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William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth President of the United States, an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. The oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the United States Declaration of Independence, Harrison died on his thirty-second day in office of complications from a cold – the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment. Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought an end to hostilities in his region. After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to the United States Congress, and in 1824 he became a member of the Senate. There he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia, he lectured Simon Bolívar on
the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio,
where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the
presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before being
elected president in 1840. William Henry Harrison was born February 9, 1773, the youngest of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth Bassett's seven children. They were a prominent political family who lived on Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the last president born as a British subject before American Independence. His father was a planter and a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774 – 1777) who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was governor of Virginia between 1781 and 1784. William's older brother Carter Bassett Harrison was elected a representative of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives. In 1787, at the age of 14, Harrison entered the Presbyterian Hampden - Sydney College. He attended the school until 1790, becoming well versed in Latin and basic French. He was removed by his Episcopalian father, possibly because of a religious revival occurring at the school. He then briefly attended an academy in Southampton County before being again moved to the state capital of Richmond, where he began the study of medicine. He allegedly became involved with the antislavery Quakers and Methodists at the school. Angered, his pro-slavery father had him transfer to Philadelphia, where he boarded with Robert Morris, probably because of medical training available there. Harrison entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1790, where he continued to study medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush. As
Harrison explained to his biographer, he did not enjoy the subject.
Shortly after he had arrived in Philadelphia in 1791, his father died,
leaving him without funds for further schooling. He was 18 when his
father died, and was left in the guardianship of Morris. Governor Henry Lee of Virginia,
a friend of Harrison's father, learned of Harrison's impoverished
situation after his father's death and persuaded him to join the army.
Within 24 hours of meeting Lee, Harrison was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Army, 11th U.S. Regt. of Infantry at the age of 18. He was first assigned to Cincinnatiin the Northwest Territory where the army was engaged in the ongoing Northwest Indian War. General "Mad Anthony" Wayne took
command of the western army in 1792 following a disastrous defeat by
its previous commander, Arthur St. Clair. Harrison was promoted to
lieutenant that summer because of his strict attention to discipline,
and the following year he was promoted to serve as aide-de-camp. It was from Wayne that Harrison learned how to successfully command an army on the American frontier. Harrison participated in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which brought the Northwest Indian War to a successful close for the United States. After the war, Lieutenant Harrison was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which opened much of present day Ohio to settlement by European Americans. After
the death of his mother in 1793, Harrison inherited a portion of the
family's estate, including about 3,000 acres (12 km2) of land and several slaves. Still in the army at the time, Harrison sold his land to his brother. In 1795 Harrison met Anna Symmes, of North Bend, Ohio. She was the daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, a prominent figure in the state, and former representative to the Congress of the Confederation. When
Harrison asked the judge for permission to marry Anna, he was refused.
Harrison waited until Symmes left on business, then he and Anna eloped and married on November 25, 1795. Afterward,
concerned about Harrison's ability to provide for Anna, Symmes sold the
young couple 160 acres (65 ha) of land in North Bend. Together
they had 10 children: six sons and four daughters. Nine lived into
adulthood and one died in infancy. Anna was frequently in poor health
during the marriage, primarily due to her many pregnancies. Nevertheless, she outlived William by 23 years, dying at age 88 on February 25, 1864.
