and read this, we're studying about the presence of the United States and how they affected our country and yet the whole world. America has affected the whole world in the 200 plus years that we've been in existence. Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he of this authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed all will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. Now it goes on down for several other verses, but that's as far as we'll go for right now. God instituted government right here. And government was supposed to protect bad people or good people from bad people, and to prosecute bad people, even capital punishment if it was a capital crime, and to protect the people from the government also. Now, all through the world, we're having all kinds of problems. Religion has got a lot to do with the world. Many, most wars have been fought over religion worldwide. We had the Catholic domination that murdered between 50 and 100 million people, and we've had Islam that has killed over 270 million people. Over religion, now, religion. Baptists have always stood for separation of church and state. and I believe that. But we need to know what's happening around us and what's happened in the past. A man that will not study history is a fool and bound to repeat it again. Nothing has happened in America that hasn't, in our, what you call, we, our presidents, our rulers, basically, especially what we have right now under this administration, We have an oligarchy, we have a rule by few, and the executive orders have been insurpassed by any other president in the past. We go back to Abraham Lincoln, we saw what kind of a mess that caused, that caused the Civil War. and killed between 600,000 and 750,000 people on our shores. Lincoln had imported mercenaries from different countries. And we had a war for years in America. It didn't need to be a war. Slavery was on the way out anyway. And the war wasn't over slavery to begin with. It was over taxes. And now All of the presidents since that period of time have come up and they've had to deal with Reconstruction and trying to, what we might call, unify America again after he divided it. We come up to a man by the name of Benjamin Harrison the 8th. Benjamin Harrison the 8th. Now he never used the term the 8th, but his family had a lot to do with America and the founding of America. Of course, he was a Republican and he had fought in the Civil War. He was a general in the Civil War. He was born August the 20th, 1883 in North Bend, Ohio, the second child of Elizabeth Ramsey Irwin. and John Scott Harrison's, they had 10 children. He was number two of 10 children. His paternal, or his father's ancestors, were the Harrison family of Virginia, whose immigrant ancestor, Benjamin Harrison, there we go, we go way back, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia around 1630 from England. The Harrison family was completely of English descent. all his ancestors having immigrated to America during the early colonial period of time. He was the grandson of a U.S. President, William Henry Harrison, and great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence and succeeded Thomas Nelson, Jr. as governor of Virginia. Harrison was only seven years old when his grandfather was elected United States President, but he did not, was not able to attend the inauguration. His family was distinguished, but his parents were not wealthy. John Scott Harrison was a two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Now, this man did not go into politics to become a millionaire as the Biden family did, as the Clinton family did, etc., as the Bushes. This man went into the politics to serve the country, his family, all of them did. Benjamin's father spent most of his farm income on his children's education. He believed education was very important. His family had modest resources, but Harrison's boyhood was not in great depression as some of the others had been when they were growing up. ate, lived, had a roof over his head, and enjoyed hunting and fishing. His early schooling took place in a log cabin near his home. But his parents loved their children, and they provided tutors for their children, preparing their children for college. When Benjamin was 14 years old, he and his brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio in 1847, 100 years before I was born. He attended the college for two years. And while he was there, he met his love, Carolyn Levina Scott, a daughter of John Witherson's Her father was John Witherspoon Scott. He was a science professor at the college, but he was also a Presbyterian minister. He then transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1850. He graduated in 1852 and was a member of two different fraternities. the Delta, Phi Delta Theta and the Delta Chi. He had joined the Presbyterian Church and was a lifelong member and basically one of the elders of the Presbyterian Church. He believed in God. After his graduation in 1852, he studied law with Judge Bellamy, a storer of Cincinnati. And he returned to Oxford, Ohio to marry Carolyn on October 20, 1853. Carolyn's father, the Presbyterian minister, performed the ceremony. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison, August 12, 1854 to December 13, 1936. And Mary, or Mamie Scott Harrison, April 3, 1858, and she lived until October 28, 1930. Benjamin and his wife returned to live at the point where his father's farm in southwestern Ohio while he finished his law studies. Basically, people, when they studied law, they read the law books and memorized them, pretty much. