Benjamin Harrison Historical Background

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Name: Benjamin Harrison Born: August 20, 1833, (North Bend) Died: March 13, 1901, (Indianapolis) President Number: 23 (March 4, 1889 – March 4, 1893) Republican Defeated Opponents: Political Background: Benjamin Harrison came from a family with many years of political service. His great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. William Henry Harrison, Benjamin's grandfather, was the first governor of the Indiana Territory, congressman, senator, and the ninth president of the United States. His father, John Scott Harrison, was a representative from the State of Ohio. The Harrison family record of service to the United States government is matched by few other families throughout history. Born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Ohio, Harrison spent his youth on his grandfather's estate. He received his education at Farmers' College and then attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Upon graduating…show more content…
For the first sixty years of the twentieth century, historians believed that McKinley had been a weak President pressured into the war with Spain by popular passions and a nationalistic press. Most interpretations held that McKinley's weakness extended to the domestic political arena. McKinley was a managed President, so the thinking went, a chief executive handled by his political cronies, especially Mark Hanna. McKinley, moreover, suffered in comparison to his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, whom historians thought possessed—often in abundance—many of the characteristics that McKinley lacked. In the 1960s, a new assessment of McKinley emerged, however. Revisionist historians, suspicious of politicians generally and critical of American imperialism, began to portray McKinley as a cunning and manipulative leader bent on expanding American influence in the
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