Benjamin Harrison and Thomas Marshall

In the spring of 1873 Thomas R. Marshall, a student at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, found himself in deep trouble. Working as an editor for the college’s bimonthly newspaper, The Geyser, Marshall had written an article making fun of a visiting temperance speaker and teacher of elocution named Ida Leggett. He had accused the married woman of playing “footsie” (flirting) under a table with students living at a boardinghouse where she was staying.

Writing in a period when journalism, he admitted, was “in its incipient stage,” Marshall played to his readers’ basic instincts with his article. Featured in the student newspaper’s March 19, 1873, issue, his piece claimed that Leggett had “shown her cloven foot at last. Though the cause of her departure was kept a secret for several days, it leaked out at last. She was caught tramping on the feet of the boys boarding at her house and was immediately kicked out. We have nothing to say, however, as she gave us the worth of our money in her entertainments.”

Outraged by what she had read, Leggett hired a respected local lawyer, Lew Wallace, a Civil War general and future best-selling author and diplomat, to bring a lawsuit against Marshall and the rest of the Geyser staff for libel. She sought $20,000 in damages. Realizing the trouble he was in, Marshall, upon the urging of his fellow codefendants, sought legal aid. He traveled to Indianapolis to ask for advice from an attorney praised as having “no superior at the bar of Indiana”—Benjamin Harrison.

Like Wallace, Harrison had risen to the rank of general in the Union army and had also earned a reputation as a fine public speaker on behalf of the Republican Party after the war. “Some speakers had more fire, and some more magnetism, but few were more graceful and convincing in their motive,” said Reverend Ferdinand Cowle Iglehart in an magazine article on Harrison. GOP (“Grand Old Party”) leaders held great expectations for Harrison’s future in politics.

Marshall met with Harrison, showed him the article, and asked his opinion about whether or not it might be libelous. Remembering the meeting years later in his autobiography, Marshall said that Harrison carefully read the piece, looked up at him, and said: “Young man, if I had an enemy that I wanted to libel and could hire you to look after the job, I would not hunt further.”

A shaken Marshall explained to Harrison that he had no hope of raising 20,000 cents, let alone $20,000, if he lost the case. “He said I would have to justify the article by proof of the truth of what was written or have a big judgment which some time I would have to pay or have it everlastingly hanging over my head,” Marshall recalled. Luckily for the Wabash student, Harrison agreed to represent the young journalists. When the case was heard in New York, and after initial testimony had been given, Leggett withdrew her lawsuit.

A relieved Marshall, who later rose to prominence in the Democratic Party, serving as Indiana governor and for two terms as vice president under Woodrow Wilson, asked Harrison what he owed him for his services. He added that he could write his father to secure the necessary funds to pay the lawyer. “Not a cent,” Harrison responded. “I wouldn’t think of taking anything from you. You have been foolish boys and this will be a great lesson to you. Never hereafter in life charge anybody with wrongdoing or crime that you do not have in your hands undoubted proof that it is true before you make the charge, and even then don’t make it unless you are quite satisfied that by the making of it you are either defending yourself or performing some real public service.”

Although admired for his faith and honesty, Harrison sometimes was viewed by others as reserved and aloof, even to his supporters, while his opponents referred to him as a “human iceberg.” A close associate, William H. H. Miller, who served as attorney general in his administration, said Harrison was not “a cordial man” with anybody except his close friends. Often, even when dispensing favors, Harrison caused ill feelings with his brusque behavior, and seemed to possess a talent for “doing the right thing in the wrong way.” On one occasion, a person close to the president warned a visitor before meeting with Harrison, “Don’t feel insulted by anything he may do or say . . . it is only his way.” A historian of his administration described Harrison’s manner perfectly when he noted that he “preferred directness, simplicity, and unusual frankness; and he unnecessarily made enemies in the process.”

One of Harrison’s Republican friends noted that if Harrison spoke to a crowd of 10,000 his oratorical skills could make everyone in the audience his friend, but “if he were introduced to each of them afterward each would depart his enemy.” Another Republican, Chauncey Depew, said Harrison’s stiff personal manner was due to the fact that his career had been “one of battle, from his early struggles to his triumphant success.”

In his dealings with the press, Harrison could also seem remote. Hilton U. Brown, who covered Harrison for the Indianapolis News, recalled that the general “never toadied nor flattered and could be flatfooted and hardheaded to the press when he thought best to decline to be interviewed, or to venture random or casual remarks.” Brown added that when agreeing to give remarks “off the record,” Harrison’s manner changed dramatically, and he could be “as gracious as any man in public life of that period.” Also, the newspaperman observed, Harrison, when dealing with former comrades in arms, fellow church members, and to those he knew from his college days, “he revealed a genuine warmth of sentiment not suspected by some of his contemporaries. Life to him was full of purpose and he could not be deflected from an objective: but there were ‘hours of ease’ when he paid homage to his friends and to friendship.”

Harrison knew he could be viewed as unsympathetic, even by his supporters. On one occasion, several years before he became president, he was on his way to give a political speech in an Indiana city. Before leaving Indianapolis, his friend, John C. New, one of the few people who called him by his first name, advised him: “Now Ben. 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 after his return, Harrison saw New and said to him: “John, I tried it, but I failed. I’ll never try again. I must be myself.”

Marshall, known for having a well-developed sense of humor, believed that the reports of Harrison having a “cold-blooded nature” were unfounded. Often, Harrison was “too busy thinking, reasoning, seeking the right, to be a light-hearted man such as I am,”  Marshall recalled. Whatever anyone might have thought of him, Marshall believed that Harrison’s “heart beat true to all the finer and nobler instincts of our nature.”