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854, the same year he sold his property that he had inherited after the death of an aunt for $800 and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. He began practicing law there in the office of John H. Ray in 1854, and he became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis for which he was paid $2.50 a day. That's what I was making when I was working in a wrecking yard when I was a young boy in the 1950s when I worked for my uncles. I made $2.50 a day. That was hard work, people, 12 hours a day. He also served as a commissioner for the United States Court of Claims, and he became a founding member of the first president of both the University Club and Private Gentleman's Club in Indianapolis, and the Phi Delta Theta Alumni Club. They assumed leadership and positions in the Indianapolis First Presbyterian Church. He grew up in a Whig household. That's the same that Abraham Lincoln came from until the Republican Party was invented. He favored the party's politics, but joined the Republican Party shortly after his formation in 1856 and campaigned on behalf of the presidential candidate John T. Fremont. Now, I won't hold that against him, but that was not a good man. He might have been better than Lincoln, to tell you the truth, but they might have done the same thing. In 1857, he was elected as Indianapolis City Attorney. And he got paid a salary of $400 at that period of time. It's something like $11,000 today or more. In 1858, he entered into a law partnership with William Wallace. and the law office was Wallace and Harrison. In 1860, he was elected a reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. He was active supporter of the Republican Party platform and served as Republican State Committee Secretary also. Harrison established a new firm after his partner was elected as a county clerk with William Fischbach, with Fischbach and Harrison. And they worked together until Harrison entered the Union Army after the start of the Civil War. In 1862, Lincoln had issued a call for more recruits for the Union Army. Harrison wanted to enlist, but he didn't know what would happen to his family if he enlisted and went into the Army. They were not rich. The governor, Morton, asked Harrison to find and to start enlisting men. And he told the government, or the governor, if I can be of any service, I want to do it. He said, he said, you can help become a recruiter. But he said he wouldn't ask him to serve because of his family situation. Morton later offered him a command, but Harrison declined because he didn't have any military experience at all. They didn't allow him to go out and fight a war. He was commissioned as a captain and company commander in July the 22nd, 1862. He became a colonel on August the 7th, 1862, and the newly formed 70th Indiana Volunteers. and he entered into the federal service on August 12, 1862. Once he got his regiment together, they left Indiana to join the Union Army at Louisville, Kentucky. Much of his first two years in the 7th Indiana, he performed reconnaissance duty, which sometimes is dangerous. Reconnaissance is going out there and finding out what the enemy's doing. He guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1864, Harrison and his remnant joined William Tecumseh Sherman and the Atlanta Scourge campaign, when they went and killed every man, woman, and child, and animal, and dog, and sheep, and whatever, and burned every farmhouse down. They declared total war on all the civilians. That was against the rules of war, of course. Lincoln says, that's the only way we can win the war. Do it. And Sherman and Grant did it. That would be looked upon with a great frown today. In January the 2nd, 1864, Benjamin was appointed in command of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the 20th Corps, and he commanded The battles at Rosika, Castville, New Hope, Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta. They burned Atlanta. They burned it down to the ground. There aren't any court records in any of those towns, in any of those cities all through the South, because they burned all the courthouses and all the homes down. There was nothing left. When Sherman's main force began its march to the sea, Harrison's brigade was transferred to the District of Ottawa and participated in the Battle of Nashville. Lincoln nominated Harrison to the grade of Revit Brigadier General of Volunteers. And the Senate confirmed the nomination on February the 14th, 1865. Harrison wrote in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. before mustering out on June the 8th, 1865. After he left his service in the war, now he believed in the war. His family were against slavery and everything. A lot of the people that fought in the Civil War on the Union side, they were fighting against slavery, but the war wasn't over slavery, it was over taxes. Lincoln said, if you don't pay your taxes, you can't secede from the Union. If you don't pay your taxes, I will invade you and kill you and burn you down. And that's what he said in his inaugural address. When he was elected president, the South began to secede because they knew that the Union was gonna be divided. The nation was going to be destroyed. Well, that's what happened. We wouldn't look at it now. They've made a god out of him, but he did what he did. Anybody that spoke against him was put in jail and all their property confiscated without habeas corpus. Those that supported him, he would send money to. I'm talking about editors and newspaper men and newspapers in the north, not in the south. There was a lot of opposition to the war in the North. A lot of opposition. Harrison was again elected a reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. And he served at that position for four more years. He had a steady income. He was preparing and publishing court opinions. He resumed his law practice in Annapolis and he became a skilled orator and one of the state's leading lawyers at the time. In 1869, Ulysses S. Grant appointed Harrison to represent the federal government in a civil suit filed against Lambden P. Milligan. whose controversial wartime conviction