Chapter 5

HisWorkswere edited with biography by John Toland in 1700; Toland’s edition, with additions by Birch, appeared in 1747, and again in 1771.Oceanawas reprinted by Henry Morley in 1887. See Dwight inPolitical Science Quarterly(March, 1887). Harrington has often been confused with his cousin Sir James Harrington, a member of the commission which tried Charles I., and afterwards excluded from the acts of pardon.

HARRIOT,orHarriott,THOMAS(1560-1621), English mathematician and astronomer, was born at Oxford in 1560. After studying at St Mary Hall, Oxford, he became tutor to Sir Walter Raleigh, who appointed him in 1585 to the office of geographer to the second expedition to Virginia. Harriot published an account of this expedition in 1588, which was afterwards reprinted in Hakluyt’sVoyages. On his return to England, after an absence of two years, he resumed his mathematical studies, and having made the acquaintance of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, distinguished for his patronage of men of science, he received from him a yearly pension of £120. He died at London on the 2nd of July 1621. A manuscript of Harriot’s entitledEphemeris chrysometriais preserved in Sion College; and hisArtis analyticae praxis ad aequaliones algebraicas resolvendaswas published at London in 1631. His contributions to algebra are treated in the articleAlgebra; Wallis’sHistory of Algebra(1685) may also be consulted. From some papers of Harriot’s, discovered in 1784, it would appear that he had either procured a telescope from Holland, or divined the construction of that instrument, and that he coincided in point of time with Galileo in discovering the spots on the sun’s disk.

See Charles Hutton,Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary(1815), and J. E. Montucla,Histoire des mathématiques(1758).

HARRIS, GEORGE,1st Baron(1746-1829), British general, was the son of the Rev George Harris, curate of Brasted, Kent, and was born on the 18th of March 1746. Educated at Westminster school and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he was commissioned to the Royal Artillery in 1760, transferring to an ensigncy in the 5th foot (Northumberland Fusiliers) in 1762. Three years later he became lieutenant, and in 1771 captain. His first active service was in the American War of Independence, in which he served at Lexington, Bunker Hill (severely wounded) and in every engagement of Howe’s army except one up to November 1778. By this time he had obtained his majority, and his next service was under Major-General Medows at Santa Lucia in 1778-1779, after which his regiment served as marines in Rodney’s fleet. Later in 1779 he was for a time a prisoner of war. Shortly before his promotion to lieutenant-colonel in his regiment (1780) he married. After commanding the 5th in Ireland for some years, he exchanged and went with General Medows to Bombay, and served with that officer in India until 1792, taking part in various battles and engagements, notably Lord Cornwallis’s attack on Seringapatam. In 1794, after a short period of home service, he was again in India. In the same year he became major-general, and in 1796 local lieutenant-general in Madras. Up to 1800 he commanded the troops in the presidency, and for a short time he exercised the civil government as well. In December 1798 he was appointed by Lord Wellesley, the governor-general, to command the field army which was intended to attack Tipu Sahib, and in a few months Harris reduced the Mysore country and stormed the great stronghold of Seringapatam. His success established his reputation as a capable and experienced commander, and its political importance led to his being offered the reward (which he declined) of an Irish peerage. He returned home in 1800, became lieutenant-general in the army the following year, and attained the rank of full general in 1812. In 1815 he was made a peer of the United Kingdom under the title Baron Harris of Seringapatam and Mysore, and of Belmont, Kent. In 1820 he received the G.C.B., and in 1824 the governorship of Dumbarton Castle. Lord Harris died at Belmont in May 1829. He had been colonel of the 73rd Highlanders since 1800.

His descendant, the 4th Baron Harris (b. 1851), best known as a cricketer, was under-secretary for India (1885-1886), under-secretary for war (1886-1889) and governor of Bombay (1890-1895).

See Rt. Hon. S. Lushington,Life of Lord Harris(London, 1840), and the regimental histories of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers and 73rd Highlanders.

