Charles W. Calhoun > Quotes

“All told, the Fifty-first Congress passed 531 public laws, representing an unprecedented level of legislative accomplishment unequaled until Theodore Roosevelt’s second term. After the final adjournment on March 3, the historian and Republican congressman Henry Cabot Lodge wrote, “No Congress in peace time since the first has passed so many great & important measures of lasting value to the people.”
― Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 23rd President, 1889-1893

“Throughout his career as a soldier, lawyer, and public servant, Harrison had felt a keen sense of personal responsibility for whatever work he engaged to do. He treated his presidential duties no differently. Although he could delegate work, he could not relinquish the conviction that the country would hold him ultimately accountable for his administration’s actions. He was, therefore, a hands-on president.”
― Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 23rd President, 1889-1893

“Embracing government activism, he asserted that the public benefit fully justified the government “in making expenditures in the direction that no private enterprise could afford to go.”
― Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 23rd President, 1889-1893

“There is,” he said, “a great sense of loneliness in the discharge of high public duties. The moment of decision is one of isolation.”
― Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 23rd President, 1889-1893