William Henry Harrison

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William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States in 1841.

He died of typhoid, pneumonia, or paratyphoid fever 31 days into his term (the first president to die in office).

Because the Constitution was vague as to whether Vice President John Tyler should take the presidency or simply do the duties of the vacant office, his death caused a brief constitutional crisis.

When the current president's term expires, Tyler argued a constitutional mandate to become the new president and took the oath of office in order to orderly exchange of the presidency and its full powers.

He was the last president to be born in the Thirteen Colonies before the Revolutionary War in 1775.

He was involved in the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, an American military victory that effectively ended the Northwest Indian War during his early military career.

Early life and education

Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth (Bassett) Harrison, the seventh and youngest child of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth (Bassett) Harrison, born in Berkeley, Virginia, on the James River in Charles City County, on February 9, 1773. This was a prominent political family of English descent whose ancestors had lived in Virginia since the 1630s; he became the last American president not born as an American citizen. His father, a Virginia planter, was a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) and who signed the Declaration of Independence. He served in the Virginia legislature and as the fourth governor of Virginia (1781-1784) during and after the American Revolutionary War. Carter Bassett Harrison, Harrison's older brother, served Virginia in the House of Representatives (1793–1799). As he was growing up in a house just 30 miles (48 km) away from where Washington defeated the British in the Battle of Yorktown, William Henry often referred to himself as a "child of the revolution," as he did.

When Harrison first attended Hampden–Sydney College, a Presbyterian college in Virginia, he was tutored at home until age 14. He studied for three years, gaining a classical education that included Latin, Greek, French, logic, and debate. His Episcopalian father resigned from the academy, owing to religious reasons, and after brief stays at an academy in Southampton County, Virginia, and with his elder brother Benjamin in Richmond in 1790, he moved to Philadelphia.

His father died in the spring of 1791, and his son was placed in the custody of Robert Morris, an intimate family friend in Philadelphia. Doctor Benjamin Rush and William Shippen Sr. briefly studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, so he didn't have enough funds for further medical education, which he later discovered he didn't like. He therefore dropped out of medical school, but school archives reveal him as a "non-graduate alumnus of Penn's medical school class of 1793." Governor Henry Lee III, his father's companion, launched a military career, lending him the clout of his father's uncle, Governor Henry Lee III.

Within 24 hours of meeting Lee, Harrison, age 18, was accepted as an Army ensign and assigned to the First American Regiment on August 16, 1791. He was first posted to Fort Washington, Cincinnati, where the army was stationed in the Northwest Indian war. Young Harrison, according to biographer William W. Freehling, escorted eighty thrill-seekers and troublemakers off Philadelphia's streets, coerced them to sign enlistment papers and march them to Fort Washington.

After a humiliating defeat under Arthur St. Clair, Harrison was promoted to lieutenant. He became Wayne's aide-de-camp and developed the capabilities to command an army on the frontier; he was instrumental in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which ended the Northwest Indian War in 1793. Wayne lauded him for his service in the war: "I must reveal the names of my faithful and gallant Aide-de-camp... he deserves the praise." Lieutenant Harrison, "who provided the most essential service by not giving my orders in any direction," said Lieutenant Harrison, "detaining the troops to press for victory." Harrison, a signatory to the Treaty of Greenville (1795), as witness to Wayne, the United States' chief negotiator. A group of Indians ceded a portion of their lands to the federal government under the terms of the pact, bringing two-thirds of Ohio to an end.

Harrison inherited a portion of his family's Virginia estate at his mother's death in 1793, including approximately 3,000 acres (12 km2) of land and several slaves. At the time, he was in the Army and sold the property to his brother. Harrison was promoted to captain in May 1797 and resigned from the Army on June 1, 1798.

When Harrison was 22 years old, he encountered Anna Tuthill Symmes of North Bend, Ohio. She was a granddaughter of Anna Tuthill and Judge John Cleves Symmes, who served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War and as a Confederation representative and a representative of Confederation Congress. Harrison begged for permission to marry Anna but was refused, so the couple waited until Symmes left to pursue business. They eloped and were married on November 25, 1795, at the North Bend home of Stephen Wood, the Northwest Territory's treasurer. Since Harrison was still on military service, they honeymooned at Fort Washington. Judge Symmes confronted him two weeks later at a farewell dinner for GM, sternly asking how he could help a family. "Mr. Harrison, by my sword and my own right arm," he said. Harrison's return from the army was lucrative as he eventually abused his father-in-law's links with land speculators, which enabled him to leave the army. Judge Symmes' doubts about him remained as he wrote to a friend, "He can neither bleed, plead, nor preach, and preach, and if he could plow, I would be happy." The situation escalated until the father-in-law, who later sold the Harrisons 160 acres (65 ha) of land in North Bend, which allowed Harrison to build a house and start a farm.