HARRIS, JAMES(1709-1780), English grammarian, was born at Salisbury on the 20th of July 1709. He was educated at the grammar school in the Close at Salisbury, and at Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving the university he was entered at Lincoln’s Inn as a student of law, though not intended for the bar. The death of his father in 1733 placed him in possession of an independent fortune and of the house in Salisbury Close. He became a county magistrate, and represented Christchurch in parliament from 1761 till his death, and was comptroller to the queen from 1774 to 1780. He held office under Lord Grenville, retiring with him in 1765. The decided bent of his mind had always been towards the Greek and Latin classics; and to the study of these, especially of Aristotle, he applied himself with unremitting assiduity during a period of fourteen or fifteenyears. He published in 1744 three treatises—on art; on music, painting and poetry; and on happiness. In 1751 appeared the work by which he became best known,Hermes, a philosophical inquiry concerning universal grammar. He also publishedPhilosophical ArrangementsandPhilosophical Inquiries. Harris was a great lover of music, and adapted the words for a selection from Italian and German composers, published by the cathedral organist, James Corfe. He died on the 22nd of December 1780.

His works were collected and published in 1801, by his son, the first earl of Malmesbury, who prefixed a brief biography.

HARRIS, JOEL CHANDLER(1848-1908), American author, was born in Eatonton, Putnam county, Georgia, on the 8th of December 1848. He started as an apprentice to the printer’s trade in the office of theCountryman, a weekly paper published on a plantation not far from his home. He then studied law, and practised for a short time in Forsyth, Ga., but soon took to journalism. He joined the staff of the SavannahDaily Newsin 1871, and in 1876 that of the AtlantaConstitution, of which he was an editor from 1890 to 1901, and in this capacity did much to further the cause of the New South. But his most distinctive contribution to this paper, and to American literature, consisted of his dialect pieces dealing with negro life and folk-lore. His stories are characterized by quaint humour, poetic feeling and homely philosophy; and “Uncle Remus,” the principal character of most of them, is a remarkably vivid and real creation. The first collection of his stories was published in 1880 asUncle Remus: his Songs and his Sayings. Among his later works areNights with Uncle Remus(1883),Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White(1884),Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches(1887),Balaam and His Master and Other Sketches and Stories(1891),Uncle Remus and His Friends(1892),On the Plantation(1892), which is partly autobiographic,Sister Jane(1896), TheChronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann(1899), andThe Tar-Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus(1904). More purely juvenile areDaddy Jake the Runaway and Other Stories(1889),Little Mr Thimblefinger and his Queer Country(1894) and its sequelMr Rabbit at Home(1895),Aaron in the Wildwoods(1897),Plantation Pageants(1899),Told by Uncle Remus(1905), andUncle Remus and Br’er Rabbit(1907). He was one of the compilers of theLife of Henry W. Grady, including hisWritings and Speeches(1890) and wroteStories of Georgia(1896), and Georgia from the Invasion of De Soto to Recent Times (1899). He died in Atlanta on the 3rd of July 1908.

HARRIS, JOHN(c.1666-1719), English writer. He is best known as the editor of theLexicon technicum, orDictionary of the Arts and Sciences(1704), which ranks as the earliest of the long line of English encyclopaedias, and as the compiler of theCollection of Voyages and Travelswhich passes under his name. He was born about 1666, probably in Shropshire, and was a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1684 to 1688. He was presented to the vicarage of Icklesham in Sussex, and subsequently to the rectory of St Thomas, Winchelsea. In 1698 he was entrusted with the delivery of the seventh series of the Boyle lectures—Atheistical Objections against the Being of God and His Attributes fairly considered and fully refuted. Between 1702 and 1704 he delivered at the Marine Coffee House in Birchin Lane the mathematical lectures founded by Sir Charles Cox, and advertised himself as a mathematical tutor at Amen Corner. The friendship of Sir William Cowper, afterwards lord chancellor, secured for him the office of private chaplain, a prebend in Rochester cathedral (1708), and the rectory of the united parishes of St Mildred, Bread Street and St Margaret Moses, in addition to other preferments. He showed himself an ardent supporter of the government, and engaged in a bitter quarrel with the Rev. Charles Humphreys, who afterwards was chaplain to Dr Sacheverel. Harris was one of the early members of the Royal Society, and for a time acted as vice-president. At his death on the 7th of September 1719, he was busy completing an elaborateHistory of Kent. He is said to have died in poverty brought on by his own bad management of his affairs.

