Background
Tanner was born on a farm near Richmondville, New York, on April 4, 1844. He was the son of Josiah and Elizabeth (Earle) Tanner and a descendant of William Tanner who settled in Rhode Island about 1679.
Tanner was born on a farm near Richmondville, New York, on April 4, 1844. He was the son of Josiah and Elizabeth (Earle) Tanner and a descendant of William Tanner who settled in Rhode Island about 1679.
He attended the district schools.
Tanner became a teacher at the age of seventeen. In September 1861 he ran away from his father's farm to enlist in the 87th New York Volunteer Infantry. Promoted to be corporal, he took part in the Peninsular campaign in the spring of 1862 and in the battles of Warrenton, Bristoe Station, and Second Manassas (Bull Run). At Bull Run (August 29-30, 1862) he received a wound necessitating amputation of both legs four inches below the knees. He recovered, learned to walk with artificial limbs, and studied stenography.
Friends procured for him the post of under-doorkeeper of the New York Assembly and late in 1864 a clerkship in the War Department at Washington. He was summoned from his room next door to the house where Lincoln lay dying to take stenographic notes on the first examination of witnesses of the assassination. After the close of the war he returned home, studied law in the office of Judge W. C. Lamont, and was admitted to the bar in 1869. He held various positions in the custom house at New York, 1869-77, and was tax collector of Brooklyn, 1877-85.
In his spare time he was a candidate for political offices, appeared often on the lecture platform, and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic. While commander of the Department of New York in 1876, he caused the legislature to be deluged with petitions for the establishment of a soldiers' home. The successful outcome of this agitation gained him a place on the pension committee of the Grand Army, with the duty of lobbying before congressional committees. Republican campaign managers sent him on speechmaking tours of California and Oregon in 1886 and 1887, and of Indiana in 1888. His friends claimed that his efforts won for Benjamin Harrison the small margin of votes by which he carried Indiana. Tanner's reward for this service was the post of commissioner of pensions in the new administration. Thankful that "at these finger tips there rests some power, " he declared his intention of raising all pensions to at least four dollars a month, "though I may wring from the hearts of some the prayer, 'God help the surplus!' ". He raised the disability ratings of many pensioners, in some cases without application on their part, and ordered the payment in lump sums of thousands of dollars accrued before the original application. Many of the beneficiaries were persons with political influence. The employees of the Pension Office, taking advantage of Tanner's administrative ineptitude, proceeded to give each other higher ratings. The number of new names on the pension rolls was also increased on the principle of giving "an appropriation to every old comrade that needs it".
After a few months the secretary of the interior interfered for reasons of economy. Tanner insubordinately informed him that he alone was responsible for the Pension Office; but, receiving no official encouragement, he sent a letter of resignation to the president in September 1889, and retired to private life as a pension attorney. President Harrison, in accepting the resignation, affirmed his belief in Tanner's personal honesty, and public opinion concurred. It is fairly obvious that Tanner's failure was due to his limited education and his lack of good administrative standards.
In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him register of wills of the District of Columbia; and the Grand Army of the Republic made him its commander-in-chief for the year 1905-06.
He died in Washington, D. C.
Tanner was a member of the Union Veteran Legion, and was elected national commander of that association as well.
He was married in November 1866 to Mero L. White of Jefferson, N. Y. , and was survived by two sons and two daughters.