The Harrisons had ten children: Elizabeth Bassett (1796–1846), John Cleves Symmes (1798–1830), John Symmes (1802–1868), Benjamin Harrison (1808–1848), Benjamin Pike (1801–1838), John Cleves Symmes (1796–1848), Thomas Symmes (1808–1868), John Smith (1804–1820), Henry Symmes (1804–1820), Benjamin Henry (1796-1837 Anna was often in poor health during her pregnancy, mainly due to her many pregnancies, but she outlived William by 23 years, dying on February 25, 1864, at 88. Harrison had six children by an enslaved African-American woman named Dilsia, according to scholar Kenneth R. Janken in his biography of Walter Francis White. The allegation is based on the White family's oral history, but not otherwise documented.

Postwar life

Harrison resigned from the army in 1814, a few years before the war of 1812 ended, and he returned to his family and farm in North Bend, Ohio. Freehling claims that his spending then far exceeded his means and he fell into debt, that Harrison chose "celebrity over service" instead of defaming the word at parties in New York, Washington, and Philadelphia, and that he became an office seeker. He was elected in 1816 to complete John McLean's term in the House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 1st congressional district until 1819. He attempted to re-pose the post as Secretary of War under President Monroe in 1817 but fell short to John C. Calhoun. He had been refused a diplomatic post to Russia. He was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1819 and served until 1821, having lost the election for governor in 1820. He ran in the 1822 race for the United States House of Representatives but fell short of James W. Gazlay. He was elected to the Senate in 1824, and in 1820, he was a presidential elector in Ohio, as well as Henry Clay in 1824.

Harrison was elected in 1828 as minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia, but he resigned from Congress and served in his new post until March 8, 1829. He arrived in Bogotá on December 22, 1828, and discovered the state of Colombia was sad. He told the Secretary of State that the country was on the brink of anarchy and that Simón Bolvar was going to become a military dictator. Bolvar wrote a letter of polite rebuke to Bolvar, saying that "the most important of all governments is that which is most free" and calling on Bolvar to foster democracy's growth. Bolvar wrote in response that the US "is destined by Providence to wreak havoc in the name of liberty," a view that has gained notoriety in Latin America.

Harrison's stumbles in Columbia were "poor and frequent," meaning he struggled to properly maintain a sense of neutrality in Columbian affairs by publicly condemning Bolivar, and Columbia demanded his dismissal. Andrew Jackson assumed office in March 1829 and recall Harrison in order to make his own appointment to the position. Harrison finds a military dictatorship in Columbia, but "his liberal views, his stern republican ties, and the nexuous dress and demeanor of his clothes and demeanor all contrasted too closely with the public officers' arbitrary beliefs and ostentatious behavior to allow him to long be a favorite with those who usurped the government's ostensible conduct. They feared that the people would know the difference between a true and a pretended patriot, and started a string of lawsuits against our minister, making his situation extremely unpleasant."

Harrison, who resigned from his position but remained in the United States, wrote his nearly ten-page letter to Bolivar, which is reproduced in full in both the Hall and Burr biographies. It was the former soldier who was struck by Harrison's "deeply embedded principles of liberty" that had harmed him. Burr's letter is described as "full of wisdom, goodness, and patriotism...and the purest of principles."

After nearly four decades of government service, Harrison returned to the United States and his North Bend farm, living in relative anonymity. During his lifetime, he had no money to spare, a small pension, and the farm's income. Burr discusses M. Chavalier, who was in Cincinnati at the time, and characterized Harrison as "poor" with a large family that was rejected by the federal government but a firm devoted to independent thinking."

Locals had to be able to help Harrison's by naming him Clerk of Courts for Hamilton County, where he served from 1836 to 1840. "His colleagues talk about making him president here in the east, but here we make him clerk of an inferior court." He also raised corn and started a distillery to distill whisky, but he closed it after being worried by alcohol's effects on its consumers. He said he had sinned in making whiskey and hoped that others would learn from his mistake and avoid the production of liquors in an address to the Hamilton County Agricultural Board in 1831.

He encountered George DeBaptiste, an abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor who lived in Madison, about this time, and the two became friends. "We might not be looking forward to a day when a North American sun will not look down on a slave," Harrison wrote at the time. Later, DeBaptiste became his valet, and later became the White House steward.

