The illness that took the life of former President Benjam Harrison came as a surprise to him and his family. Harrison
had seemed "perfectly well" on the morning of March 6, 1901, took his usual
walk, and told his wife Mary that he planned on going to the law library the
next day to research a case he expected to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On the
morning of March 7, the couple had breakfast and Harrison had gone up to his
library to finish reading the morning newspaper. About a half-hour later, she
heard her husband call out to her "in rather a startled voice." Mary
tracked her husband down in his library, where she found him sitting before a
fire. "I am having a dreadful chill," he told her. At once Mary gave
him some quinine and whiskey and went to telephone a doctor (Doctor Henry
Jameson), who arrived in just fifteen minutes.
Jameson
immediately gave Harrison some nitroglycerin, and upon hearing what he had been
given, the former president said, "the greatest heart stimulant!" As
Mary left the room she heard him say, "I think, this is very
serious." Alarmed, Mary wanted Harrison to retire to bed, but he said,
"not yet." The doctor remained for a while, then gave Mary directions
and said he would return in a short time, telling her that as soon as she could
she should put Harrison to bed.
Harrison
went to bed. "For a few hours he was easy, and I lay by his side
smoothing his head, as he so loved to have it," Mary wrote, "and he
talked to me in a loving way, and those two hours of precious memories I would
not part with for anything in this world."
"I
was most anxious," Mary wrote her daughter Elizabeth, "but never
thought then that this was the beginning of a fatal illness which would robe me
of my beloved one." Dr. Jameson returned in a couple of hours and was at
the home several times that day.
On the
afternoon of March 7 Harrison complained of a pain in his side, and the doctor
told Mary it was "intercostal neuralgia. All afternoon and night I made
and kept on flaxseed poultices, but it was only temporary relief."
A Doctor
Dorsey came to sleep at the Harrison home in case he might be needed, but
"this was only a precaution," said Mary, "as I felt, I wished a
doctor at hand." Dorsey was not needed during the night, and with Harrison
no worse the next morning, Dorsey left for his office.
Shortly
after Dorsey left, however, the pain in Harrison's side grew worse, and Mary
sent for Doctor Jameson, who came and gave the former president a shot and
stayed until the pain was relieved.
The
doctors seemed to fear that Harrison suffered from pneumonia from the
beginning. Jameson asked Mary if she wanted to have a nurse on hand, and she
declined. Hearing this, Harrison said, "if it does not wear you out--dear,
I do not want to do that!" Mary responded that it would not tire her out,
"I will take care of you," and so she did. However, on Friday, March
8, she realized she needed assistance and told the doctor to get a nurse; she
arrived Friday night.
Although
Harrison's pain in the side had disappeared, his left lung became affected,
said Mary, and from that time she became "very, very anxious. . . . It
seemed as if I could not stand it. I could not believe that God would take him
from you and me who loved him so."
As
news broke that Harrison had been struck ill, concerned citizens rallied to
provide treatments for his "grippe" (influenza) and neuralgia as he
lay bedridden at his Indianapolis home.
Private
William Butler of New York wrote that instead of staying in bed, Harrison
should "get a quart can of tomatoes and stew them in a frying pan"
and eat as much as he could, salted to suit his taste, along with a slice of
bread. Butler added: "I cook a pound of the prunes each day and eat a few
every time I look at them after they are cooked."
Chris
Metz of New York said he had suffered from neuralgia and nothing could give him
relief except "hot water, drawing it up through the nose, Taking it up
with both hands as hot as I could bear it, changing the water to keep it the
same temperature."
Mrs.
A. L. Laimbeer of New York wrote that her treatment involved flannel,
"wrung out of the hot, or very hot, water, placed over the lungs, changed
every fifteen minutes. Have the flannel double-large enough to cover the lungs,
place a dry one over the wet, wring out quite dry. The moisture penetrates and
softens. Then the cough throws off the mucus. Tear up an old soft blanket-is
better than new flannel. Give one cup of milk porridge every hour."
Philo
S. Armstrong of Milford, Ohio, advised taking 6 to 10 onions, chopping them
very fine and mixing them with rye meal and enough vinegar to make a paste,
simmering for 10 minutes. "Apply in cotton bag, to the chest as hot as
patient can stand it, and apply one after another."
A
Chicago man said Harrison's doctor should "blister his lungs with crouting
oil-all over the lungs-lay a linen cloth-dry until it works-then remove dry and
lay over a time-cloth oiled with sweet oil-leave until well. Also, he noted,
"Keep breast covered with pad of cotton and also the back-if this Blister
has 12 hours to work. Please trust to me it will save his life, it will loosen
up his lungs, so he can rise the phlegm that clogs the Lungs. I saved the life
of my son that was dying with Pneumonia-after the Dr. gave him up, by
blistering him."
