A Look at History
Victorian Society Regarded Marriage Very Seriously
BY FRANK STRAUS

Many Americans come to Mackinac Island to propose to their beloved, to get married, for honeymoons, or to celebrate a romantic retreat. The late-1800s architecture and horse culture of Mackinac seems to create an atmosphere of romance and faithfulness. Many buildings on the Island, including Grand Hotel and Fort Mackinac, were built during the 1880s and 1890s, or are interpreted as if one were visiting them at that time.

It is well known that the Victorians took marriage very seriously. At that time the laws of English-speaking countries did not allow divorce upon demand, and a large quantity of written and unwritten law encouraged the agreement that marriage was for life. In line with this consensus, American men encouraged themselves to develop a structure of thought that sacralized women; that treated them as almost a link to the divine. A 16-year-old Ohio teenager named Benjamin wrote an essay for his prep school about 1849 that described an ideal woman: She "is considered as a superior being, and in the eyes of many as an angel. This, however, is the case only when we behold them through the telescope of love."

Young Benjamin Harrison was at that time beginning to court Carrie Scott, of Oxford, Ohio. Carrie, like Benjamin, was a Presbyterian; they came from the congregational, Biblechurch tradition that had built Mackinac Island's Mission Church. It was fortunate for all concerned that Carrie returned the ardent youth's attentions. The young couple considered waiting until Benjamin had established himself in the law, but they could not delay matters and married in October, 1853. Harrison was 20 and his wife was barely 21; a search of their family papers has uncovered a freight bill for 91 cents, this covering the cost of shipping a single box from Cincinnati to Indianapolis that contained all of their possessions. Their first child was born nine and a half months after the marriage ceremony.

Although Benjamin and Carrie had entered married life in straightened circumstances, both were intelligent and conscientious, and they bore what was at that time a famous name in Indiana. Benjamin's grandfather, William Henry Harrison, had been the governor of Indiana Territory, and was briefly elected president of the United States by the old Whig Party before dying in office in 1841. With the help of family and church connections, young Harrison soon became a leading member of the Indiana bar.

Possessing what in a later century would be called "high name-ID," the Harrisons were encouraged to try their hand in politics. During the 1850s, the Republican party was establishing itself in Indiana as the successor to the Whigs; this transition period was ideal for the formation of a new circle of political "insiders." When the Civil War came, Benjamin swiftly became colonel of a regiment of Indiana volunteers. In this duty, he helped Sherman capture Atlanta.

Returning to Indianapolis as a brigadier general, Benjamin helped Carrie build a home in 1874-75 for themselves and their two children. One mile north of the state capitol, the mansion was designed for the entertaining that was a constituent element of leadership in those days. For example, the house included a ballroom on the third floor for formal dancing.

In the late 1870s, the first railroad unions began to organize throughout the United States. As one of Indiana's chief lawyers, Harrison took the lead in fighting the unions and defending the interests of the state's largest railroads.

Indianapolis was, in the 1880s, a key city in the economic and political life of the nation. The country's two largest corporations at that time were the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads, bitter rivals in Indiana, Michigan, and many other Northeastern states. For several decades these two roads, which both served Indianapolis, were such enemies that they even used different clocks to calibrate their timetables. However, the joint threat from the fledgling railroad unions helped lawyers like Harrison begin the task of brokering deals between the two firms.

One of the earliest recorded examples of cooperation between the two lines came in 1882, when after racing each other to build tracks to Mackinaw City, they shook hands and joined together to help operate a 12-month railroad car ferry service across the Straits of Mackinac. With the "standard time" agreement of 1883, the two railroads agreed to divide the United States into "time zones" and operate according to a common clock time. The N.Y.C. and the "Pennsy" further collaborated in 1886-87 to build Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel. As Grand Hotel was being built, the rival firms agreed to collaborate in the construction of a new Union Station in Indianapolis. The joint railroad palace was opened for use in 1888.

Many of the CEOs who held power in the Republican party felt that a "sound" couple like Benjamin and Carrie Harrison, with their known ability to entertain business leaders and bring them together, would make ideal occupants of the White House. In the summer of 1888, Harrison was nominated and elected as the 23rd President of the United States.

By this time, Harrison was so close to the nation's railroads that he asked the chief executive of the New York Central, Chauncey Depew, to be the Secretary of State. Depew said no. Being a CEO paid better.

As Commander-in-Chief, Harrison found the American borders quiet. The Indians had largely been forced into reservations. The frontier had ceased to exist; continuous lines of telegraph wires, railroads, and settlements stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

During Harrison's first two years in office, he signed bills admitting Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming to the Union.

Harrison and his Secretary of War, Redfield Proctor, found that the private-sector system used by the Army to provide private comforts and possessions to the troops had become corrupt. Greedy "sutlers" were overcharging the soldiers and flouting the regulations that controlled or forbade the pouring of whiskey. Inspired by the new Woolworth's (founded 1879) and other fast-growing retail chains, Proctor abolished the sutler system and replaced it with a system of five-cent "canteens" at each fort. The troops were partly paid in nickel tokens that were good only within the fort's walls. Canteens, such as one opened in Fort Mackinac's Officer's Wooden Quarters, offered five-cent glasses of beer, but no whiskey of any kind. The canteen network was the direct ancestor of the Army's 20thcentury PX system.

First Lady Carrie Harrison, meanwhile, was making extensive changes to the White House. As we have seen, she liked to supervise large nighttime social gatherings. Edison had invented the electric light bulb in 1879, but when the couple arrived in Washington in early 1889, the executive mansion was still lit by gaslight. Carrie began the massive task of tearing out the White House's stone-and-plaster walls and wiring the mansion for electricity.

In the next article, we will learn the second half of the love story of Benjamin and Carrie Scott Harrison.