HARRIS, THOMAS LAKE(1823-1906), American spiritualistic “prophet,” was born at Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England, on the 15th of May 1823. His parents were Calvinistic Baptists, and very poor. They settled at Utica, New York, when Harris was five years old. When he was about twenty Harris became a Universalist preacher, and then a Swedenborgian. He became associated about 1847 with a spiritualist of indifferent character named Davis. After Davis had been publicly exposed, Harris established a congregation in New York. About 1850 he professed to receive inspirations, and published some long poems. He had the gift of improvisation in a very high degree. About 1859 he preached in London, and is described as a man “with low, black eyebrows, black beard, and sallow countenance.” He was an effective speaker, and his poetry was admired by many; Alfred Austin in his bookThe Poetry of the Periodeven devoted a chapter to Harris. He founded in 1861 a community at Wassaic, New York, and opened a bank and a mill, which he superintended. There he was joined by about sixty converts, including five orthodox clergymen, some Japanese people, some American ladies of position, and especially by Laurence Oliphant (q.v.) with his wife and mother. The community—the Brotherhood of the New Life—decided to settle at the village of Brocton on the shore of Lake Erie. Harris established there a wine-making industry. In reply to the objections of teetotallers he said that the wine prepared by himself was filled with the divine breath so that all noxious influences were neutralized. Harris also built a tavern and strongly advocated the use of tobacco. He exacted complete surrender from his disciples—even the surrender of moral judgment. He taught that God was bi-sexual, and apparently, though not in reality, that the rule of society should be one of married celibacy. He professed to teach his community a change in the mode of respiration which was to be the visible sign of possession by Christ and the seal of immortality. The Oliphants broke away from the restraint about 1881, charging him with robbery and succeeding in getting back from him many thousands of pounds by legal proceedings. But while losing faith in Harris himself, they did not abandon his main teaching. In Laurence Oliphant’s novelMasollamhis view of Harris will be found. Briefly, he held that Harris was originally honest, greatly gifted, and possessed of certain psychical powers. But in the end he came to practise unbridled licence under the loftiest pretensions, made the profession of extreme disinterestedness a cloak to conceal his avarice, and demanded from his followers a blind and supple obedience. Harris in 1876 discontinued for a time public activities, but issued to a secret circle books of verse dwelling mainly on sexual questions. On these his mind ran from the first. In 1891 he announced that his body had been renewed, and that he had discovered the secret of the resuscitation of humanity. He published a book,Lyra triumphalis, dedicated to A. C. Swinburne. He also made a third marriage, and visited England intending to remain there. He was called back by a fire which destroyed large stocks of his wine, and remained in New York till 1903, when he visited Glasgow. His followers believed that he had attained the secret of immortal life on earth, and after his death on the 23rd of March 1906 declared that he was only sleeping. It was three months before it was acknowledged publicly that he was really dead. There can be little or no doubt as to the real character of Harris. His teaching was esoteric in form, but is a thinly veiled attempt to alter the ordering of sexual relations.

The authoritative biography from the side of his disciples is theLifeby A. A. Cuthbert, published in Glasgow in 1908. It is full of the jargon of Harris’s sect, but contains some biographical facts as well as many quotations. Mrs Oliphant’sLife of Laurence Oliphant(1891) has not been shaken in any important particular, and Oliphant’s own portrait of Harris inMasollamis apparently unexaggerated. But Harris had much personal magnetism, unbounded self-confidence, along with endless fluency, and to the last was believed in by some disciples of character and influence.

(W. R. Ni.)

HARRIS, SIR WILLIAM SNOW(1791-1867), English electrician, was descended from an old family of solicitors at Plymouth, where he was born on the 1st of April 1791. He received his early education at the Plymouth grammar-school,and completed a course of medical studies at the university of Edinburgh, after which he established himself as a general medical practitioner in Plymouth. On his marriage in 1824 he resolved to abandon his profession on account of its duties interfering too much with his favourite study of electricity. As early as 1820 he had invented a new method of arranging the lightning conductors of ships, the peculiarity of which was that the metal was permanently fixed in the masts and extended throughout the hull; but it was only with great difficulty, and not till nearly thirty years afterwards, that his invention was adopted by the government for the royal navy. In 1826 he read a paper before the Royal Society “On the Relative Powers of various Metallic Substances as Conductors of Electricity,” which led to his being elected a fellow of the society in 1831. Subsequently, in 1834, 1836 and 1839, he read before the society several valuable papers on the elementary laws of electricity, and he also communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh various interesting accounts of his experiments and discoveries in the same field of inquiry. In 1835 he received the Copley gold medal from the Royal Society for his papers on the laws of electricity of high tension, and in 1839 he was chosen to deliver the Bakerian lecture. Meanwhile, although a government commission had recommended the general adoption of his conductors in the royal navy, and the government had granted him an annuity of £300 “in consideration of services in the cultivation of science,” the naval authorities continued to offer various objections to his invention; to aid in removing these he in 1843 published his work onThunderstorms, and also about the same time contributed a number of papers to theNautical Magazineillustrative of damage by lightning. His system was actually adopted in the Russian navy before he succeeded in removing the prejudices against it in England, and in 1845 the emperor of Russia, in acknowledgment of his services, presented him with a valuable ring and vase. At length, the efficiency of his system being acknowledged, he received in 1847 the honour of knighthood, and subsequently a grant of £5000. After succeeding in introducing his invention into general use Harris resumed his labours in the field of original research, but as he failed to realize the advances that had been made by the new school of science his application resulted in no discoveries of much value. His manuals ofElectricity,GalvanismandMagnetism, published between 1848 and 1856, were, however, written with great clearness, and passed through several editions. He died at Plymouth on the 22nd of January 1867, while having in preparation aTreatise on Frictional Electricity, which was published posthumously in the same year, with a memoir of the author by Charles Tomlinson.

