In a manuscript that survives in the Library of Congress, the future president recorded his thinking as he puzzled about which career to choose. As a young man setting out to “go forth and grapple with the stern realities of life,” Harrison seriously considered becoming a minister or a lawyer. All quotations are his.
On lawyers as a whole, he recorded that “No invective has been thought too strong and no anathema too bitter.” Even lawyers attempting charitable work were looked down upon, “until is has become a generally acknowledged proposition that no honest or pious man can practice law with success.”
Using his singularly logical mind, he rebutted the claim:
….that all rogues are lawyers may in some sense be true, but that all lawyers are rogues, no syllogistic reasoning can prove. Where is the justice in denouncing the whole profession on account of the unworthy conduct of some of its members? Shall we denounce and anathematize the practice of medicine because there are quacks (and that, too, not a few) wrapped in the dignity of an M.D.?
Harrison went on to success as a lawyer.
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