Benjamin Harrison
Twenty-third President of the United States
1889-1893
Personal information
Inaugural Address
Term in office
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Personal Information
Birthplace: North Bend, Ohio
Birthdate: August 20, 1833
Death Place: Indianapolis, Indiana
Death date: March 13, 1901
Prior Occupation: Laywer
Party: Republican
First Wife: Caroline Lavinia Scott
Second Wife: Mary Scott Lord Dimmick
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Inaugural Address

It is not a departure, but a return that we have witnessed. The protective policy had then its opponents. The argument was made, as now, that its benefits inured to particular classes or sections. If the question became in any sense, or at any time, sectional, it was only because slavery existed in some of the States. But for this there was no reason why the cotton producing States should not have led or walked abreast with the New England States in the production of cotton fabrics. There was this reason only why the States that divide with Pennsylvania the mineral treasures of the great southeastern and central mountain ranges should have been so tardy in bringing to the smelting furnace and the mill the coal and iron from their near opposing hillsides. Mill fires were lighted at the funeral pyre of slavery. The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth as well as in the sky; men were made free and material things became our better servants.

shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to hang upon the skirts of progress? How long will those who rejoice that slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate the incapacities it puts upon these communities? I look hopefully to the continuance of our protective system and to the consequent development of manufacturing and mining enterprises in the States hitherto wholly given to agriculture as a potent influence in the perfect unification of our people. the men who have invested their capital in these enterprises, the farmers who have felt the benefit of their neighborhood, and the men who work in shop or field will not fail to find and defend a community of interest. Is it not quite possible that the farmers and the promoters of the great mining and manufacturing enterprises which have recently been established in the south may yet find that the free ballot of the workingman, without distinction of race, is needed for their defense as well as for his own? I do not doubt that if these men in the South who now accept the tariff views of Clay and the constitutional expositions of Webster would courageously avow and defend their real convictions they would not find it difficult, by friendly instruction and cooperation, to make the black man their efficient and safe ally, not only in establishing correct principles in our national administration, but in preserving for their local communities the benefits of social order and economical and honest government. At least until the good offices of kindness and education have been fairly tried the contrary conclusion cannot be plausibly urged.

If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal obligations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations. The community that by concert, open or secret, among its citizens, denies to a portion of its members their plain rights under the law, has severed the only safe bond of social order and prosperity. the evil works, from a bad center, both ways. It demoralizes those who practice it, and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector. the man in whose breast that faith has been darkened is naturally the subject of dangerous and uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no higher motive than the selfishness that prompts them, may well stop and inquire what is to be the end of this. An unlawful expedient can not become a permanent condition of government. If the educated and influential classes in a community either practice or connive at the systematic violation of laws that seem to them to cross their convenience, what can they expect when the lesson that convenience or a supposed class interest is a sufficient cause for lawlessness has been well learned by the ignorant classes? A community where law is the rule of conduct, and where courts, not mobs, execute its penalties, is the only attractive field for business investments and honest labor.

We have sought to dominate or to absorb any of our weaker stable governments, resting upon the consent of their own people. We have a clear right to expect, therefore, that no European government will seek to establish colonial dependencies upon the territory of these independent American States. That which a sense of justice restrains us from seeking they may be reasonably expected willingly to forego.

It must be assumed, however, that our interests are so exclusively American that our entire inattention to any events that may transpire elsewhere can be taken for granted. Our citizens domiciled for purposes of trade in all countries and in many of the islands of the sea demand and will have adequate care in their personal and commercial rights. The necessities of our navy require convenient coaling stations and dock and harbor privileges. These and other trading privileges we will feel free to obtain only by means that do not in any degree partake of coercion, however feeble the Government from which we ask such concessions. But having fairly obtained them by methods, and for purposes entirely consistent with the most friendly disposition toward all other powers, our consent will be necessary to any modification or impairment of the concession.

We shall neither fail to respect the flag of any friendly nation or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact the like treatment for our own. Calmness, justice, and consideration should characterize our diplomacy. The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of a friendly arbitration, in proper cases, should be adequate to the peaceful adjustment of all international difficulties. By such methods we will make our constitution to the world's peace, which no other nation values more highly, and avoid the opprobrium which must fall upon the nation that ruthlessly breaks it.

Heads of departments, bureaus, and all other public officers having any duty connected therewith, will be expected to enforce the civil service law fully and without evasion. Beyond this obvious duty I hope to so something more to advance the reform of the civil service. The ideal, or even my own ideal, I shall probably not attain. Retrospect will be a safer basis of judgment than promises. We shall not, however, I am sure, be able to put our civil service upon a nonpartisan basis until we have secured an incumbency that fair minded men of the opposition will approve for impartiality and integrity. As the number of such in the civil list is increased removals from office will diminish.

The constitution of a sufficient number of modern war ships and of their necessary armament should progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and workmanship. The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and seaman have many times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of naval list. That they will again do so upon occasion I do not doubt; but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal combat.

Our pension law should give more adequate and discriminating relief to the Union soldiers and sailors and to their widows and orphans. Such occasions as this should remind us that we owe everything to their valor and sacrifice.

I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in frequent ambush along our path, but we have uncovered and vanquished them all. Passion has swept some of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent methods without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the necessary units of all our communities, and the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect. We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation which our next census will make of the swift development of the great resources of some of the States. Each State will bring its generous contribution to the great aggregate of the nation's increase. And when the harvest from the fields, the cattle from the hills, and the ores of the earth shall have been weighed, counted, and valued, we will turn from them all to crown with the highest honor the State that has most promoted education, virtue, justice, and patriotism among the people.

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Term: 1889 - 1893
Vice President: Levi P. Morton
-1889-
Inaugurated as president (March)
Berlin Conference - Samoan affairs (April)
Theodore Roosevelt becomes Civil Service Commissioner (May)
North and South Dakota become states 39 and 40 (November)
Montana becomes state 41 (November)
Washington becomes state 42 (November)
-1890-
Pension Bill - service pensions for minors, dependent parents, widows of soldiers (June)
Sherman Anti-Trust Act (July)
Idaho becomes state 43 (July)
Wyoming becomes state 44 (July)
-1891-
First president to travel the United States and make impromptu speeches to citizens (May)
-1892-
Small conflict with Chile (January)
Strike in Idaho - federal troops restore order (July)
Grover Cleveland defeats Benjamin Harrison in election (November)
-1893-
Hawaiian revolt (January)
Attends Gover Cleaveland's inauguration (March)

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