1868 to the memory of the soldiers who fell in the Mexican War; it has a column of Maryland marble 76 ft. high, which is surmounted by an Italian marble statue of Victory, executed in Rome. At the base of the monument are muskets used by United States soldiers in that war and guns captured at Cerro Gordo. In State Street is the Dauphin County Soldiers’ monument, a shaft 10 ft. sq. at the base and 110 ft. high, with a pyramidal top.
For several years prior to 1902 Harrisburg suffered much from impure water, a bad sewerage system, and poorly paved and dirty streets. In that year, however, a League for Municipal Improvements was formed; in February 1902 a loan of $1,000,000 for municipal improvements was voted, landscape gardeners and sewage engineers were consulted, and a non-partisan mayor was elected, under whom great advances were made in street cleaning and street paving, a new filtration plant was completed, the river front was beautified and protected from flood, sewage was diverted from Paxton Creek, and the development of an extensive park system was undertaken.
Harrisburg’s charitable institutions include a city hospital, a home for the friendless, a children’s industrial home, and a state lunatic hospital (1845). The city is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric. Both coal and iron ore abound in the vicinity, and the city has numerous manufacturing establishments. The value of its factory products in 1905 was $17,146,338 (14.3% more than in 1900), the more important being those of steel works and rolling mills ($4,528,907), blast furnaces, steam railway repair shops, cigar and cigarette factories ($1,258,498), foundries and machine shops ($953,617), boot and shoe factories ($922,568), flouring and grist mills, slaughtering and meat-packing establishments and silk mills.
Harrisburg was named in honour of John Harris, who, upon coming into this region to trade early in the 18th century, was attracted to the site as an easy place at which to ford the Susquehanna, and about 1726 settled here. He was buried in what is now Harris Park, where he erected the first building, a small hut, within the present limits of Harrisburg. In 1753 his son established a ferry over the river, and the place was called Harris’s Ferry until 1785, when the younger Harris laid out the town and named it Harrisburg. In the same year it was made the county-seat of the newly constituted county of Dauphin, and its name was changed to Louisburg; but when, in 1791, it was incorporated as a borough, the present name was again adopted. In 1812, after an effort begun twenty-five years before, it was made the capital of the state; and in 1860 it was chartered as a city. In the summer of 1827, through the persistent efforts of persons most interested in the woollen manufactures of Massachusetts and other New England states to secure legislative aid for that industry, a convention of about 100 delegates—manufacturers, newspaper men and politicians—was held in Harrisburg, and the programme adopted by the convention did much to bring about the passage of the famous high tariff act of 1828.
HARRISMITH, a town in the Orange Free State, 60 m. N.W. by rail of Ladysmith, Natal, and 240 m. N.E. of Bloemfontein via Bethlehem. Pop. (1904) 8300 (including troops 1921). It is built on the banks of the Wilge, 5250 ft. above the sea and some 20 m. W. of the Drakensberg. Three miles N. is the Platberg, a table-shaped mountain rising 2000 ft. above the town, whence an excellent supply of water is derived. The town is well laid out and several of the streets are lined with trees. Most of the houses are built of white stone quarried in the neighbourhood. The Kaffirs, who numbered in 1904 3483, live in a separate location. Harrismith has a dry, bracing climate and enjoys a high reputation in South Africa as a health resort. It serves one of the best-watered and most fertile agricultural and pastoral districts of the province, of which it is the chief eastern trading centre. Wool and hides are the principal exports.
Harrismith was founded in 1849, the site first chosen being on the Elands river, where the small town of Aberfeldig now is; but the advantages of the present site soon became apparent and the settlement was removed. The founders were Sir Harry Smith (after whom the town is named), then governor of Cape Colony, and Major Henry D. Warden, at that time British resident at Bloemfontein, whose name is perpetuated in that of the principal street. In a cave about 2 m. from the town are well-preserved Bushman paintings.
HARRISON, BENJAMIN (1833–1901), the twenty-third president of the United States, was born at North Bend, near Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 20th of August 1833. His great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison of Virginia (c. 1740–1791), was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His grandfather, William Henry Harrison (1773–1841), was ninth president of the United States. His father, John Scott Harrison (1804–1878), represented his district in the national House of Representatives in 1853–1857. Benjamin’s youth was passed upon the ancestral farm, and as opportunity afforded he attended school in the log school-house near his home. He was prepared for college by a private tutor, studied for two years at the Farmers’ College, near Cincinnati, and in 1852 graduated from Miami University, at that time the leading educational institution in the State of Ohio. From his youth he was diligent in his studies and a great reader, and during his college life showed a marked talent for extemporaneous speaking. He pursued the study of law, partly in the office of Bellamy Storer (1798–1875), a leading lawyer and judge of Cincinnati, and in 1853 he was admitted to the bar. At the age of twenty-one he removed to Indianapolis. He had but one acquaintance in the place, the clerk of the federal court, who permitted him to occupy a desk in his office and place at the door his sign as a lawyer. Waiting for professional business, he was content to act as court crier for two dollars and a half a day; but he soon gave indications of his talent, and his studious habits and attention to his cases rapidly brought him clients. Within a few years he took rank among the leading members of the profession at a bar which included some of the ablest lawyers of the country. His legal career was early interrupted by the Civil War. His whole heart was enlisted in the anti-slavery cause, and during the second year of the war he accepted a commission from the governor of the state as second-lieutenant and speedily raised a regiment. He became its colonel, and as such continued in the Union Army until the close of the war, and on the 23rd of January 1865 was breveted a brigadier-general of volunteers for “ability and manifest energy and gallantry in command of brigade.” He participated with his regiment in various engagements during General Don Carlos Buell’s campaigns in Kentucky and Tennessee in 1862 and 1863; took part in General W. T. Sherman’s march on Atlanta in 1864 and in the Nashville campaign of the same year; and was transferred early in 1865 to Sherman’s army in its march through the Carolinas. As the commander of a brigade he served with particular distinction in the battles of Kenesaw Mountain (June 29–July 3, 1864), Peach Tree Creek (20th of July 1864) and Nashville (15th–16th of December 1864).
Allowing for this interval of military service, he applied himself exclusively for twenty-four years to his legal work. The only office he held was that of reporter of the supreme court of Indiana for two terms (1860–1862 and 1864–1868), and this was strictly in the line of his profession. He was a devoted member of the Republican party, but not a politician in the strict sense. Once he became a candidate for governor, in 1876, but his candidature was a forlorn hope, undertaken from a sense of duty after the regular nominee had withdrawn. He took a deep interest in the campaign which resulted in the election of James A. Garfield as president, and was offered by him a place in his cabinet; but this he declined, having been elected a member of the United States Senate, in which he took his seat on the 4th of March 1881. He was chairman of the committee on territories, and took an active part in urging the admission as states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Idaho and Montana, which finally came into the Union during his presidency. He served also on the committee of military and Indian affairs, the committee on foreign relations and others, was prominent in the discussion of matters brought before the Senate from these committees, advocated the enlargement of the navy and the reform of the civil service, and opposed the
