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U.S Presidents — William Henry Harrison

OVERVIEW Name: William Henry Harrison President: # 9 Term Number(s): 14 Term Length: 0.1 Took Office: March 4, 1841 Left Office: April 4, 1841 Age when Elected: 68 Party: Whig Also Known As: "Old Tippecanoe, Old Tip" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Education: Hampden-Sydney College, University of Pennsylvania Occupation: Soldier Other Governmental Position: 2nd United States Minister to Colombia, United States Senator from Ohio, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Ohio State Senator, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio's 1st District, 1st Governor of Indiana Territory, Congressional Delegate from the Northwest Territory, 2nd Secretary of Northwest Territory. Military Service: None Religion: Episcopal Spouse(s): Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison (November 25, 1795) Children: Elizabeth Bassett Harrison; John Cleves Symmes Harrison; Lucy Singleton Harrison Este; William Henry Harrison, Jr.; John Scott Harrison; Benjamin Harrison; Mary Symmes Harrison; Carter Bassett Harrison; Anna Tuthill Harrison Taylor; James Findlay Harrison Birthdate: February 9, 1773 Birthplace: Charles City County, Virginia Deathdate: April 4, 1841 Deathplace: Washington, D.C. Age at Death: 68 Cause of Death: pneumonia and pleurisy Place of Internment: William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial in North Bend, Ohio Signature FIRST ELECTION Election Year: 1840 Main Opponent: Martin Van Buren Voter Participation: 80.20%   Electoral Popular States Click for larger image Winner 234 (80.00%) 1,275,390 (52.90%) 19 Main Opponent 60 (20.41%) 1,128,854 (46.80%) 7 total 294 2,411,808 26 CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS Vice President: John Tyler Secretary of State: Daniel Webster (1841) Secretary of the Treasury: Thomas Ewing (1841) Secretary of War: John Bell (1841) Secretary of the Navy: George E. Badger (1841) Attorney General: John J. Crittenden (1841) Postmaster General: Francis Granger (1841) Supreme Court Assignments: None PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY Referring to William Henry Harrison, a Democratic newspaper foolishly gibed, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it, he will sit ... by the side of a 'sea coal' fire, and study moral philosophy." The Whigs, seizing on this political misstep, in 1840 presented candidate Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren. Harrison was in fact a scion of the Virginia planter aristocracy. He was born at Berkeley in 1773. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond in 1791. Suddenly, that same year, Harrison switched interests. He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the Regular Army, and headed to the Northwest, where he spent much of his life. In the campaign against the Indians, Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened most of the Ohio area to settlement. After resigning from the Army in 1798, he became Secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In 1801 he became Governor of the Indiana Territory, serving 12 years. His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness. When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements. The threat against settlers became serious in 1809. An eloquent and energetic chieftain, Tecumseh, with his religious brother, the Prophet, began to strengthen an Indian confederation to prevent further encroachment. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack the confederacy. While Tecumseh was away seeking more allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet's town. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded. The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison's fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh's confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again fighting on the frontier. In the War of 1812, Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest. Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60. When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed "seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them." Webster had reason to be pleased, for while Harrison was nationalistic in his outlook, he emphasized in his Inaugural Address that he would be obedient to the will of the people as expressed through Congress. But before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died—the first President to die in office—and with him died the Whig program. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison Anna Harrison was too ill to travel when her husband set out from Ohio in 1841 for his inauguration. It was a long trip and a difficult one even by steamboat and railroad, with February weather uncertain at best, and she at age 65 was well acquainted with the rigors of frontier journeys. As a girl of 19, bringing pretty clothes and dainty manners, she went to Ohio with her father, Judge John Cleves Symmes, who had taken up land for settlement on the north bend of the Ohio River. Anna had grown up a young lady of the East, completing her education at a boarding school in New York City. A clandestine marriage on November 25, 1795, united Anna Symmes and Lt. William Henry Harrison, an experienced soldier at 22. Though the young man came from one of the best families of Virginia, Judge Symmes did not want his daughter to face the hard life of frontier forts; but eventually, seeing her happiness, he accepted her choice. Though Harrison won fame as an Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, he spent much of his life in a civilian career. His service in Congress as territorial delegate from Ohio gave Anna and their two children a chance to visit his family at Berkeley, their plantation on the James River. Their third child was born on that trip, at Richmond in September 1800. Harrison's appointment as governor of Indiana Territory took them even farther into the wilderness; he built a handsome house at Vincennes that blended fortress and plantation mansion. Five more children were born to the Harrisons. Facing war in 1812, the family went to the farm at North Bend. Before peace was assured, two more children were born. There, at news of her husband's landslide electoral victory in 1840, home-loving Anna said simply: "I wish that my husband's friends had left him where he is, happy and contented in retirement." When Mrs. Harrison decided not to go to Washington with her husband, the president-elect asked his daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison, widow of his namesake son, to accompany him and act as hostess until Anna's proposed arrival in May. Half a dozen other relatives happily went with them. On April 4, exactly one month after his inauguration, he died, so Anna never made the journey. She had already begun her packing when she learned of her loss. Accepting grief with admirable dignity, she stayed at her home in North Bend until the house burned in 1858; she lived nearby with their last surviving child, John Scott Harrison, until she died in February 1864 at the age of 88. MAJOR EVENTS 1841: Harrison delivers a lengthy inaugural address on an exceptionally cold day. Within one month, he is afflicted with pneumonia and dies in the White House. TRIVIA 1. William Henry Harrison was the only president who studied to become a doctor. 2. Harrison served the shortest presidency. 3. Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address, and was the first president to die in office, about 32 days after elected. On March 4, 1841, he gave a 105-minute speech and did not wear an overcoat or hat. He developed pneumonia and died in the White House exactly one month after giving his speech, on April 4. 4. It was believed that Harrison was cursed by Shawnee chief Tecumseh's brother for bribing the Native Americans for their land and giving them whiskey. Known as the "Curse of Tippecanoe," for 120 years, every president elected during years ending in a zero died while in office. The "curse" was broken by Ronald Reagan who survived an assassination attempt in 1981.