HARRIS, WILLIAM TORREY(1835-1909), American educationist, was born in North Killingly, Connecticut, on the 10th of September 1835. He studied at Phillips Andover Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and entered Yale, but left in his junior year (1857) to accept a position as a teacher of shorthand in the St Louis, Missouri, public schools. Advancing through the grades of principal and assistant superintendent, he was city superintendent of schools from 1867 until 1880. In 1858, under the stimulus of Henry C. Brockmeyer, Harris became interested in modern German philosophy in general, and in particular in Hegel, whose works a small group, gathering about Harris and Brockmeyer, began to study in 1859. From 1867 to 1893 Harris editedThe Journal of Speculative Philosophy(22 vols.), which was the quarterly organ of the Philosophical Society founded in 1866. The Philosophical Society died out before 1874, when Harris founded in St Louis a Kant Club, which lived for fifteen years. In 1873, with Miss Susan E. Blow, he established in St Louis the first permanent public-school kindergarten in America. He represented the United States Bureau of Education at the International Congress of Educators at Brussels in 1880. In 1889 he represented the United States Bureau of Education at the Paris Exposition, and from 1889 to 1906 was United States commissioner of education. In 1899 the university of Jena gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy for his work on Hegel. In 1906 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching conferred upon him “as the first man to whom such recognition for meritorious service is given, the highest retiring allowance which our rules will allow, an annual income of $3000.” Besides being a contributor to the magazines and encyclopedias on educational and philosophical subjects, he wroteAn Introduction to the Study of Philosophy(1889);The Spiritual Sense of Dante’s Divina Commedia(1889);Hegel’s Logic(1890); andPsychologic Foundations of Education(1898); and edited Appleton’sInternational Education Seriesand Webster’sInternational Dictionary. He died on the 5th of November 1909.

See Henry R. Evans, “A List of the Writings of William Torrey Harris” in theReport of the Commissioner of Education for 1907, vol. i. (Washington, 1908).

HARRISBURG,the capital of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Dauphin county, on the E. bank of the Susquehanna river, about 105 m. W. by N. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890), 39,385; (1900), 50,167, of whom 2493 were foreign-born and 4107 were negroes; (1910 census) 64,186. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia & Reading, the Northern Central and the Cumberland Valley railways; and the Pennsylvania canal gives it water communication with the ocean. The river here is a mile wide, and is ordinarily very shallow and dotted with islets, but rises from 4 to 6 ft. after a moderate rain; it is spanned by several bridges.

The city lies for the most part on the E. slope of a hill extending from the river bank, several feet in height, across the Pennsylvania canal to Paxton Creek. Front Street, along the river, is part of a parkway connecting the park system with which the city is encircled. Overlooking it are the finest residences, among them the governor’s mansion. State Street, 120 ft. in width, runs at right angles with Front Street through the business centre of the city, being interrupted by the Capitol Park (about 16 acres). The Capitol,1dedicated in 1906, was erected to replace one burned in 1897; it is a fine building, with a dome modelled after St Peter’s at Rome. At the main entrance are bronze doors, decorated in relief with scenes from the state’s history; the floor of the rotunda is of tiles made at Doylestown, in the style of the pottery made by early Moravian settlers, and illustrating the state’s resources; the Senate Chamber and the House Chamber have stained-glass windows by W. B. van Ingen and mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey, who painted a series, “The Development of the Law,” for the Supreme Court room in the eastern wing and decorated the rotunda. The mural decorations of the south corridor, by W. B. van Ingen, portray the state’s religious sects; those in the north corridor, by John W. Alexander, represent the changes in the physical and material character of the state; and there is a frieze by Miss Violet Oakley, “The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual,” in the governor’s reception room. Two heroic groups of statuary for the building were designed by George Grey Barnard. The state library in the Capitol contains about 150,000 volumes. In the same park is also a monument 105 ft. high erected in1868 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.