for treason in 1864 led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ex parte Milligan. The civil case was referred to the U.S. Circuit Court in Indianapolis and it evolved into the Milligan v. Hovey. The jury found in favor of Milligan. that he had sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages as state and federal statutes limited the amount the federal government had to award Milligan to $5 plus court costs. And they had destroyed the man. He had a constantly growing and increasing reputation. He began to speak on behalf of Republican candidates. He was better than the candidates. He put in a bid for statewide office, but he lost it. He returned to his law practice. And in spite of the panic of 1863, was financially successful enough to build a great grand new home in Indianapolis in 1874. He began to, and continued to, make speeches on behalf of Republican candidates. In 1876, a scandal forced the original Republican nominee, Good Love Steinorth, to drop out of the gubernatorial race. Harrison accepted the party's invitation to take his place on the ticket, and he centered his campaign on economic policy and favored deflating the national currency. He didn't win. He had began to build his prominent new career in state politics, and then the great railroad strike of 1873 reached Indianapolis. He gathered a citizen militia to make a show of support for owners of the management for big business, not for the workers. In the early part of the Republican party, they did not stand for the workers of America. They stood for big business. Big business was on corporate welfare up until Teddy Roosevelt. And basically, that's what he was doing, except he began to see some of his problems that he was having. The workers were crying for more money, safety rules, and less hours. They were working them to death. Children were working in factories at five and six years old and being maimed and killed for the rest of their lives. He kept running for public office but kept on losing. He was a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention. the next year and he was instrumental in breaking the deadlock on candidate James A. Garfield and won the nomination. Benjamin Harrison led the Indiana's Republican delegation in 1880 Republican National Committee and Convention. And he was considered as a candidate for U.S. Senate. He gave speeches in favor of Garfield in Indiana, New York, and further raising his profile in the party because they knew who he was. Finally, as a representative, he was elected for a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. Harrison was finally chosen. After Garfield was elected, they offered Harrison a cabinet position because of all his work. But he wanted to continue in his service as a United States Senator. He served as a United States Senator from March 4, 1881 to March 3, 1887. He chaired different committees. One of them was the Transportation Routes to the Seaboard in the 47th Congress and the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories in the 48th and 49th Congress. In 1881, he was confronted with a great budget surplus. They had collected so many taxes, so much taxes, they didn't know what to do with it. They had money running out their ears. They were robbing the South, confiscating lands, doing all kinds of stuff. Lots of money was coming in. The Republicans wanted to spend the money on internal improvements and pensions for Civil War veterans, that is Union Civil War veterans. And the Democrats wanted to limit the amount of tariffs. Again, once the Civil War was over, they were still trying to lower the tariffs. Because the South was paying 70% of all the taxes in the United States. Harrison took his party's side and advocated generous pensions for the veterans and their widows. He also unsuccessfully supported aid for Southerners, especially black children, free slaves. He was always a champion for the slaves of the South. If Grant's administration had not been so wicked and corrupt in the South, the South may have healed. But there was so much corruption going on down there that And even basically in Harrison's administration, there was a lot of corruption also. The pensions that he gave to the Union soldiers and their widows, many of the people working for the government were skimming 50% or more of it off. It didn't get there. James G. Blaine, again, became the presidential nominee. But the old story was, and the old song was, Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine. He had done a lot of crooked things. He had done a lot of things in the United States government that actually was good, but he was crooked as a dog's hind leg, and everybody knew it. Grover Cleveland wanted to admit several new Western states. But he was waiting for them. He wanted a balance of power to come about. The Democrats were against it. The Republicans were for it. They were afraid that the new states would elect Republican Congress. And they had no say so again. In 1885, the Democrats restricted the NIA to state legislation, which resulted in an increased Democratic majority in 1886. Despite all the Republican majority statewide, And it was the cause of the democratic gerrymandering of Indiana's legislative districts. And Harrison was defeated for his re-election as a senator. He returned to Indianapolis and began to practice law again. The Republican nomination for president again was James G. Blaine of Maine. Blaine had written several letters denying any interest in the nomination and his supporters were divided among the candidates of John Sherman of Ohio and Chauncey DePoe of New York and Russell Agar of Michigan. and Walter O. Gresham, which was an appellate court judge in Chicago. In 1888 Blaine would not endorse any of the candidates. He said the one man remaining who in my judgment can make the best one is Benjamin Harrison. Now the public didn't like