One day in the fall of 1856, when Benjamin Harrison was hard at work in his law office, some Republican friends dropped by and asked him to speak at a political gathering in the street outside. Harrison refused. He needed time, he said, to prepare a speech. But his friends persisted; and when he continued to say no, they simply picked him up, carried him downstairs, and deposited him on a box in front of the crowd. Then one of them introduced him grandiloquently as the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Quick as a flash, young Ben cried out: "I want it understood that I am the grandson of nobody. I believe that every man should stand on his own merits." Years later, when he was running for President, he was still exasperated by references to his grandfather; but to no avail. During the 1888 campaign Democratic cartoonists pictured him as a little fellow standing in the shadow of his grandfather's gigantic beaver hat, while the Republicans campaigned for him with the song "Grandfather's Hat Fits Ben!"

Harrison was a Senator from Indiana when he received the Republican nomination for President in 1888. The Des Moines Register praised him as "calm, cool, deliberate, polished, candid, dignified and strong," but most people found him something of a cold fish. His handshake, it was said, was "like a wilted petunia." One of Harrison's friends, before introducing some people to him, warned them beforehand: "Don't think he means to insult you; it is his way!" Speaker of the House Thomas B. ("Czar") Reed was invited to "board the Harrison bandwagon" just before the 1888 nomination, but he cried, "You should say 'ice wagon,"' and added: "I never ride in an ice-cart." Still, some people liked Harrison's style. The owner of the boarding house in Washington where Harrison lodged found the Senator's frosty independence a matter for commendation. "You know," he said, "I like ... Harrison, and I'll tell you why. At dinner frequently a group of Senators (whom I shall not name) pass Harrison by without speaking, as though they didn't care a damn for him. But what I liked about Harrison was, that he didn't seem to care a God damn for them."

Harrison was an effective public speaker who could move masses of people with his oratory. In face-to-face encounters, though, he had a way of turning people off. One afternoon several years before he became President, he was leaving Indianapolis to make a campaign speech in another Indiana city, and his friend General John C. New saw him off at the railway station. "Now, Ben," said New as they parted, "I know you'll capture them with your speech, but for God's sake be a human being down there. Mix around a little with the boys after the meeting." A few days later, when the two met again, Harrison confessed: "John, I tried it, but I failed. I'll never try it again. I must be myself." But "being himself" created a hardship for Harrison's campaign workers. On a railroad campaign in Illinois, Harrison made a series of speeches which roused audiences to great enthusiasm. Each time he held a reception afterward, however, people came away, after shaking hands with him, silent and downcast. Noticing this, one of Harrison's supporters began pulling the bell-rope to start the train again the very minute Harrison ended a speech. Chided for rushing Harrison away from each town that way, he explained: "Don't talk to me. I know my business. Benjamin Harrison had the crowd red-hot. I did not want him to freeze it out of them with his hand-shaking."

On occasion, Harrison's cool imperturbability amazed and discomfited his friends and associates. On election eve in November 1888, they were struck by his seeming unconcern when early returns from New York were unfavorable. "Cheer up, everybody," Harrison told them. "This is no life and death affair. I am very happy here in Indianapolis and will continue to be if I'm not elected. Home is a pretty good place." He seemed interested only in Indiana and followed the returns from every Hoosier county with great interest. Toward eleven o'clock, however, he finally said, "This last bulletin settles it. We've got Indiana." And he added; "That's enough for me tonight, then. My own State is for me. I'm going to bed." The next morning a friend who had called at midnight to congratulate him asked him why he had retired so early. "Well," he explained, "I knew that my staying up would not change the result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event."

In December, Senator Stanley M. Quay of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Republican National Committee, went to Indianapolis to congratulate Harrison on his victory and discuss Cabinet selections with him. To his surprise, he found Harrison disposed, "in true Presbyterian fashion (for he was a pious man) to believe that Providence had been on the Republican side." Taking Quay's hand, the President-elect said fervently: "Providence has given us the victory!" "Think of the man!" exclaimed Quay to a journalist friend afterward. "He ought to know that Providence hadn't a damn thing to do with it." Harrison, he added, "would never know how close a number of men were compelled to approach the penitentiary to make him President." Harrison himself was of course incorruptible; he was, in fact, "ugly honest," like Cleveland. But the 1888 election was a close one, and the Democrats charged corruption in the key state of New York, which had gone Republican. When Harrison became President, moreover, he found that he could not name his own Cabinet; his party managers "had sold out every place to pay the election expenses."

Harrison's Presidency was famous mainly for high tariffs, a Treasury surplus, and lavish spending by Congress on veterans' pensions and special-interest projects. When the Democrats criticized what they called the "Billion Dollar Congress," Speaker Reed retorted: "This is a billion-dollar country!" Harrison's reputation for unapproachability continued undiminished during his four years in the White House. "You may be interested in knowing that we have one of the smallest Presidents the United States has ever known," Walter Wellman of the Chicago Tribune told Judge Walter Q. Gresham. "He is narrow, unresponsive and, oh, so cold! ...There are bitter complaints..... Senators call and say their say to him, and he stands silent..... As one Senator says: 'It's like talking to a hitching post!'" Senator Thomas Platt called Harrison the "White House Iceberg." "Outside the White House and at a dinner," said Platt, "he could be a courtly gentleman. Inside the Executive Mansion, in his reception of those who solicited official appointments, he was as glacial as a Siberian stripped of his furs. During and after an interview, if one could secure it, one felt even in torrid weather like pulling on his winter flannels, galoshes, overcoat, mitts and earlaps."

One day Captain A. H. Reed, a one-armed Civil War veteran, visited Harrison to talk about appointments in the third Minnesota district. No sooner had he commenced discussing problems there than the President cut him off. "Oh, I know all about the political conditions up there," Harrison told him impatiently: "much better than you." "Do you mean to tell me," asked Reed incredulously, "that you know more about the political conditions in my home district where I have lived all my life than I do?" "Certainly," replied Harrison. "You have only the narrow personal interest view and do not comprehend the real situation." "Then I have nothing more to say," exclaimed Reed. "Good day, Mr. President." And he stalked out of the room and told his friends outside: "He's a damned icicle." Everyone agreed: Harrison had a knack for "doing the right thing in the wrong way."

Democratic cartoonists depicted "little Ben" (he was only five feet six inches tall) as a tiny pigmy standing in the shadow of his grandfather's gigantic hat. Some Republicans also questioned his stature. One man went day after day to see him, and day after day the President's secretary got rid of him on one pretext or another. Finally the frustrated office-seeker went to the White House determined not to be turned away again. To his peremptory demand that he see the President, the secretary insisted, "I'm sorry, sir, but the President cannot be seen." "Can't be seen!" exclaimed the enraged visitor. "My God! Has he got as small as that?"

Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 183-87.