On
Saturday, March 9, Mary believed another nurse was needed for her stricken
husband, and one arrived on Sunday, March 10. "He talked with me and
seemed sometimes a little better, but his lung did not clear up and the doctors
were anxious," Mary wrote Elizabeth. Elizabeth came into Harrison's
sickroom several times a day to visit her father. Mary recalled that Harrison
would take Elizabeth's hand but he could not talk much. He did always smile at
her and said several times, "I would give $100, if I could take a walk
with you today!"
Despite these suggestions, doctors in attendance thought it best to administer
oxygen to Harrison on Sunday, March 10, and from Sunday evening until a few moments before his
death, Mary recalled, it was given to him almost constantly.
Harrison 's health worsened on Monday evening March 11 and through that night and Tuesday,
March 12, his mind wandered, said Mary, and he talked of public affairs and
about a book he had been reading. Harrison seemed troubled about some public
affairs, and Mary said to him, "dear, don't worry over these things, they
will all come out right. He would rouse himself and say 'I cannot get these
things out of my mind, you do not know how many things are passing through my
mind."
Early
Tuesday morning Mary felt that her husband was much worse, as his breathing was
more difficult and "his nervous condition serious. I broke down and felt
there was not hope. Dr. Jameson felt the disease was progressing and we could
do nothing to arrest it."
At
about noon on March 12 Harrison took his wife's hand and kissed it, "and I
asked him if he knew me, his wife, he answered yes, and from that time he spoke
to no one and did not seem conscious." Harrison died at about 4:45 p.m. on
March 13.
Jameson
said that he had never "seen such courage in a dying man." His
patient's constitution was remarkably strong "for a man of his age, and it
joined with his tremendous will power to retain life in the body. It seemed at
times that by sheer force of mentality the patient was able to shake off the
delirium that was conquering him."
According
to a report in the Indianapolis News, within a few minutes after Harrison's
death was made known, the flags on many downtown buildings were "run down
to halfmast" and by the morning after "this token of respect is
general. Flags so displayed appeared first on the masts of the United States
arsenal, the Federal building, the State House, the court house and were
followed by like tributes of respects from many business houses."
On March 16 pallbearers took Harrison’s
body from his home to lay in state in the rotunda at the Indiana Statehouse and
was visited by thousands of his fellow citizens, including surviving members of
his old Civil War regiment, the Seventieth Indiana.
“There were not many of these
veterans—less than a hundred—but each one stood for a little group lying
somewhere beneath the friendly sod,” reported the Indianapolis Journal. “Doubtless memories of other fallen comrades
than the one upon whose face they looked mingled with those evoked by the sight
of their leader lying pale and cold and majestic in death, for there was not a
dry eye in the group and many a bent form shook with the depth of emotion only
age can feel.”
With President William McKinley in
attendance, funeral services were held the following day at First Presbyterian
Church, with burial to be at Crown Hill Cemetery alongside the grave of his
first wife, Caroline. Also gathered for the services were former members of
Harrison’s cabinet, the ex-president’s family members, and numerous U.S.
senators and state governors. In his proclamation announcing Harrison’s death,
McKinley has praised his fellow Republican for his “extraordinary gifts as administrator and statesman. In public
and in private life he set a shining example for his countrymen.”
Indianapolis
newspaperman Hilton U. Brown served as one of the pallbearers, along with Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, and remembered that they all wore tall, silk hats for the
occasion and Harrison’s body had been “encased in a metallic casket, “very
heavy, as we pallbearers realized in going through the front door of the
General’s house with our burden. But with the aid of the undertaker we
succeeded in reaching the funeral car without incident.”
Brown also had the rare experience of
hearing commentary from Riley, whose only votes he ever cast were said to be
for Harrison, upon the prayer offered at the service by a visiting clergyman—humorous
comments about the minister’s remarks that had his fellow pallbearers “shaken
with dismay and suppressed laughter.”
Hoosiers everywhere mourned the loss of
what then Indiana governor Winfield T. Durbin called the state’s “most
distinguished citizen,” and all public businesses were closed for the day of
Harrison’s funeral and all flags were placed at half-mast.
Among the many tributes published about
the former president, one that stood out was offered by his biographer and
best-selling author Lew Wallace. “He had every quality of greatness—a courage
that was dauntless, foresight almost to prophecy, a mind clear, strong, and of
breadth by nature, strengthened by exercise and constant dealing with subjects
of National import, subjects of world-wide interest,” Wallace said of his
longtime friend. “And of these qualities the people knew, and they drew them to
him as listeners and believers, and in the faith they brought him there was no
mixture of doubt or fear.”
