, Ohio, then moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1854. He was admitted to the bar and became reporter of the decisions of the Indiana Supreme Court.

"Come on boys!" General Benjamin Harrison in the Battle of Resaca, May, 1864.

On October 20, 1853, Harrison, 20, married Caroline Lavinia Scott, 21, in Oxford, Ohio. The wedding was performed by her father, Rev. John W. Scott. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 - December 13, 1936) and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison McKee (April 3, 1858 - October 28, 1930). On June 13, 1861, they suffered the tragedy of a miscarriage.

Brig. Gen. Benjamin Harrison

Harrison served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was appointed Colonel of the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment in August 1862. The unit performed reconnaissance duty and guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee until Sherman's Atlanta Campaign in 1864. Harrison was brevetted as a brigadier general, and commanded a Brigade at Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek and Atlanta. Harrison was later transferred to the Army of the Cumberland and participated in the Siege of Nashville and the Grand Review in Washington D.C. before mustering out in 1865.

Politics

While in the field in October 1864, he was elected reporter of the Indiana State Supreme Court and served four years. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana in 1876, being defeated by James D. Williams. He was appointed a member of the Mississippi River Commission, in 1879, and elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from March 4, 1881, to March 4, 1887. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (47th Congress) and U.S. Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses).

Presidency 1889-1893

Inauguration of Benjamin Harrison, March 4, 1889.

Policies

The Raven
An 1890 Puck cartoon depicts Harrison at his desk wearing his grandfather's hat which is too big for his head, suggesting that he is not fit for the presidency. Atop a bust of William Henry Harrison, a raven with the head of Secretary of State James G. Blaine gawks down at the President, a reference to the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem "The Raven." Blaine and Harrison were both at odds over the recently proposed McKinley Tariff.

After beating John Sherman for the Republican presidential nomination, Harrison was elected President of the United States in 1888 in notoriously fraudulent balloting in New York and Indiana (See Blocks of Five). In the Presidential election, Harrison received nearly 100,000 fewer popular votes than incumbent President Grover Cleveland but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had made no political bargains, his supporters had given innumerable pledges upon his behalf. When Boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach...the penitentiary to make him President." He was inaugurated on March 4, 1889, and served through March 4, 1893. Harrison was also known as the "centennial president" because his inauguration was the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington.

For Harrison, Civil Service reform was a no-win situation. Congress was split so far apart on the issue that agreeing to any measure for one side would alienate the other. The issue became a popular political football of the time and was immortalized in a cartoon captioned "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?" (featured below)

Political football "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?"

Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy which he helped shape. The first Pan-American Congress met in Washington, D.C. 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; to his disappointment, President Cleveland later withdrew it.

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue. The high tariff rates in effect had created a surplus of money in the Treasury. Low-tariff advocates argued that the surplus was hurting business. Republican leaders in Congress successfully met the challenge. Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed a still higher tariff bill; some rates were intentionally prohibitive.

Harrison tried to make the tariff more acceptable by writing in reciprocity provisions. To cope with the Treasury surplus, the tariff was removed from imported raw sugar; sugar growers within the United States were given two cents per pound bounty on their production.

In an attempt to battle trusts and monopolies, Harrison signed into effect the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in order to protect trade and commerce. This was the first Federal act of its kind.

President Harrison rowed ashore at Wall Street, April 29, 1889.

Long before the end of the Harrison Administration, the Treasury surplus had evaporated and prosperity seemed about to disappear. Congressional elections in 1890 went against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to abandon President Harrison, although he had cooperated with Congress on party legislation. Nevertheless, his party renominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Cleveland. Just two weeks earlier, on October 25, 1892, Harrison's wife, Caroline died after a long battle with tuberculosis. Their daughter, Mary Harrison McKee, continued the duties of the First Lady.

