As the presidential election of 1888 loomed ahead, on all counts 
        Governor Benjamin Harrison was a most satisfactory figure. He was from 
        one of the significant states---and later was to strenghten the ticket 
        by picking Levi Morton of New York as running mate. His name was a 
        useful asset, since he was the son of a former Congressman and the 
        grandson of "Old Tippecanoe", President William Henry Harrison. He was 
        well educated; an excellent lawyer with an unusually remunerative 
        practice in Indianapolis; a keen early member of the Republican party; 
        a devout Presbyterian who taught a men's Bible class and superintended 
        a Sunday school; and he was suitably married, to Caroline Lavinia 
        Scott, whom he had met in college and by whom he had two children. 
        Benjamin Harrison had served a term in the U.S. Senate. 
             His Civil War record was impeccable; he ended three years in 
        uniform with a promotion to Brigadier-General "for ability and 
        manifest energy and gallantry".He had already been mentioned as a dark 
        horse candidate in 1880 and 1884. By 1888 his supporters were in a 
        position to nominate him on the first ballot at the party's Chicago 
        convention, and to have him acclaimed on the eighth ballot. 
             When Harrison was inaugurated in March 1889 he began promisingly, 
        at least in foreign affairs. In James G. Blaine he chose a very shrewd 
        Secretary of State; and the appointment was politically helpful. 
        Harrison was keenly interested in America's external development. 
        Under his Administration the nation began to build a modern navy to 
        replace the "ruins and curiosities" of the old dispensation. But 
        executive authority had dwindled since Lincoln's day. Initiative lay 
        with the "millionaires' club" of the Senate. Harrison was typical of 
        the Presidents of the post-Civil War generation in accepting this 
        state of affairs, which in fact he could do little to combat. 
             No one questioned Harrison's intelligence or honesty. He became 
        however a somewhat helpless figure, surrounded by spoilsmen and 
        importunate office-seekers. He made himself vulnerable by giving minor 
        posts to his brother, his father-in-law and various other deserving 
        relations. His Administration, bolstered yet embarrassed by a large 
        treasury surplus, handed out so much money for pensions and public 
        works that the Fifty-First Congress was dubbed the "Billion Dollar 
        Congress". Much of the blame for lax and lavish spending stuck 
        unfairly to Harrison. Men in Washington were apt to denigrate him 
        because they found him devoid of warmth. He was charming among his 
        family and friends, and a remarkably persuasive platform speaker. But 
        with acquaintances or strangers, as had been said of him earlier, he 
        was "as cold as an iceberg". Indiana Democrats nicknamed him 
        "Kid-glove" Harrison. In the opinion of someone what had studied him, 
        "Harrison can make a speech to ten thousand men, and every man of them 
        will go away his friend. Let him meet the same ten thousand men in 
        private, and every one will go away his enemy". 
             Benjamin Harrison might have been more relaxed if the situation 
        had permitted. In common with other Presidents he was continually 
        irked by the "circus atmosphere", the lack of privacy, of White House 
        life. Always stiff in posture---he was likened to a pouter pigeon--- 
        Harrison held himself even more erectly aloof on his daily walk around 
        Lafayette Square, as if to ward off intrusion. "There is my jail", he 
        was heard to say more than once, indicating the neargy White House. 
          Also in common with some other Presidents, he found new sources of 
        happiness after his release from executive bondage. He had not been 
        eager to run again for office in 1892. Defeated by Cleveland, he 
        returned cheerfully home to Indianapolis. He was in demand as lawyer, 
        orator and author. 
             When his wife had become an invalid, her widowed niece, Mary 
        Scott Lord (Mrs. Dimmick), was brought to the White House as official 
        hostess. His wife died in 1892 and, in New York in 1896, Benjamin 
        Harrison married Mary Scott Dimmick, he was 62 and she 37. A year 
        later, and four years before Harrison's death, a daughter was born to 
        them. They created a wonderful tangle of family relationships; their 
        child, for instance, was younger than Harrison's four grandchildren. 
        Harrison gave every indication in his closing years of being happy, 
        alert and productive. 

Source: Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of America.