Harrison, BENJAMIN, twenty-third president of the United States, was born at North Bend, Hamilton county, Ohio, August 20, 1833. His father, the third son of President William Henry Harrison, was a small farmer, who, however, managed to educate his nine children; and Harrison, after two years at a school called Farmer's College, near Cincinnati, was transferred to Miami University, at Oxford, Ohio, where he graduated in 1852. In 1854 he settled as a lawyer in Indianapolis, where his first earnings were as a crier of the Federal court. In a short time he was in full practice in all the courts. In 1860 he became candidate for supreme court reporter of Indiana, by nomination of the Republican party, and was elected. Entering the Union army pending the term, the office was declared vacant. In 1864 his party re-elected him with a largely increased majority. He remained in military service, however, and only resumed the reportership upon muster-out at the end of the war. He began his military career in 1862 by raising a company, in which his first commission was of second-lieutenant. He was then made colonel of the 70th Regiment Indiana Volunteers, and ordered to Kentucky. Carrying his studious habits into camp, he became a proficient drill-master. As colonel, sometimes brigade-commander, in the first division 11th Army Corps, he participated in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, distinguishing himself in the battles of Resaca and Peach Tree Creek, and he was in 1865 commissioned brevet-brigadier-general. He also took part in the battle of Nashville, under Thomas, in December 1864.
Returning to the law in Indiana, Harrison declined a third nomination as supreme court reporter. He took an active part in the Grant campaigns of 1868 and 1872, and was nominated for the governorship of the state in 1876; but, though he polled 2000 votes more than the rest of his party, he was defeated. Two years later he presided over the State Convention, and in 1880 he appeared in the Chicago National Convention as chairman of his state delegation. He then declined the use of his name for the presidential nomination; and he afterwards also declined a seat in the cabinet of President Garfield. In 1884 he was again delegate-at-large, and was discussed as a possible nominee for the presidency. In 1880 he was elected United States senator from Indiana; but at the end of his term of six years he was defeated for re-election, and returned to his law office. At the National Republican Convention (1888) in Chicago Harrison received the presidential nomination; President Cleveland being the Democratic nominee. Harrison's election signified the triumph of protection; but in 1892 he was defeated by Mr Cleveland. He was chief counsel for Venezuela in the boundary dispute with British Guiana. See the Life by Lew Wallace (1888), and UNITED STATES, p. 389.