Post-presidency

After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis. He married a widow, Mary Scott Lord Dimmick on April 6, 1896 in New York City. She was also his deceased wife's niece. His two adult children Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary "Mamie", 38, did not attend the wedding because they disagreed. Their mother had only died three and a half years earlier. Benjamin and Mary had one child, Elizabeth (February 21, 1897 - December 26, 1955), who later married James Blaine Walker, a grandnephew of James G. Blaine. Their daughter, Jane Harrison Walker, later married Newell Garfield, the great-grandson of President James A. Garfield and his wife Lucretia Garfield and the grandson of James R. Garfield. Harrison went to the First Peace Conference at The Hague. He served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in the boundary dispute between Venezuela and the United Kingdom in 1900. He also wrote a book entitled This Country of Ours about the federal government and the presidency.

Harrison developed the flu and a bad cold in February 1901. Despite treatment by steam vapor inhalation, Harrison's condition only worsened. Benjamin Harrison eventually died from influenza and pneumonia on Wednesday, March 13, 1901 and is interred in Crown Hill Cemetery. Incidentially, Crown Hill Cemetery also holds the remains of three United States Vice-Presidents: Charles W. Fairbanks, Thomas A. Hendricks, and Thomas R. Marshall.

Legacy

• The Benjamin Harrison Law School in Indianapolis was named in his honor. In 1944, Indiana University acquired the school and renamed it Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis.
  

  
  

  Benjamin Harrison stamp
• At Miami University, Harrison Hall houses the political science department and the Harrison Scholarship is school's most prestigious academic award. [1]
• In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Benjamin Harrison was launched. She was torpedoed and scuttled in 1943.
• A U.S. Army post, Fort Benjamin Harrison, was established after Harrison's death in Indianapolis, but it was closed in the 1990s.
• Harrison Hall, a co-educational dormitory at Purdue University, is named after President Harrison, who served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University from July, 1895 to March, 1901.
• The Benjamin Harrison Memorial Drawbridge over the James River in Virginia is one of the longest vertical lift bridges in the North America at 363 feet at its longest span.

Trivia

• Benjamin Harrison is the only President who was the grandson of a past President (William Henry Harrison).
• From the time when Harrison was born on August 20, 1833 until the death of Former U.S. President James Madison on June 28, 1836, there were a total of 19 Presidents of the United States (Former, Current, and Future) living; which as of 2007 is more than any other time period in U.S. history.
• Benjamin Harrison might be the first President whose voice was recorded. This recording was originally made on a phonograph cylinder in 1889 and can be accessed below in the Media section. Some believe Rutherford B. Hayes was actually the first president, but the cylinder cannot be found.
• Nicknames such as "Kid Gloves", "The Human Iceberg" and "Little Ben" were mocking titles given by his political rivals. "Little Ben" was also a name so-called by his Civil War regiment, the 70th Indiana Volunteers.
• Harrison was the last President to wear a beard while in office but not the last to sport facial hair. Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft all had moustaches.
• The 1968, Walt Disney musical film, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band was about the United States presidential election of 1888 between Harrison and rival, Grover Cleveland. In the film, the campaign song, "Oh, Benjamin Harrison" was modern and not really from that campaign. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers.
• Harrison had electricity installed in the White House for the first time by Edison Electric Company, but he and his wife reportedly would not touch the light switches for fear of electrocution and would often go to sleep with the lights on.
• In April 1891, Harrison became the first President to travel across the United States entirely by train.
• On June 7, 1892, Harrison became the first President to ever attend a baseball game.
• Harrison's roommate at Miami University, John Alexander Anderson, became a six-term U.S. Congressman from Kansas and the second President of Kansas State University. Harrison appointed him consul general in Cairo, Egypt.
• In 1892, Harrison and Whitelaw Reid formed the only U.S. presidential ticket composed of candidates that were also alumni of the same university, Miami University. Like Harrison, Reid also had a building on Miami's campus named for him. Reid Hall was a dormitory until it was demolished in 2006 to make room for the new Richard T. Farmer School of Business.
• Benjamin Harrison was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
• On January 28, 2007 Mrs. Emma Tillman died being the last U.S. citizen alive born during the Harrison administration.
• Harrison had six states admitted to the Union during his administration, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming, the most of any administration since George Washington.

Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908), the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States, was the only President to serve non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897). He was defeated for reelection in 1888 by Benjamin Harrison, against whom he ran again in 1892 and won a second term. He was the only Democrat elected to the Presidency in the era of Republican political domination between 1860 and 1912, after the American Civil War. His admirers praise him for his bedrock honesty, independence, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism. As a leader of the Bourbon Democrats, he opposed imperialism, taxes, corruption, patronage, subsidies and inflationary policies.

Some of Cleveland's actions were controversial with political factions: his intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 in order to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions, and his support of the gold standard and opposition to free silver alienated the agrarian wing of the party. Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters — depressions and strikes — in his second term. He lost control of his party to the agrarians and silverites in 1896.

Early life

An early, undated photograph of Grover Cleveland from the Cleveland Family Papers at the New Jersey Archives.

Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey to the Reverend Richard Cleveland and Anne Neal. He was the fifth of nine children, five sons and four daughters. He was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time. From 1841 to 1850, he lived in Fayetteville, New York^[1], but as the church frequently transferred its ministers, the family moved many times, mainly around central and southern New York State.

He became involved in Democratic politics at the age of 19 when he worked for the presidential campaign of James Buchanan. Following Buchanan's single term, the next Democrat elected president would be Cleveland himself, almost thirty years later. During the American Civil War, Cleveland hired a replacement to avoid Lincoln's draft order of 1863.

As a lawyer in Buffalo, New York, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. He was elected sheriff of Erie County, New York in 1870 and, while in that post, carried out at least two hangings of condemned criminals, refusing to delegate the unpleasant task to others. Political opponents would later hold this against him, calling him the "Buffalo Hangman." Cleveland stated that he wished to take the responsibility for the executions himself and not pass it along to subordinates.

Political career

In 1871 Grover Cleveland was elected Sheriff of Erie County, New York. At age 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, with the slogan "Public Office is a Public Trust" as his trademark of office. One newspaper, in endorsing him, said it did so for three reasons: "1. He is honest. 2. He is honest. 3. He is honest." In 1882, he was elected Governor of New York, working closely with reform-minded Republican state legislator Theodore Roosevelt.

1884 campaign

Cleveland won the Presidency in the 1884 election with the unusual combination of support from both Democrats and reform-minded Republicans called "Mugwumps" who denounced his opponent, former Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, as corrupt.

The campaign was negative. To counter Cleveland's image of purity, his opponents reported that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo. The derisive phrase "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?", often chanted at Republican political rallies, rose as an unofficial campaign slogan for those who opposed him.

Cleveland admitted to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who claimed he fathered her child named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Halpin was involved with several men at the time, including Cleveland's law partner and mentor, Oscar Folsom, for whom the child was named. (Cleveland may not have been the father and is believed to have assumed responsibility because he was the only bachelor among them.) After Cleveland's election as President, Democratic newspapers added a line to the chant used against Cleveland and made it: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House! Ha Ha!"

The desire for reform, blunders on behalf of Blaine, and voters' demand for honesty turned the tide for Cleveland. Cleveland's victory made him the first Democrat elected president since James Buchanan, who was elected in 1856.

First term as President (1885-1889)

Politics

Cleveland's administration might be characterized by his saying: "I have only one thing to do, and that is to do right". Cleveland faced a Republican Senate and often resorted to using his veto powers. Cleveland himself insisted that, as President, his greatest accomplishment was blocking others' bad ideas. He vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he 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...." He also vetoed hundreds of private pension bills for American Civil War veterans. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed that, too. Cleveland used the veto far more often than any President up to that time. Once Cleveland told a friend that his principal duty and greatest service to the country was in preventing Congress from enacting bad bills. He also felt that if the constitution did not authorize it, he could not in good faith sign a bill into law.

Cleveland lived up to his reputation of running an efficient government. He demanded his administration get rid of extravagances and abuses.

In 1885, Cleveland ordered a military campaign against the Southwestern Apache tribe under Chief Geronimo; in 1886 Geronimo was captured.