Blaine But politics knew how powerful he was and he was a good, he had a good mind on him. He did some good things in America with foreign affairs especially. Harrison was fifth on the first ballot with Sherman in the lead and finally Harrison won. Because they thought he could attract more votes than any of the other delegates. And he campaigned against Cleveland. Cleveland was the Democratic president that had done well. He won his first election. Now he's going to win this election also, but they're going to, but the electoral votes are going to go toward Harrison. He won three elections. Grover Cleveland won three elections. but he was only seated twice, but he won three of them. Harrison campaigned on protective tariffs and the protectionist voters. And also, there was a problem here because many of the big businessmen were threatening their workers if they didn't vote Republican, they were going to be out of a job. Now they did this for about three different elections. Big Mrs. was very powerful because they had thousands of people working for them, and the ballot boxers were at work, and here's the Republican over here, and here is the Democrat over here. And they better vote for the man that the company owner said to vote for, or else they were going to be gone. So the election was not good. The voter turnout was about 79.3%. Nearly 11 million votes were cast. Harrison received 90,000 fewer votes than Cleveland. 90,000 fewer. 90,000 fewer votes. But carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Many allegations were made against the Republicans for irregular ballot practices and an example was described as the Blocks of Five. William Wade Dudley was said to be offering bribe to voters in Blocks Five to ensure Harrison's election. This was Basically, it happened. They were buying the election like Kennedy bought the election when he won his election. His father, Joseph Kennedy, got the Mafia behind him and then John Kennedy turned Bobby Kennedy loose on the Mafia. And that didn't work. At all. He was gone. Harrison had made no political bargains with anybody. He was an honest man. But his supporters had made many pledges to the people that were supporting him, and he did not support them. So he began to have problems. Again, he himself wanted election integrity. And he was not going to just pack his cabinet or any of the federal offices with Republicans and fire all the Democrats. Harrison was said that how close the number of men were compelled to approach the penitentiary to make him president that they went in and got the prisoners votes for Harrison. Sounds familiar? He was called the Centennial President. He was sworn into office March the 4th, 1889 by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. Harrison said in his speech that he credited the nation's growth to the influence of education and religion, urged the cotton states and mining territories to attain the industrial proportions of the eastern states. In other words, do like they're doing, put people into slavery, pretty much. And he promised a protective tariff. Now, a protective tariff, to some extent, is good for America. President Trump used the Protective Tariff against China and the imports so that American people, jobs could be formed. Because during Obama's administration and Clinton's administration, everybody flew. All the big, all the businesses flew the coop and went to China, Mexico, wherever. He said that if our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal obligations and duties, they would have less to call to complain of the limitation of their rights of interference with their operations. He urged early statehood for the territories and advocated pensions for veterans. And I believe the pensions for veterans was a good thing. But remember, we had a great monetary surplus because they had taxed the South so greatly, and all these tariffs, they had money coming out of their ears. Of course, the veterans applauded his protection for them. In foreign affairs, he reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine. and that was a mainstay of foreign policy up until the 20th century. He built a navy and a merchant marine force. He gave his commitment to international peace through non-interference in the affairs of foreign governments. John Philip Sousa's Marine Corps played the inaugural ball inside the the pension building with a large crowd attending. After he moved into the White House, Harrison noted quite prophetically, there's only one door, one that is never locked, between the president's office and what they are not very definitely called his private apartments. He said there should be an executive office. not too far away but totally but wholly distinct from his dwelling place. He wanted them out of his home. He wanted to have an office where he left his home and went to the office. He said there is a public office for everybody else but the president. He said, there is an unroofed space between the bedroom and the desk. I want it separate. I want a door. I want my private life kept separate from the presidency. He was independent of all of his Republican Party. This man was an honest man. He made some bad decisions, but he was an honest man in what he did. He appointed many people that were not his party's choice because he was trying to do it honestly. His selections shared particular alliances such as their service in the Civil War, Indiana citizenship, membership in the Presbyterian Church, Harrison had alienated pivotal Republican operatives in New York to Pennsylvania, to Iowa with these choices that he had made. He tried to be honest in what he was doing. In some ways, he compromised his political power and career because of what he did. He said his normal schedule would be provided for two full cabinet meetings per week and as well as separate weekly one-on-one meetings with each cabinet