In 2005, President Bush signed the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizing the United States Mint to strike $1 coins honoring America’s Presidents in the order in which they served. This coin, the 23rd in the Presidential $1 Coin Program, honors President Benjamin Harrison.
Grandson of former President William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison was born in 1833 on a farm by the Ohio River below Cincinnati.
After the Civil War, during which Harrison served as colonel of the 70th Volunteer Infantry, he enhanced his reputation as a lawyer. In the 1880s, he served in the U.S. Senate, where he championed American Indians, homesteaders and Civil War veterans. In the presidential election of 1888, he received 100,000 fewer popular votes than President Cleveland but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168.
As President, Harrison was proud of his vigorous foreign policy. The first Pan-American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan-American Union. At the end of his administration, Harrison submitted a treaty to the Senate to annex Hawaii, but his successor withdrew it. He was re-nominated by his party in 1892 but lost to Grover Cleveland, who became the only President in U.S. history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. A dignified elder statesman, he died in 1901.
