Charles W. Calhoun

This short work is a part of the American Presidents series of short biographies of our nation’s chief executives.

I wouldn’t recommend the American Presidents series for Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, either Roosevelt or most of the Presidents in the 20th century. However, for many of the 19th century Presidents, 200 pages of material will contain about all the material you need to know about Presidents such as Harrison, Tyler, Buchanan, Arthur, Garfield, Van Buren, Fillmore, Hayes, etc.

Benjamin Harrison was an Indiana attorney who became the Republican nominee for President, immediately following the first term of Grover Cleveland. Harrison was something of a pragmatist and a hard-working reformer who ensured his subsequent re-election defeat by refusing to satisfy the party regulars with sufficient patronage appointments.

Interestingly, there is much discussion throughout the book about his “relationship” with his wife’s niece, Mame Dimmitt, thirty years his junior. It was pretty obvious throughout the book that the relationship was not platonic, though the author never comments on it until Harrison’s wife dies and he marries Dimmitt a short time later.

Harrison is a perfect subject for the series, because 200 pages of material is about all you need to know about the man.… (mais)

The presidential election of 1888 is notable for being one of the few in American history in which the victor won a majority of electoral college votes while losing the popular vote to his opponent. This alone makes the election a curiosity, yet as Charles Calhoun demonstrates in this excellent book, it was so much more than that. For while the presidential election was one in which many of the ongoing political processes of the era were on full display, it also saw the development of new practices by the Republican campaign that presaged the would shortly allow them to dominate presidential contests in the three decades that followed.

Calhoun begins by focusing on the incumbent president, Grover Cleveland. The first Democrat to win election to the White House since James Buchanan, he charted a conservative course involving pursuit a number of traditional Democratic goals, most notably a lower tariff on imported goods. Cleveland's efforts galvanized tariff-supporting Republicans like no other issue could, yet their most prominent prospect, former nominee James G. Blaine, refused to seek the nomination so as to avoid the party schism that contributed to his defeat in 1884. Instead the party nominated former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison as their standard-bearer. His campaign pioneered a number of new approaches, including greater national financing, party coordination with interest groups, and the involvement of the nominee -- all of which combined to allow Harrison to emerge victorious once the votes were tallied.

Concise yet informative, Calhoun's book is a first-rate work of political history. His analysis shatters many of the misconceptions about the politics of the period, with possibly the most notable being his observation that Harrison's "minority victory" was more a reflection of successful suppression of African-American voters in the South than of any flaws in the electoral college process. Such insights make this book an indispensable read for anyone interested in American politics, the history of American elections, or Gilded Age America.… (mais)