President Cleveland angered railroad investors by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by government grant, involving the return of 81,000,000 acres (328,000 km²) which is the approximately equivalent to the areas of N.Y., N.J., Pa., Dela., Md., and Va.,combined. The Department of the Interior charged that the rights of way for this land must be returned to the public because the railroads failed to extend their lines according to agreements. The lands were forfeited and became part of public domain.

He signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

Foreign policy

Cleveland was a committed isolationist who had campaigned in opposition to expansion and imperialism. He reversed policy and withdrew the treaty for the annexation of Hawaii negotiated by Benjamin Harrison from the consideration of the Senate. Cleveland often quoted the advice of George Washington's Farewell Address in decrying alliances, and he slowed the pace of expansion that President Chester Arthur had begun. Cleveland refused to promote Arthur's Nicaragua canal treaty, calling it an "entangling alliance". Free trade deals (reciprocity treaties) with Mexico and several South American countries died because there was no Senate approval. Cleveland withdrew from Senate consideration the Berlin Conference treaty which guaranteed an open door for U.S. interests in Congo.^[2]

As Fareed Zakaria argued, "But while Cleveland retarded the speed and aggressiveness of U.S. foreign policy, the overall direction did not change."^[2] Historian Charles S. Campbell argues that the audiences who listened to Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard, Sr.'s moralistic lectures "readily detected through the high moral tone a sharp eye for the national interest."^[3] Cleveland supported Hawaiian free trade (reciprocity) and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor. Naval orders were placed with Democratic industrialists rather than Republican ones, but the military buildup actually quickened.^[2]

In his second term Cleveland stated that by 1892, the U.S. Navy had been used to promote American interests in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and Hawaii. Under Cleveland, the U.S. adopted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.^[4]

Crusade against protective tariff

In December 1887, Cleveland called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs:

The theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him... the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. This wrong inflicted upon those who bear the burden of national taxation, like other wrongs, multiplies a brood of evil consequences. The public Treasury... becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder.

He failed to lower tariffs when the Mills bill failed, and made it the central issue of his losing 1888 campaign, as Republicans under William McKinley claimed a high tariff was needed to produce high wages, high profits, and fast economic expansion.

Personal life

Grover Cleveland was the second President married in office, and the only President married in the White House itself

On June 2, 1886, Cleveland married Frances Cornelia Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner, in the Blue Room in the White House. He was the second President to marry while in office, and the only President to have a wedding in the White House itself. This marriage was controversial because Cleveland was the executor of the Folsom estate and supervised Frances' upbringing. Folsom, at 21 years old, was the youngest First Lady in the history of the United States. Their children were Ruth Cleveland (1891-1904); Esther Cleveland (1893-1980); Marion Cleveland (1895-1977); Richard Folsom Cleveland (1897-1974); and Francis Grover Cleveland (1903-1995).

1888 campaign

Cleveland/Thurman campaign poster

Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election, in part due to fraud (See Blocks of Five). He actually led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison (48.6% to 47.8%), but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by squeaking out a barely-over-1% win in Cleveland's home state of New York; in fact, had Cleveland won his home state, he would have won the electoral vote by a count of 204-197 (201 votes then needed for victory). Note, though, that Cleveland earned 24 of his electoral votes in states that he won by less than 1% (Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Cleveland thus became one of only four men to clearly win the popular vote but lose the presidency; there would not be another such election until Al Gore's narrow loss to George W. Bush in 2000. As Frances Cleveland and the ex-president left the White House, she assured the staff that they would return in four years.

1892 Campaign

The primary issues for Cleveland for the 1892 campaign were reducing the tariff and stopping free minting of silver which had depleted the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury. Cleveland was elected again in 1892, thus becoming the only President in U.S. history to be elected to a second term which did not run in succession to the first.