1For this building the legislature in 1901 appropriated $4,000,000, stipulating that it should be completed before the 1st of January 1907. It was completed by that time, the net expenditure of the building commission being about $3,970,000. Although the legislature had made no provision for furniture and decoration, the state Board of Public Grounds and Buildings (governor, auditor-general and treasurer) undertook to complete the furnishing and decoration of the building within the stipulated time, and paid out for that purpose more than $8,600,000. In May 1906 a new treasurer entered office, who discovered that many items for furniture and decoration were charged twice, once at a normal and again at a remarkably high figure. In 1907 the legislature appointed a committee to investigate the charge of fraud. The committee’s decision was that the Board of Grounds and Buildings was not authorized to let the decorating and furnishing of the state house; that it had illegally authorized certain expenditures; and that architect and contractors had made fraudulent invoices and certificates. Various indictments were found: in the first trial for conspiracy in the making and delivering of furniture the contractor and the former auditor-general, state treasurer and superintendent of public grounds and buildings were convicted and in December 1908 were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined $500 each; in 1910 a suit was brought for the recovery of about $5,000,000 from those responsible.

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 thepension veto messages of President Cleveland. Having failed to secure a re-election to the Senate in 1887, Harrison was nominated by the Republican party for the presidency in 1888, and defeated Grover Cleveland, the candidate of the Democratic party, receiving 233 electoral votes to Cleveland’s 168. Among the measures and events distinguishing his term as president were the following: The meeting of the Pan-American Congress at Washington; the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill and of the Sherman Silver Bill of 1890; the suppressing of the Louisiana Lottery; the enlargement of the navy; further advance in civil service reform; the convocation by the United States of an international monetary conference; the establishment of commercial reciprocity with many countries of America and Europe; the peaceful settlement of a controversy with Chile; the negotiation of a Hawaiian Annexation Treaty, which, however, before its ratification, his successor withdrew from the Senate; the settlement of difficulties with Germany concerning the Samoan Islands, and the adjustment by arbitration with Great Britain of the Bering Sea fur-seal question. His administration was marked by a revival of American industries and a reduction of the public debt, and at its conclusion the country was left in a condition of prosperity and on friendly terms with foreign nations. He was nominated by his party in 1892 for re-election, but was defeated by Cleveland, this result being due, at least in part, to the labour strikes which occurred during the presidential campaign and arrayed the labour unions against the tariff party.

After leaving public life he resumed the practice of the law, and in 1898 was retained by the government of Venezuela as its leading counsel in the arbitration of its boundary dispute with Great Britain. In this capacity he appeared before the international tribunal of arbitration at Paris in 1899, worthily maintaining the reputation of the American bar. After the Spanish-American War he strongly disapproved of the colonial policy of his party, which, however, he continued to support. He occupied a portion of his leisure in writing a book, entitledThis Country of Ours(1897), treating of the organization and administration of the government of the United States, and a collection of essays by him was published posthumously, in 1901, under the titleViews of an Ex-President. He died at Indianapolis on the 13th of March 1901. Harrison’s distinguishing trait of character, to which his success is to be most largely attributed, was his thoroughness. He was somewhat reserved in manner, and this led to the charge in political circles that he was cold and unsympathetic; but no one gathered around him more devoted and loyal friends, and his dignified bearing in and out of office commanded the hearty respect of his countrymen.

President Harrison was twice married; in 1853 to Miss Caroline Lavinia Scott, by whom he had a son and a daughter, and in 1896 to Mrs Mary Scott Lord Dimmock, by whom he had a daughter.

A “campaign” biography was published by Lew Wallace (Philadelphia, 1888), and a sketch of his life may be found inPresidents of the United States(New York, 1894), edited by James Grant Wilson.

