ILLUSTRATIONS. GENERAL BENJAMIN HARRISON (Steel)....... ....Frontispiece. CARPENTERS' HALL AND STATE HOUSE, PHIladelphia............ WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.. ........PAGE 25 TIPPECANOE PROCESSION RIVER VIEW AT "SYMMES' PURCHASE".. IDEAL TIPPECANOE LOG-CABIN............. HARRISON'S FIRST HOME IN INDIANAPOLIS....... OFF FOR THE FRONT...... THE BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS..... CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY. EVERY citizen is free to contend for honor and preferment in our country, and the contention is perpetual. A peculiarity of the struggle is that the whole people witness the start, the effort, and the outcome. When at length a contestant emerges from the throng, ready to lay his hand upon one of the great prizes, every spectator demands to know all there is knowable of him. The subject of this sketch has just reached that point in a career for the Presidency, and it is to at least partially gratify the hunger of the multitude for information of the man that these pages are respectfully offered them. There shall never be a perfect biography that does not tell the reader who its subject is, and what, aside from his name and the place and date of his birth. That shall be the best biography which gives us the incidents of his life, and at the same time an insight into his nature and character; so that, when we have risen from the reading, it will be possible to say and believe we know him in and out, and that he is worthy or unworthy our respect and confidence. |