Second term as President (1893-1897)

Politics

Shortly after Cleveland was inaugurated, the Panic of 1893 struck the stock market, and he soon faced an acute economic depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act. With the aid of J. P. Morgan and Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

Cleveland's humiliation by Gorman and the sugar trust; cartoon by W. A. Rogers

He fought to lower the tariff in 1893-1894. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act introduced by West Virginian Representative William L. Wilson and passed by the House would have made significant reforms. However, by the time the bill passed the Senate, guided by Democrat Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, it had more than 600 amendments attached that nullified most of the reforms. The "Sugar Trust" in particular made changes that favored it at the expense of the consumer. It imposed an income tax of two percent to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. Cleveland was devastated that his program had been ruined. He denounced the revised measure as a disgraceful product of "party perfidy and party dishonor," but still allowed it to become law without his signature, believing that it was better than nothing and was at the least an improvement over the McKinley tariff.

Cleveland refused to allow Eugene Debs to use the Pullman Strike to shut down most of the nation's passenger, freight and mail traffic in June 1894. He obtained an injunction in federal court, and when the strikers refused to obey it, he sent in federal troops to Chicago, Illinois and 20 other rail centers. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Most governors supported Cleveland except Democrat John P. Altgeld of Illinois, who became his bitter foe in 1896.

Cleveland's agrarian and silverite enemies seized control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the National Democratic Party (United States) (or "Gold Democratic") third party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limit government, and oppose protectionism. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election (just over 1 percent). Agrarians again nominated Bryan in 1900, but in 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic Party and nominated Alton B. Parker.

Typewriters were new in 1893, and this cartoon shows Cleveland as unable to work the Democratic Party machine without jamming the keys (the key politicians in his party)

Foreign affairs

Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 1895, Cleveland forced Britain to agree to arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. His administration is credited with the modernization of the United States Navy that allowed the U.S. to decisively win the Spanish-American War in 1898, one year after he left office.

In 1893, Cleveland sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of a provisional government. He initially supported Blount's scathing report which blamed the U.S. for the overthrow; called for the restoration of Liliuokalani; and withdrew from the Senate the treaty of annexation of Hawaii. When the deposed Queen refused to grant amnesty as a condition of her reinstatement, and said she would execute the current government in Honolulu, Cleveland referred the matter to Congress. The Senate then produced the Morgan Report, which completely contradicted Blount's findings and found the overthrow was a completely internal affair. Following the Turpie Resolution of May 31, 1894, which vowed a policy of non-interference in Hawaiian affairs, Cleveland dropped all support for reinstating the Queen, and further went on to officially recognize and maintain diplomatic relations with the Republic of Hawaii declared on July 4, 1894.

Women's rights

Cleveland was a stout opponent of the women's suffrage (voting) movement. In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland wrote, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.

Cancer

After Cleveland began his second term in 1893, Doctor R.M. O'Reilly found an ulcerated sore a little less than one inch (24 mm) in diameter on the left lingual surface of Cleveland's hard palate. Initial biopsies were inconclusive; later the samples were proven to be a malignant cancer. Because of the financial depression of the country, Cleveland decided to have surgery performed on the tumor in secrecy to avoid further market panic. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for an August 7 address to Congress, which had recessed at the end of June.

Under the guise of a vacation cruise, Cleveland, accompanied by lead surgeon Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. Bryant, joined by his assistants Dr. John F. Erdmann, Dr. W.W. Keen Jr., Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck (dentist and anesthesiologist), and Dr. Edward Janeway, operated aboard E. C. Benedict's yacht Oneida as it sailed off Long Island. The surgery was conducted through the President's mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), removed his upper left jaw and portions of his hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland's mouth severely disfigured. During another surgery, an orthodontist fitted Cleveland with a hard rubber prosthesis that corrected his speech and covered up the surgery.

A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press somewhat placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland's vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida (Dr. W.W. Keen, Jr.) wrote an article detailing the operation. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The final diagnosis was verrucous carcinoma and the president was cured by the surgical excision.

Later life and death

Oil painting of Grover Cleveland, painted in 1899 by Anders Zorn.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, bringing him into opposition to the school's president, Woodrow Wilson. Conservative Democrats hoped to nominate him for another presidential term in 1904, but his age and health forced them to turn to other candidates. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he had constructively worked while Governor of New York decades before.