member. He wanted civil service reform and pensions. It was a prominent issue all the way from Garfield onward to him. And so the former president, also Garfield, and Grover Cleveland, he campaigned to support the merit system. In other words, you got a job because you could do the job. So many times you see in businesses, there's an old story that he slept his way or she slept his way into the into their position. That wasn't going to happen with this man. He spent much of his first months in office dealing with his political opponents of his own party. He was alienated sometime from both sides. He said, no matter what I do, both parties insist on kicking. Harrison pointed Theodore Roosevelt and Hugh Smith Thompson at both reformers to the Civil Service Commission, but he basically turned them loose on the Civil Service reform, and then he backed off and let them do their job. He saw the enactment of the Dependent and Disability Pension Act in 1890, a cause which he championed, providing pensions to disabled Civil War veterans regardless of the cause of their disability. That depleted quite a bit of the federal surplus budget. Can you imagine having so much money in the budget? We don't have anything. We're going trillions of dollars in debt now. They had a surplus here. The act depleted this troublesome federal budget, and it reached $135 million under Harrison. He was called the billion dollar president the first time that the government spent a billion dollars. He had the largest expenditures of any kind in American history. But so much money of this money was going to corruption that he didn't know. He backed off too far. He put people in positions and trusted them to do their job and it didn't really happen that way. Tariff measures had caused the Civil War and have been a problem ever since. And they were the most dominant matter in the 1888 election. The high tariff rates had created a surplus of money in the Treasury. More money than what they knew what to do with. Most Republicans preferred to let the tariffs remain at their present rate and spend the surplus on internal improvements and eliminate some internal taxes. William McKinley and Nelson W. Aldrich framed a McKinley tariff that would raise the tariff even higher, including making some rates intentionally prohibited. This is what caused the Civil War, remember? And because of this, Benjamin Harrison lost his bid for re-election. The McKinley tariff became a red flag to everybody in America. Their prices were going higher and higher and higher and higher and higher, and the government was getting more and more money. initiated some antitrust laws and some things about the currency. He was worried about the great monopolies in America and their great power. And these are the people that were running America. Big business was running America. Big business was paying for America. The lobbyists, you know. We still have lobbyists up there in Washington, D.C. That's corruption, people. He began to try to enforce some of these anti-trust laws. And then he began to want to back money by silver and not gold. And that caused a lot of inflation and higher taxes. The Democrats had held strong for the gold standard. They were over Cleveland, man. And what happened during Benjamin Harrison's administration, the country went into a great depression, a panic, because of all this. The United States government bills were paid in silver. But all of the foreigners, the foreign governments wanted their payment in gold, which was depleting the gold out of the gold standard money, basically. And it resulted in a reduction of income of the people. Higher, what we call inflation. Look at the inflation that we've had in the last 10 months. It has gone sky high. We are in a mess. The poor and the debtors were calling for the silver coinage, but it caused a lot of inflation. Civil rights. Benjamin Harrison was on on the side of the black people tried to make sure that they had the right to vote and they wanted to make sure that they could go to school. He said the colored people did not intrude themselves upon us that they were brought here and changed and held in communities where they are now chiefly bound by cruel slave code. When and under what condition is a black man to have for free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been in his law? When is the quality of influence, which is our form of government, was intended to secure to the electors to be restored? In many parts of our country where the colored population is large, the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise in their political rights and many of their civil rights. But he didn't go back and look at what happened in the South. When the Southern voters, the white Southern voters, were denied the right to vote or hold office, and they put black people in office that were corrupt. They were uneducated. They were corrupt. The wrong does not expanse upon those whose votes are suppressed. Every consensus of the Union is wrong. He questioned the state's civil rights records. And he endorsed a proposed amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling of civil rights cases in 1883 and declared that much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. None of these measures ever gained any congressional approval. He tried. anti-slavery and owned up northern side, even though his family were originally from Virginia. In 1891, Congress enacted that Harrison signed the Land Revision Act of 1891. And it was a desire to initiate reclamation of surplus land that had been given up to the railroads. The railroads were given both sides of the railroad for putting railroads in, and they took all of the farmers' land. That's what was the problem with the James and the Younger Brothers. That's why we had Jesse James and and Frank James going out and robbing banks and railroads and giving it to the