By Edwin Cooney
His full name was Benjamin Harrison, but the men who served
under him in the 70th Regiment of the Indiana volunteers during the
Civil War called him “Little Ben.”
After all, he stood only five feet six inches tall. He had blonde hair, blue eyes, and wore
a full beard by the time he was elected our twenty-third president in 1888.
Benjamin Harrison comes to mind this day, not so much
because today, August 20th, 2012, marks the 179th
anniversary of his 1833 birth, but because he became president during the
brightest era of the Republican Party.
In the seventy-two years that passed between Abraham Lincoln's
Inauguration in 1861 and Franklin Roosevelt's Inauguration in 1933, we had only
two Democratic Presidents: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. Cleveland served between 1885 and 1889
and again from 1893 to 1897. The
man who defeated Grover Cleveland in his bid for re-election in 1888 was in
turn defeated by Cleveland in 1892. That man was our "Little Ben.”
A few years back an opinion piece was circulated by a writer
urging you and me to be outraged at the amount of money “politicians” were
asking the taxpayers to pay for the reconstruction of New Orleans in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina in late August of 2005. The proposed cost to the American taxpayer was 250 billion
dollars.
To dramatize opposition to the New Orleans restoration price
tag, this commentator invited you and me to grasp the meaning of a billion
dollars. This beleaguered author
went on to assert that a billion seconds ago it was 1959, a billion minutes ago
Christ walked the earth and a billion hours ago humanity still lived in caves.
Next, the author got to the root of the matter. As you might
guess, the matter was taxes. A score or more of taxes were listed that didn’t
exist a mere hundred years ago but that today make life so miserable --
especially for those who can afford to pay them. (That last bit was my own commentary!)
The root of all this grief, this able writer insisted, was
the advent of the Politician. What
this author doesn’t point out is that a cash economy is fairly new in the
history of human kind. A billion
is a thousand million and, as I see it, is easily comprehendible. Of course, Republicans traditionally
wax eloquent in their opposition to government spending, but I’ve never heard a
Republican (or anyone else for that matter) complaining about the private
accumulation of millions or even billions of dollars -- especially when they are
in tax-exempt foreign bank accounts!
I can only guess that this person in 2012 is a devout Tea
Party member. What’s ironic is the
connection between the billion dollar figure and ideological conservatives of
today, most of whom reside in the Republican Party. The first Congress to spend
a billion dollars was the Fifty-first Congress -- which legislated between 1889
and 1891 -- and the first President to sign those billion dollar congressional
appropriations was our twenty-third president Benjamin Harrison who led us
between 1889 and 1893.
President Harrison (who in many ways was very conservative)
had a pet project, disability benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their
families. After all, he’d survived
the Battles of Nashville, Kennesaw Mountain, and Peachtree Creek. He was there
when Sherman took Atlanta on Thursday, September 1st, 1864. He had heard grown men scream in sudden
pain, moan in lingering agony and die crying for mama. To say the Treasury didn’t matter to
“Little Ben” would be silly. Some things mattered more than money, however, even
to a man like Benjamin Harrison who defended the rights and dignity of the
rich. So, Ben was the “politician” who approved America’s first billion dollar
budget,
So, what of politicians? Do we need them?
Of course we do! Could
there be representative government without politicians? I defy anyone to tell me that there can
be freedom without politicians! If
you can construct a free society free of politics and politicians, I want to
hear from you as soon as you have the time to write me.
As things turned out for Benjamin Harrison, it was all
downhill after the midterm elections of 1890. Although they retained the Senate, the Republicans lost the
House of Representatives to the Democrats that year. In 1892, Grover Cleveland came back to defeat “little Ben”
for reelection.
Ben Harrison was a man of stark contrasts. He was a brilliant lawyer and a dynamic
public speaker. However, he found
it difficult to relate to individuals he didn’t know. It was said of him:
as hot and muggy as summers are in D.C., if you’re going to the
President’s mansion in August to shake hands with President Harrison, wear an
overcoat. You’ll need it!
On Inauguration Day 1893, Harrison was sorry to turn the
government over to Grover Cleveland, but his personal grief was due to the loss
of his beloved wife Caroline ("Carrie”) who had died the previous October
25th of a sudden bout of tuberculosis exactly two weeks before
election day. When he remarried in
April 1896, he earned the permanent estrangement of his son Russell and his
daughter Mary. His new bride, Mary
(Lord) Dimmick, was his first wife Carrie’s niece and the exact age of his 38
year-old daughter.
Ben Harrison came from a rich political heritage. His paternal
great grandfather, Benjamin Harrison, was a signer of the Declaration of
Independence. His grandfather,
William Henry Harrison, was the first member of the Whig party to be elected
president. Grandfather William was
president for only thirty-one days, March 4th to April 4th
1841, before becoming the first president to die in office. Ben’s father, John Scott Harrison, was
an anti-slavery Whig member of Congress from Ohio between 1853 and 1857. Father John gave up politics because he
hated back room deals. I can’t
help but wonder if “Little Ben” would have been a better president if he’d been
a better politician!
What say you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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