The former president had been scheduled to be the Chairman and Master of Ceremonies for Robert Fulton Day on September 24, 1907 at the Jamestown Exposition at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads, Virginia. However, ill-health forced him to cancel, and his role was filled by humorist Mark Twain.

Cleveland died in 1908 from a heart attack with his wife at his side. He is buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Honors and memorials

Cleveland on the $1000 bill

Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill from 1928 to 1946. He also appeared on a $1000 bill of 1907 and the first few issues of the $20 Federal Reserve notes from 1914.

Since he was both the 22nd and 24th President, he will be featured on two separate dollar coins to be released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.

In 2006, Free New York, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research group, began raising funds to purchase the former Fairfield Library in Buffalo, New York and transform it into the Grover Cleveland Presidential Library & Museum

Chester A. Arthur

Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American politician who served as the twenty-first President of the United States. Arthur was a member of the Republican Party and worked as a lawyer before becoming the twentieth vice president under James Garfield. While Garfield was mortally wounded by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881, he did not die until September 19, at which time Arthur was sworn in as president, serving until March 4, 1885.

Before entering politics, Arthur was a member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party and a political protégé of Roscoe Conkling, rising to Collector of Customs for the Port of New York. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant but was fired by the succeeding Rutherford B. Hayes under suspicion of bribery and corruption.

To the indignation of the Stalwarts, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Avoiding old political cronies and alienating his old mentor Conkling, public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President. Arthur's primary achievement was the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. The passage of this legislation earned Arthur the moniker "The Father of Civil Service" and a very favorable reputation among historians.

Publisher Alexander K. McClure wrote, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired… more generally respected." Author Mark Twain, deeply cynical about politicians, conceded, "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration."

Early life and education

Chester A. Arthur
October 5, 1829 - November 18, 1886
Place of birth	Fairfield, Vermont
Place of death	New York, New York
Allegiance	New York State militia
Rank	Brigadier General, Quartermaster General
Commands	Quartermaster Service in the New York State
Battles/wars	Civil War
Other work	U.S. Vice President (1881), U.S. President (1881-1885)

Arthur was supposedly born in the town of Fairfield in Franklin County, Vermont (even though no birth record has ever been found in the US) on October 5, 1829, although he sometimes claimed to be born in 1830 (even his grave inscription says the latter). His parents were William Arthur and Malvina Stone. His father was an Irish immigrant who had initially migrated to Dunham, Québec, Canada where he and his wife bought a farm, located about 80 miles (129 km) north of the Vermont, US border. Arthur never publicly admitted to either country of his birth and there remains much speculation that he was born a British/Canadian subject and not an American. During his lifetime, political rivals circulated the rumor that he was born across the International Boundary in Canada, which if true would have barred him from serving as the President of the United States for failure to meet the eligibility requirements outlined in Article II Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, providing that the President must be a natural born US citizen. Arthur never provided any credible proof of his origins and never admitted to anything.

Arthur spent some of his childhood years living in Perry, New York. One of Arthur's boyhood friends remembers Arthur's political abilities emerging at an early age:

When Chester was a boy, you might see him in the village street after a shower, watching the boys building a mud dam across the rivulet in the roadway. Pretty soon, he would be ordering this one to bring stones, another sticks, and others sod and mud to finish the dam; and they would all do his bidding without question. But he took good care not to get any of the dirt on his hands. (New York Evening Post, April 2, 1900)

Chester Arthur's Presidency was predicted by James Russel Webster originally of Perry, New York and then later of Waterloo, New York. A detailed account of this is written here in a self written memorial for James Russel Webster ^[1]. An excerpt from Webster's memorial;

Chester Alan Arthur (c. 1859)

"He first attended the Baptist church in Perry, the pastor there being "Elder Arthur," father of Chester A. Arthur. The latter was then a little boy, and Mr. Webster, once calling at his house, put upon his head of the lad, remarked, "this little boy may yet be President of the United States." Years after, calling at the White House, he related the circumstances to President Arthur, who replied that he well remembered the incident although the name of the man who thus predicted his future had long since passed from his memory; then standing up he added. "You may place your hand upon my head again."