people so they can buy their land back. A potential settlement or use by railroad syndicates. as the law's drafting was finalized and Section 24 was added to the behest of Harrison by his Secretary of the Interior, John Noble, which reads as follows, that the President of the United States may from time to time set apart and reserve in any state or territory having public land bearing forests in any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber and or undergrowth whether a commercial value or not as public reservations. And the President shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and limits thereof." And this is where we had the national force. A lot of the land that was taken from the United States government or given to the railroads as corporate welfare were going to be reclaimed. And Grover Cleveland did some of that also. He began to authorize some parts of the country as a forest reserve, located on public demands as to the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. And the first forest reservations, a total of 22 million acres in his term. He was also one of the very first presidents to protect prehistoric Indian ruins. like in Casa Grande in Arizona, by federal protection. During his period of time, we had the battle at Wounded Knee, which was not a battle at all. There was a man, a charlatan out here in Nevada, called Woboka. He was a charlatan. And he got a group of people together, And I mean, I could tell you a lot about this. He lived with a family, and he lined up with these white men to prove and do these miracles. He said that on July the 4th, ice was going to float down the Truckee River. The ice was going to float down. Well, they got up there and they floated down. They had an ice house and they started putting this ice in the river and it was floating down the Walker River. And then another time, he had ice fall from the sky. They tied a big block of ice up there in the trees and then it melted and fell down. But what he said, mainly, that he got involved with the Lakota people, the Sioux people, which I'm from that tribe. And he convinced some of them that if they danced and prayed that God would resurrect all of their warriors and resurrect the buffalo and the land would just shed the white man by itself and the white man's bullets would not penetrate these ghost dance shirts. Now, Wovoka was really interested in Mormonism. And he wanted some of this Mormon underwear that would protect him from being, you know, them. And they wouldn't give him any. He finally stole some. And then he began to tell these people, they put these marks on the shirt like they had on the Mormon underwear. They put these marks on the shirt and they go out and dance. And when they were dancing, and this was not what we call a resurrectionist, they were just praying to God. It was a religious service. They were deceived by this charlatan. And the Battle of Wounded Knee, basically the Lakota were out there dancing. Geronimo's group were dancing there at Turkey Creek, and they killed their people. They killed their medicine men. They weren't trying to resurrect any opposition to them. They believed that God was gonna come in and intervene for them. They didn't have to fire bullets. And the bulla said the white men wouldn't penetrate their Mormon underwear, so to speak. Well, what happened to the Lakota people was because of Bobo Cook. They got convinced that they would dance. So Bigfoot and his tribe were out there, and Sitting Bull was shot because of this, basically, in a different way. He was for this Ghost Fast. He believed that God had to do something to protect the people here from the white expansionists. And they believed that since they couldn't win in war, that God had to intercede and make their bullets ineffective on them. And he was going to raise all the great warriors back up and resurrect them and raise all the buffalo back up so they'd have something to eat. That was the story. His Native American policy was that you just leave your culture and come to ours or we'll starve you to death, basically, because they were killing all the buffalo. Teddy Roosevelt saved the buffalo. There wouldn't be no buffalo in this country again and there were 100 million of them at one time. Well, there was a, Nelson Miles was a scoundrel anyway. He went in there behind the general in Arizona, the honest man, and went in behind him and made treaties with Geronimo that he didn't plan on keeping at all. It was nothing but lies. And he sent Britton Davis and And Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood in there, Tom Horton even had part of it. And Gatewood looked at him, Nelson Miles, and he told him, go in and do it, promise them all this stuff. He said, do you plan on keeping this treaty? He said, you just do what I tell you. And he told him, He said, you know, the Bible says that if a man gain the whole world and lose his soul, he's lost the battle. Well, we know what happened to that when they took him over there to Florida and Geronimo never went back to his land, which they had promised. Well, Nelson Miles was to investigate. He took 3,500 federal troops to South Dakota. The uprising was going to be brought to an end. It was not an uprising at all. It was a religious service. Basically, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, when the Yallahare Custer went in there, was a religious arrival. They were asking God, what are we going to do with these people? Sittin' Bull said, well, right in this battle, if God's going to dump them in their lap and they're not going, I'm going to walk away. And that's what happened, too. But they surrounded Bigfoot's band and surrounded them with, I should have brought in a projectile in there, an explosive bullet that I've got in there that came from this period of time. They surrounded the villages with all these guns. And there was a bullet