Burr ends his account of Harrison by describing an event that was denounced by some of his associates—a general reception in Philadelphia in 1836. "Thousands and tens of thousands of people throned Chesnut street wharf at his arrival, and he greeted him with continued applause as he landed," Burr says. He stepped into the barouche but the crowd pressed ahead so impatiently that the horses became afraid and reared often. As the General spoke to many of them and tried to prevent them from harming them, it was imperative to get them off; but the team was soon ineffective, and it was no longer able to get them to be rescued. The people drew a rope and tied it to the carriage, which was a surprise to the Marshall House. This act was the spontaneous gift of ten thousand grateful hearts. Pennsylvanians fought under the hero, and they loved him. We're focusing on this particular because we were eyewitnesses of all that has gone before.

In 1836, Harrison, one of four national Whig Party candidates, became the western Whig nominee for president. Daniel Webster, Hugh L. White, and Willie P. Mangum were among the others. More than a single Whig candidate emerged in an attempt to depose incumbent Vice President Martin Van Buren, the most popular Jackson-chosen Democrat. Democrats allege that the Whigs attempted to prevent a Van Buren win in the electoral college by several candidates and compel the vote to be held in the House. In any case, the scheme, if there was one, fell flat. Harrison came in second in second place and led nine of the Union's twenty-six states.

Harrison lived in all but Massachusetts and the slave states Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Except for South Carolina, White ran in the remaining slave states except for South Carolina. Daniel Webster played in Massachusetts and Mangum, South Carolina. Van Buren gained the presidency with 170 electoral votes. A vote of just over 4,000 votes in Pennsylvania would have shifted the state's 30-elective votes to Harrison, and the House of Representatives would have dissolved.

In the 1840 election, Harrison defeated Van Buren as the sole Whig candidate. The Whigs saw a born southerner and war hero in Harrison, who would contrast well with the aloof, uncaring, and aristocratic Van Buren. He was chosen over more controversial members of the party, such as Clay and Webster; his campaign emphasized his military accomplishments and the poor U.S. economy attributed to the Panic of 1837.

Van Buren was blamed for the economic difficulties, and the Whigs drew the nickname "Van Ruin" after him. Because he resigned from the army before the War of 1812 ended, the Democrats mocked him by calling him "Granny Harrison, the pettycoat general." When spelled backwards, they predicted what Harrison's name would be: "No Sirrah." He is depicted as a provincial, out-of-touch senior man who would rather "sit in his log cabin sipping hard cider" than attending to the country's government. When Harrison and his running buddy John Tyler adopted the log cabin and hard cider as campaign symbols, this tactic fell apart. The candidates' campaigns used the symbols on banners and posters, as well as bottles of hard cider shaped like log cabins, to connect the candidates to the "common man." "We have sung down, lied down, and drunk down," Freehling wrote about after his loss. This represented the new American political process in a single sentence.

Harrison came from a wealthy, slaveholding Virginia family, yet his campaign portrayed him as a humble frontiersman in the style popularized by Andrew Jackson, while still portraying Van Buren as a wealthy elitist. A famous example was the Gold Spoon Oration, delivered in the House by Pennsylvania's Whig representative Charles Ogle, mocking Van Buren's chic White House life and lavish spending. The Whigs invented a chant in which people would spit nicotine juice as they chanted "wirt-wirt," and this also showed the difference between candidates from the time of the election: a chanting "wirt-wirt" revealed the difference between them.

Harrison's service record and his fame as the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe were lauded by the Whigs. "Too Tippecanoe and Tyler" became one of America's most popular campaign slogans. While Van Buren ran for office, Harrison was on the campaign trail, entertaining with his portrayals of Indian war whoops and diverting people's attention away from the country's economic woes. A 60,000 crowd attended a Harrison rally at the Tippecanoe battlefield in June 1840. "Buckeyes" was used in North Bend, Ohio, as well as alumni of Ohio State University, according to Harrison's campaign announcement. The voter turnout in this election was up by 80%, 20 points higher than the previous election. Harrison gained landslide approval in the Electoral College, winning 234 electoral votes to Van Buren's 60. Despite winning nineteen of the twenty-six states, the popular vote margin was much closer, with fewer than 150,000 votes.

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Political career

Harrison began his political career in 1798 when he temporarily resigned from the military and campaigned with his colleagues and relatives for a post in the Northwest Territorial government. Timothy Pickering was serving as Secretary of State, and he was recommended to replace Winthrop Sargent, the outgoing territorial secretary, alongside Judge Symmes' influence. In July 1798, President John Adams named Harrison to the position. The documentation of the territory's activities was tedious, and he became bored and sought a position in the US Congress.

Harrison had many friends in the eastern aristocracy and quickly established a reputation as a frontier king. He owned a thriving horse-breeding business that earned him acclaim throughout the Northwest Territory. Congress had enacted a territorial policy that resulted in high land costs, a key issue for settlers in the territory; Harrison became their champion to lower those rates. In October 1799, the Northwest Territory's population reached a sufficient number to elect a delegates, and Harrison ran for office. He ran to encourage further migration to the territory, which culminated in statehoodhood.