Arthur attended public schools and later attended Union College in Schenectady, New York. There he became a member of Psi Upsilon, North America's fifth oldest college fraternity, and graduated in 1848.

Pre-political career

Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur

Arthur became principal of North Pownal Academy in North Pownal, Vermont in 1851. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. Arthur commenced practice in New York City, where he supported equal rights for blacks who objected to the racial segregation of city transportation. He also took an active part in the reorganization of the state militia.

Arthur married Ellen "Nell" Lewis Herndon^[2] on October 25, 1859. She was the only child of Elizabeth Hansbrough and Captain William Lewis Herndon USN. She was a favorite niece of Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN of the United States Naval Observatory where her father had worked.

In 1860, Chester Arthur and "Nell" had a son, William Lewis Herndon Arthur, who was named after Ellen's father. This son died at age two of a brain disease. Another son, Chester Alan Arthur II, was born in 1864, and a girl, named Ellen Hansbrough Herndon after her mother, in 1871. Ellen "Nell" Arthur died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880, at the early age of 42, only twenty months before Arthur became President. While in the White House, Arthur would not give anyone the place that would have been his wife's. He asked his sister Mary, the wife of writer John E. McElroy, to assume certain social duties and help care for his daughter. President Arthur also had a memorial to his beloved "Nell"—a stained glass window was installed in St. John's Episcopal Church within view of his office and had the church light it at night so he could look at it. The memorial remains to this day.

During the American Civil War, Arthur served as acting quartermaster general of the state in 1861 and was widely praised for his service. He was later commissioned as inspector general, and appointed quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general and served until 1862. After the war, he resumed the practice of law in New York City. With the help of Arthur's patron and political boss Roscoe Conkling, Arthur was appointed by President Ulysses Grant as Collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878.

This was an extremely lucrative and powerful position at the time, and several of Arthur's predecessors had run afoul of the law while serving as collector. Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur sided with the Stalwarts in the Republican Party, which firmly believed in the spoils system even as it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House but nevertheless staffed it with more employees than it really needed, retaining some for their loyalty as party workers rather than for their skill as public servants.

The 1880 election and vice presidency

uccessor, Rutherford Hayes, attempted to reform the Customs House. He ousted Arthur, who resumed the practice of law in New York City. Conkling and his followers tried to win back power by the nomination of Grant for a third term at the 1880 Republican National Convention, but without success. Grant and James G. Blaine deadlocked, and after 36 ballots, the convention turned to dark horse James A. Garfield, a long time Congressman and General in the Civil War.

Knowing the election would be close, Garfield's people began asking a number of Stalwarts if they would accept the second spot. Levi P. Morton, on Conkling's advice, refused, but Arthur accepted, telling his furious leader, "This is a higher honor than I have ever dreamt of attaining. I shall accept!" ^[3] Conkling and his Stalwart supporters reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur as vice president.

Arthur worked hard raising money for his and Garfield's election, but it was still a close contest, with the Garfield-Arthur ticket receiving a nationwide plurality of less than ten thousand votes.

After the election, Conkling began making demands of Garfield as to appointments, and the Vice President-elect supported his longtime patron against his new boss. According to Ira Rutkow's recent biography of Garfield, the new President quickly grew to hate Arthur, and wouldn't even let him into the White House.

On the threshold of office, what have we to expect of him?
In an 1881 Puck cartoon, Vice President Arthur faces the presidential cabinet after President James A. Garfield was fatally wounded by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. On the wall hang three portraits of (left to right) Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore and John Tyler, three other presidents who succeeded to the presidency. A fourth frame hangs next to Johnson with no picture and a question mark underneath meant for Arthur's portrait.

After a nasty political battle between Garfield and Conkling which resulted in the latter's resigation, Arthur went back to New York City to wait out the time before Congress resumed in December. Then, on July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau, who shouted: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts... Arthur is president now!!" Arthur, who knew nothing of this in advance, was mortified. (Madmen and Geniuses, Barzman, 1974)

The eighty day crisis

Arthur was cautious; he knew that there were a great number of people who thought that he had something to do with the attempted murder of the President, and didn't want anything to do with succession until it was actually necessary; in fact, he went into seclusion, largely confining himself to his house in New York City and avoiding public appearances. Thus, for two months and 18 days, the country drifted, leaderless, hanging on every reported detail of Garfield's health without much attention to the business of government. On September 19, Garfield died and Arthur succeeded to the Presidency.