(J. W. Fo.)

HARRISON, FREDERIC(1831- ), English jurist and historian, was born in London on the 18th of October 1831. Members of his family (originally Leicestershire yeomen) had been lessees of Sutton Place, Guildford, of which he wrote an interesting account (Annals of an Old Manor House, 1893). He was educated at King’s College school and at Wadham College, Oxford, where, after taking a first-class inLiterae Humanioresin 1853, he became fellow and tutor. He was called to the bar in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective contributor to the higher-class reviews. Two articles in theWestminster Review, one on the Italian question, which procured him the special thanks of Cavour, the other onEssays and Reviews, which had the probably undesigned effect of stimulating the attack on the book, attracted especial notice. A few years later Mr Harrison worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury, of whom he contributed an interesting notice to Nash’s biography of the chancellor. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867-1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869-1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence and international law under the council of legal education. A follower of the positive philosophy, but in conflict with Richard Congreve (q.v.) as to details, he led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the PositivistNew Calendar of Great Men(1892), and wrote much on Comte and Positivism. Of his separate publications, the most important are his lives of Cromwell (1888), William the Silent (1897), Ruskin (1902), and Chatham (1905); hisMeaning of History(1862; enlarged 1894) andByzantine History in the Early Middle Ages(1900); and his essays onEarly Victorian Literature(1896) andThe Choice of Books(1886) are remarkable alike for generous admiration and good sense. In 1904 he published a “romantic monograph” of the 10th century,Theophano, and in 1906 a verse tragedy,Nicephorus. An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Mr Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully for parliament against Sir John Lubbock for London University. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. In 1870 he married Ethel Berta, daughter of Mr William Harrison, by whom he had four sons. George Gissing, the novelist, was at one time their tutor; and in 1905 Mr Harrison wrote a preface to Gissing’sVeranilda(see also Mr Austin Harrison’s article on Gissing in theNineteenth Century, September 1906). As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Mr Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. In 1907 he publishedThe Creed of a Layman, Apologia pro fide mea, in explanation of his religious position.

HARRISON, JOHN(1693-1776), English horologist, was the son of a carpenter, and was born at Faulby, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, in the year 1693. Thence his father and family removed in 1700 to Barrow in Lincolnshire. Young Harrison at first learned his father’s trade, and worked at it for several years, at the same time occasionally making a little money by land-measuring and surveying. The bent of his mind, however, was towards mechanical pursuits. In 1715 he made a clock with wooden wheels, which is in the patent museum at South Kensington, and in 1726 he devised his ingenious “gridiron pendulum,” which maintains its length unaltered in spite of variations of temperature (seeClock). Another invention of his was a recoil clock escapement in which friction was reduced to a minimum, and he was the first to employ the commonly used and effective form of “going ratchet,” which is a spring arrangement for keeping the timepiece going at its usual rate during the interval of being wound up.

In Harrison’s time the British government had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an act in 1713 offering rewards of £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40 and 30 m. respectively. Harrison applied himself vigorously to the task, and in 1735 went to the Board of Longitude with a watch which he also showed to Edmund Halley, George Graham and others. Through their influence he was allowed to proceed in a king’s ship to Lisbon to test it; and the result was so satisfactory that he was paid £500 to carry out further improvements. Harrison worked at the subject with the utmost perseverance, and, after making several watches, went up to London in 1761 with one which he considered almost perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, it was found to have lostonly 1 minute 54½ seconds. This was surprisingly accurate, as it determined the longitude within 18 m., and Harrison claimed the full reward of £20,000; but though from time to time he received sums on account, it was not till 1773 that he was paid in full. In these watches compensation for changes of temperature was applied for the first time by means of a “compensation-curb,” designed to alter the effective length of the balance-spring in proportion to the expansion or contraction caused by variations of temperature. Harrison died in London on the 24th of March 1776. His want of early education was felt by him greatly throughout life. He was unfortunately never able to express his ideas clearly in writing, although in conversation he could give a very precise and exact account of his many intricate mechanical contrivances.

Among his writings were aDescription concerning such Mechanism as will afford a Nice or True Mensuration of Time(1775), andThe Principles of Mr Harrison’s Timekeeper, published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude (1767).