fired And they began shooting at all they were surrounded. And so many of the soldiers' bullets killed, they were friendly fire, killing other soldiers. And they blamed that on the Indians. The Dolls of Act was enforced. Much of the Indian land was taken from them. with crooked, he had to be a white lawyer. Indian couldn't take care of his own land, so that was easy. It was easy because it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Now let's get back to some of the things he did, okay. His foreign policy was, and Blaine, James G. Blaine, had a lot to do with foreign policy of America, and it was good. In his time, great advances in science and technology and warfare was created. He built a Navy. We have a formidable Navy. He was afraid that we were going to have to go to war, which we did. His Secretary of Navy, Benjamin F. Tracy, spearheaded the rapid construction of vessels And within a year, congressional approval was attained for building of the warships Indiana, Texas, Oregon, and Columbia. By 1898, with the help of the Carnegie Corporation, no less than ten modern warships, including steel hulls and greater displacements and armaments, had transformed the United States Navy into a legitimate naval power. Before this, who was the great naval power in the world? That was way back. Spain was a naval—it was England. England. England. Seven of these—building of these warships were built during Harrison's term. Harrison and Secretary of State James B. Blaine were often not on the most cordial of friends. but Harrison listened to him. James Lee Blaine had some good ideas when it came to foreign affairs. He tried to deal with, first of all, Latin America and Hawaii. The United States had tried to acquire Hawaii and get it into the, as one of the states for a long time in the Philippines and all this area out in there. Samoa, Latin America. Harrison set an aggressive agenda including customs and currency integration and named a bipartisan delegation to the conference led by John B. Henderson and Andrew Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie, remember what he was? He was a steel man. The conference failed to achieve any diplomatic breakthroughs because of the atmosphere of suspicion by the Argentine delegation. Harrison and Blaine pivoted a diplomatically initiated crusade for tariff reciprocity with certain Latin American nations. Harrison's administration concluded eight reciprocal treaties among these countries. He sent Frederick Douglass as an ambassador to Haiti. They tried to get a naval base there in Haiti, but it didn't work. Frederick Douglass, of course, was a black man that had been a former slave, supposedly. The United Kingdom and German Empire were locked in dispute over the Samoan Islands. Harrison played a role in determining the status of the Pacific outpost by taking a firm stand on every aspect of the Samoa Conference. Negotiations included the selection of the local ruler, refusal to allow indemnity for Germany, as well as the establishment of a Free Power Protectorate. Secretary of State Blaine was absent in some of these, and he was the greatest speaker and the greatest negotiator, but he was absent because of sickness. There was a crisis in the Aleutian Islands, which is close to Russia, you know, and in Chile. And in the Alaskan coast, there were fishing lines and claims. In 1891, there was a crisis in Chile known as the Baltimore Crisis. The American minister to Chile, Patrick Egan, granted asylum to Chileans who were seeking refuge during the 1891 Chilean War. And Egan, previously a militant Irish immigrant, Boy, wherever you got the Irish, you're going to have problems, really, to tell you the truth. They really are outspoken. We didn't get in World War I. We didn't hardly get into the Civil War over the Irish. Maybe the Civil War would have been better. The Irish have always been rioters. They're rioting over there in Europe, and they're rioting here sometimes. And his reason for this This Irish immigrant, Egan, was motivated by his personal desire to thwart any of Great Britain's influence in Chile. They hate the English. They always hate the English. Call them a bunch of inbreds. His action increased tensions between Chile and the United States. You shouldn't have been there. Anytime you got Great Britain involved in anything, you better leave the Irish out of it. you're gonna have trouble. Now here, the tensions were greatly increased. The crisis began in earnest when the United States of Baltimore took shore, leave, and Valparaiso. And a fire ensured, resulting in the deaths of two American sailors, and the arrest of three dozen others. The Baltimore's captain, Winfield Shaley, based on the nature of the sailors' wounds, insisted that the sailors had been bayoneted by the Chilean police. They'd been attacked by bayonets, without provocation at all. Blaine incapacitated, Harrison drafted a demand for reparations. The Chilean administrator of foreign affairs, Manuel Mata, replied that Harrison's message was erroneous and deliberately incorrect. One thing about Harrison, Harrison had fought in war. And he knew what war was. And he said that the Chilean government was treating the affair the same as any other criminal matter. Tensions increased to the brink of war. Harrison threatened to break off democratic relations unless the United States received a suitable apology and said that the situation required grave and patriotic consideration. The president also said, if the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States or not, to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who in foreign ports display a flag or wear the colors. The Navy was also placed on high level of preparedness. A recuperated Blaine made a brief conciliatory overtures to the Chilean government, which had no support in the administration. He then reversed his course and joined the chorus of