Presidency 1881-1885

Assumption of office

Arthur being administered the oath of office as President by Judge John R. Brady at his home in New York City after President Garfield's death, September 20, 1881.

President Arthur took the oath of office twice. The first time was just past midnight at his Lexington Avenue residence on September 20th by New York Supreme Court justice John R. Brady; the second time was upon his return to Washington two days later.

Policies

Arthur was aware of the factions and rivalries of the Republican Party, as well as the controversies of cronyism versus civil service reform. Entering the presidency under suspicion of conspiring to assassinate his predecessor, Arthur believed that the only way to garner the nation's approval — and to heal the breaches in American politics that had killed a President — was to be independent from both factions. Arthur determined to go his own way once in the White House.

He became a man of fashion in his manner of dress and in his associates; he was often seen with the elite of Washington, D.C., New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwarts, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Avoiding old political cronies and alienating his old mentor Conkling, public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President.

In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission which stopped big businesses from giving out rebates and pooling with other companies, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a "classified system" that made certain government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees against removal for political reasons.

Chester A. Arthur official White House portrait

Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883 anyway. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between the two parties.

The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and the mentally ill. Congress also suspended Chinese immigration for ten years with the Chinese Exclusion Act, later making the restriction permanent.

In 1884, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington at President Arthur's behest. This established the Greenwich Meridian which is still in use today.

President Arthur demonstrated that he was above not only factions within the Republican Party, but possibly the party itself. Perhaps, in part, he felt able to do this because of the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from Bright's Disease, a fatal kidney disease. This accounted for his failure to aggressively seek the Republican nomination for President in 1884. Nevertheless, Arthur was the last incumbent President to submit his name for renomination and fail to obtain it. Arthur sought a full term as President in 1884, but lost the Republican party's presidential nomination to former Speaker of the House and Secretary of State James G. Blaine of Maine. Blaine, however, lost the election to Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York.

Social and personal life

Arthur is remembered as one of the most society-conscious presidents, earning the nickname "the Gentleman Boss" for his style of dress and courtly manner. Professors Marina Margaret Heiss at the University of Viriginia lists Arthur as an example of an INTJ personality.^[4]

Upon taking office, Arthur did not move into the White House immediately. He insisted upon its redecoration and had 24 wagonloads of furniture, some including pieces dating back to John Adams' term, carted away and sold at public auction. Former president Rutherford B. Hayes bought two wagonloads of furniture which today are at his home Spiegel Grove. Arthur then commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany to replace them with new pieces. A famous designer now best-known for his stained glass, Tiffany was among the foremost designers of the day.^[5]

Arthur was a fisherman who belonged to the Restigouche Salmon Club and once reportedly caught an 80-pound bass off the coast of Rhode Island.

Widely popular by the end of his presidency, four young women (ignorant of Arthur's pronouncement that he would never marry again) proposed to him on the day he left office. He was sometimes called "Elegant Arthur" for his commitment to fashionable attire and was said to have "looked like a president." He reportedly kept 80 pairs of pants in his wardrobe and changed pants several times a day. He was called "Chet" by family and friends, and by his middle name, with the stress on the second syllable ("Al-AN").

Post presidency

Arthur's grave at Albany Rural Cemetery.

Arthur served as President through March 4, 1885. Upon leaving office, he returned to New York City, where he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 5:10 a.m. on Thursday, November 18, 1886, at the age of 57. Arthur suffered from Bright's disease, and his death was most likely related to a history of hypertension.

His post presidency was the second shortest, longer only than that of James Polk (excluding presidents who died in office).

Chester was buried next to Ellen in the Arthur family plot in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York, in a large sarcophagus on a large corner plot that contains the graves of many of his family members and ancestors.