Harrison defeated Arthur St. Clair Jr. by a single vote in 1798 at age 26, and served in the Sixth United States Congress from March 4, 1799, to May 14, 1800. He had no right to vote on legislative bills, but he was allowed to serve on a committee, submit bills, and participate in debate. He served as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands and introduced the Land Act of 1800, which made it possible to buy Northwest Territory land in smaller tracts at a lower price. Freeholders were allowed to buy smaller lots for less than half of the total cost of the territory's rapid population increase.

Harrison was also instrumental in splitting the territory into two parts. The eastern section continued to be known as the Northwest Territory and included Ohio and eastern Michigan; the western section was designated as the Indiana Territory and included Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, a portion of western Michigan, and the eastern portion of Minnesota. By law in 1800, the two new territories were officially established.

President John Adams appointed Harrison as the governor of the Indiana Territory on May 13, 1800, owing to his westlinks and his apparent neutral political positions. He spent a ten-year career in this role. His governorship was confirmed by the Senate, but he resigned from congress to become the first Indiana territorial governor in 1801.

Harrison began his duties in Vincennes, the Indiana Territory's capital, on January 10, 1801. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were both members of the Democratic Party, and they voted him governor in 1803, 1806, and 1809. Harrison was also in 1804 named to head the District of Louisiana's civilian government. Brigadier General James Wilkinson assumed the governor's duties for five weeks until the Louisiana Territory was officially established on July 4, 1805, and Brigadier General James Wilkinson assumed the position of governor.

Harrison built a plantation-style home near Vincennes in 1805, naming it Grouseland in honor of the birds on the property. During his tenure as governor, the 26-room house was one of the first brick structures in the territory, and during his tenure as governor, it served as a cradle of social and political life. In 1801, Harrison established a Vincennes University, which was incorporated as Vincennes University on November 29, 1806. In 1813, the territorial capital was relocated to Corydon, and Harrison built a second home at nearby Harrison Valley.

Harrison's primary goal was to obtain title to Indian lands that could be used to expand the territory's population and increase the population, which is a prerequisite for statehoodhood. He was also keen to expand the territory for personal reasons, considering that his political fortunes were tied to Indiana's eventual statehood. He was praised as a smart manager who saw significant improvements in roads and other infrastructure while profiting from land speculation on his own behalf and buying two milling companies.

When Harrison was re-elected as the Indiana territorial governor on February 8, 1803, he was granted greater authority to negotiate and conclude treaties with the Indians. The 1804 Treaty of St. Louis and Quashquame required the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes to cede a majority of western Illinois and Missouri. Many of the Sauk resent the loss of lands, particularly Black Hawk, the country's leader. Harrison believed that the Treaty of Grouseland (1805) appeased some of the Indians, but tensions remained high along the frontier. When Harrison purchased more than 2.5 million acres (10,000 km2) from the Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, and Eel River tribes, the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809) reignited new tensions. Any Indians questioned the tribe's membership in the treaty's power. As the government changed hands from Jefferson to Madison, Harrison was still able to do things unquestioned by the government.

He pursued the treaty process ardently, giving major subsidies to the tribes and their leaders in order to regain political support with Jefferson before his departure. According to biographer Freehling, the Indians assumed that land ownership was as common to all, just as the atmosphere is exhaling. Harrison achieved a massive area of Iowa and Missouri in 1805, after plying five of their chiefs with alcohol for no more than a penny per 200 acres.

Harrison's pro-slavery position made him unpopular with the Indiana Territory's abolitionists, despite continuing to promote slavery in the territory in vain. He had lobbied Congress to temporarily suspend Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance prohibiting slavery in the Indiana Territory in 1883. Despite Harrison's argument that the suspension was necessary to promote settlement and make the territory economically competitive and ready for statehood, the plan was rejected. Lacking Article VI's postponement, in 1807, the territorial legislature passed legislation that allowed indentured servitude and gave masters the power to determine the length of service.

President Jefferson, the primary author of the Northwest Ordinance, signed a clandestine pro-slavery drive backed by Harrison. He donated $100 to help Lemen with abolition and other worthy causes, and then another $20 to help support Bethel Baptist Church. The planting of the anti-slavery church in Indiana resulted in people signing a petition and campaigning to defy Harrison's efforts to legalize slavery in the state.

For the first time in 1809, the Indiana Territory held elections to the legislature's upper and lower houses. After the abolitionists took power, Harrison found himself at odds with the legislature, and the eastern portion of the Indiana territory grew to have a large anti-slavery population. The territory's general assembly convened in 1810, but its anti-slavery faction immediately repealed the indenturing laws that had been not enforced. Since 1809, the Indiana legislature gained more power, and the territory moved toward statehood.

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