HARRISON, THOMAS(1606-1660), English parliamentarian, a native of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, the son of a butcher and mayor of that town, was baptized in 1606. He was placed with an attorney of Clifford’s Inn, but at the beginning of the war in 1642 he enlisted in Essex’s lifeguards, became major in Fleetwood’s regiment of horse under the earl of Manchester, was present at Marston Moor, at Naseby, Langport and at the taking of Winchester and Basing, as well as at the siege of Oxford. At Basing Harrison was accused of having killed a prisoner in cold blood. In 1646 he was returned to parliament for Wendover, and served in Ireland in 1647 under Lord Lisle, returning to England in May, when he took the side of the army in the dispute with the parliament and obtained from Fairfax a regiment of horse. In November he opposed the negotiations with the king, whom he styled “a man of blood” to be called to account, and he declaimed against the House of Lords. At the surprise of Lambert’s quarters at Appleby on the 18th of July 1648, in the second civil war, he distinguished himself by his extraordinary daring and was severely wounded. He showed a special zeal in bringing about the trial of the king. Charles was entrusted to his care on being brought up from Hurst Castle to London, and believed that Harrison intended his assassination, but was at once favourably impressed by bis bearing and reassured by his disclaiming any such design. Harrison was assiduous in his attendance at the trial, and signed the death-warrant with the fullest conviction that it was his duty. He took part in suppressing the royalist rising in the midlands in May 1649, and in July was appointed to the chief command in South Wales, where he is said to have exercised his powers with exceptional severity. On the 20th of February 1651 he became a member of the council of state, and during Cromwell’s absence in Scotland held the supreme military command in England. He failed in stopping the march of the royalists into England at Knutsford on the 16th of August 1651, but after the battle of Worcester he rendered great service in pursuing and capturing the fugitives. Later he pressed on Cromwell the necessity of dismissing the Long Parliament, and it was he who at Cromwell’s bidding, on the 20th of April 1653, laid hands on Speaker Lenthall and compelled him to vacate the chair. He was president of the council of thirteen which now exercised authority, and his idea of government appears to have been an assembly nominated by the congregations, on a strictly religious basis, such as Barebone’s Parliament which now assembled, of which he was a member and a ruling spirit. Harrison belonged to the faction of Fifth Monarchy men, whose political ideals were entirely destroyed by Cromwell’s assumption of the protectorate. He went immediately into violent opposition, was deprived of his commission on the 22nd of December 1653, and on the 3rd of February 1654 was ordered to confine himself to his father’s house in Staffordshire. Suspected of complicity in the plots of the anabaptists, he was imprisoned for a short time in September, and on that occasion was sent for by Cromwell, who endeavoured in a friendly manner to persuade him to desist. He, however, incurred the suspicions of the administration afresh, and on the 15th of February 1655 he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle, being liberated in March 1656 when he took up his residence at Highgate with his family. In April 1657 he was arrested for supposed complicity in Venner’s conspiracy, and again once more in February 1658, when he was imprisoned in the Tower. At the Restoration, Harrison, who was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, refused to take any steps to save his life, to give any undertaking not to conspire against the government or to flee. “Being so clear in the thing,” he declared, “I durst not turn my back nor step a foot out of the way by reason I had been engaged in the service of so glorious and great a God.” He was arrested in Staffordshire in May 1660 and brought to trial on the 11th of October. He made a manly and straightforward defence, pleading the authority of parliament and adding, “May be I might be a little mistaken, but I did it all according to the best of my understanding, desiring to make the revealed will of God in His holy scriptures a guide to me.” At his execution, which took place at Charing Cross on the 13th of October 1660, he behaved with great fortitude.

Richard Baxter, who was acquainted with him, describes Harrison as “a man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his religion of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much, but naturally also so far from humble thoughts of himself that it was his ruin.” Cromwell also complained of his excessive eagerness. “Harrison is an honest man and aims at good things, yet from the impatience of his spirit will not wait the Lord’s leisure but hurries me on to that which he and all honest men will have cause to repent.” Harrison was an eloquent and fluent expounder of the scriptures, and his “raptures” on the field of victory are recorded by Baxter. He was of the chief of those “fiery spirits” whose ardent and emotional religion inspired their political action, and who did wonders during the period of struggle and combat, but who later, in the more sober and difficult sphere of constructive statesmanship, showed themselves perfectly incapable.

Harrison married about 1648 Katherine, daughter and heiress of Ralph Harrison of Highgate in Middlesex, by whom he had several children, all of whom, however, appear to have died in infancy.

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