the unconditional concessions and apology by the Chileans, who ultimately obliged and war was averted. Theodore Roosevelt later applauded Harrison for his use of the big stick, speak softly and carry a big stick. The annexation of Hawaii. The United States Consul in Hawaii, John I. Stevens, recognized the new government on February the 1st, 1893 and forwarded their proposals to Washington. With just one month before leaving office, the administration signed a treaty on February the 14th and submitted it to the Senate the next day with Harrison's recommendation. The Senate failed to act. President Cleveland withdrew the treaty shortly after taking office. President Cleveland made a bad mistake in doing that, because he thought it was better for the people there. Harrison appointed several judges while he was in office, and six states were admitted to the Union in his time. Washington, D.C. is a terrible place in the summer during this period of time. James A. Garfield dying, they built an air conditioning system in the White House trying to protect that. A man gave Harrison a cottage. in Maryland and Cape May Point, New Jersey in 1890. They made a gift to him of this summer college in Cape May Harrison. Harrison, though appreciative, was uncomfortable with it, so he gave him $10,000. for the cottage, which was a lot of money back then. It's equivalent to about $300,000 today. Harrison's opponents still made the gift of that cottage be part of it. In his election campaign of 1892, the nation's economy's health was worsening and going to pieces. And basically, they knew that Harrison could not be re-nominated and unanimously re-elected. Grover Cleveland won the election again, back in the White House because of his dropping the tariffs and putting the gold standard behind the dollar, but it was in such a bad state of affairs, the nation was at that time, that they blamed a lot of it on him, which it wasn't his fault. Now after Harrison left the office, he went to the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He returned home to Indianapolis, He had been elected to the military order of Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882 and was elected as Commander President of the Ohio Commandery in 1893. For a few months, he lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University. A lot of his fans tried to get him to seek the presidency again, but he didn't want to. In 1895 to March 1901, Harrison served at the Board of Trustees at Purdue University, where Harrison's Hall, a dormitory, is named in his honor. In Harrison, at age 62, married Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, a widow, 37 years old, and niece of his former secretary of his deceased wife. Harrison's two adult children, Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary McKee, 38, disapproved of the marriage and did not attend the wedding. Benjamin and Mary had one child together, Elizabeth, born in 1897 and died in 1955. In 1898, Harrison served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela and the British Guyana Boundary Dispute with the United Kingdom. He was in our court for 25 hours on Venezuela's behalf. He lost the case, but his legal arguments won him international fame. He attended the first peace conference at The Hague. He always was an active Presbyterian and one of the leaders in his church in Indianapolis. had basically an impeccable, honest reputation, always. Many historians recognize the importance of many of his, what he did. He built a Navy in the United States, which later on was really built up by Teddy Roosevelt. One of the worst things to happen to him was the McKinley Tariff. He had a 13-cent stamp issued in 1902. He died in 1901 of complications of flu, influenza. In 1908, the people of Indianapolis erected the Benjamin Harris Memorial Statue created by Charles Niassus and Henry Bacon in honor of Harrison's lifetime achievements as a military leader and also in the United States. In 1951, Harrison's home was opened to the public as a library and museum. It had been used as a music school from 1937 to 1950. The house was designated as a National Historic Site and Landmark in 1964. Theodore Roosevelt dedicated Fort Benjamin Harrison in his honor in 1906. and it's located in Lawrence, Indiana, a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis. The United States government decommissioned Fort Harrison in 1991 and transferred 1,700 of its 2,500 acres to Indiana State Park. and they established Fort Harrison State Park. In 1931, Franklin Hall at Miami University, Harrison's alma mater was renamed Harrison Hall, and it was replaced by a new building of the same name in 1960, and the houses of the college's political science department in 1966 at Purdue University opened in Harrison's Hall. An eight-floor, 400-room residence hall. Harrison served as a Purdue University trustee for the last six years of his life. Benjamin Harrison was an honest man. He made mistakes, but he was an honest man. He made honest mistakes. The Lakota Nation were decimated because of Wovoka, a charlatan, a Paiute charlatan. He's still honored among the Paiute, but he was nothing but a charlatan. He caused the deaths of all those people that wounded me. He caused the deaths of Crazy Horse. He caused the death of Pretending Bull. And he caused Benjamin Harrison to make some bad decisions, especially with the man that they sent there, Nelson Miles. This is a story of a honest president of the United States, a man that didn't go in there to gain money or wealth or power. He went in there to serve his country. Not all of them did that. Father, we send this message out for your honor and glory. May we remember this man and what he did for us as a Christian man. Even though he made mistakes in our country, he did the best he could. And many of the things that he did still are assets to his memory and to our country.