Harrison
resigned from the army in 1797 and began campaigning among his friends
and family for a post in the Northwest Territorial government. With the
aid of his close friend, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, he was recommended to replace the outgoing Secretary of the Northwest Territory. He was appointed to the position, during which time he acted as governor during the frequent absences of Governor Arthur St. Clair. Harrison had many friends in the elite eastern social circles, and quickly gained a reputation among them as a frontier leader. Harrison ran a successful horse breeding enterprise that won him acclaim throughout the Northwest Territory. He
championed for lower land prices, the northwesterners' primary concern
at the time. The US Congress had legislated a territorial land policy
that led to high land costs, a policy disliked by many of the
territory's citizens. When Harrison ran for Congress, he campaigned on
working to alter the situation to encourage migration to the territory. In 1799, at age 26, Harrison defeated the son of Arthur St. Clair and was elected as the first delegate representing the Northwest Territory in the Sixth United States Congress. He served from March 4, 1799, to May 14, 1800. As
a delegate from a territory, not a state, he had no authority to vote
on bills but was permitted to serve on a committee, submit legislation,
and debate. As delegate, Harrison successfully promoted the passage of the Harrison Land Act. This made it easier for the average settler to buy land in the Northwest Territory by allowing land to be sold in small tracts. The availability of inexpensive land was an important factor in the rapid population growth of the Northwest Territory. Harrison
also served on the committee that decided how to divide the Northwest
Territory. The committee recommended splitting the territory into two
segments, creating the Ohio Territory and the Indiana Territory. The bill passed and the two new territories were established in 1800. Without informing Harrison, President John Adams nominated
him to become governor of the new territory, based on his ties to "the
west" and seemingly neutral political stances. Harrison was confirmed
by the Senate the following day. Caught unaware, Harrison accepted the position only after receiving assurances from the Jeffersonians that he would not be removed from office after they gained power in the upcoming elections. He then resigned from Congress. The Indiana Territory consisted of the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and the eastern portion of Minnesota. Harrison moved to Vincennes, the capital of the newly established Indiana territory, on January 10, 1801. While in Vincennes, Harrison built a plantation style home he named Grouseland for
its many birds. It was one of the first brick structures in the
territory. The home, which has been restored and has become a popular
modern tourist attraction, served as the center of social and political
life in the territory. He also built a second home near Corydon, the second capital, at Harrison Valley. As
governor, Harrison had wide ranging powers in the new territory,
including the authority to appoint all territorial officials, and the
territorial legislature, and to control the division of the territory
into political districts. A primary responsibility was to obtain title
to Native American lands.
This would allow European - American settlement to expand and increase US
population to enable the region to gain statehood. Harrison
was eager to expand the territory for personal reasons as well, as his
political fortunes were tied to Indiana's rise to statehood. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson granted Harrison authority to negotiate and conclude treaties with the Indians. Harrison
supervised the development of 13 treaties, through which the territory
bought more than 60,000,000 acres (240,000 km2) of land from Native American leaders, including much of present day southern Indiana. The 1804 Treaty of St. Louis with Quashquame led to the surrender by the Sauk and Meskwaki of much of western Illinois and parts of Missouri. This treaty and loss of lands were greatly resented by many of the Sauk, especially Black Hawk. It was the primary reason the Sauk sided with Great Britain during the War of 1812. Harrison thought the Treaty of Grouseland in 1805 appeased some of the issues for Native Americans, but tensions remained high on the frontier. The 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne raised new tensions. Harrison purchased from the Miami tribe, who claimed ownership of the land, more than 2,500,000 acres (10,000 km²) of land inhabited by Shawnee, Kickapoo, Wea, and Piankeshaw peoples.
Harrison rushed the process by offering large subsidies to the tribes
and their leaders so that he could have the treaty in place before
President Jefferson left office and the administration changed. The tribes living on the lands were furious and sought to have the treaty overturned but were unsuccessful. In 1803 Harrison lobbied Congress to repeal Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance, in order to permit slavery in
the Indiana Territory. He claimed it was necessary to make the region
more appealing to settlers and would make the territory economically
viable. Congress
suspended the article for 10 years, during which time the territories
covered by the ordinance were granted the right to decide for
themselves whether to permit slavery. That year Harrison had the
appointed territorial legislature authorize indenturing. He
attempted to have slavery legalized outright, in both 1805 and 1807.
This caused a significant stir in the territory. When in 1809 the
legislature was popularly elected for the first time, Harrison found
himself at odds with them as the abolitionist party came to power. They immediately blocked his plans for slavery and repealed the indenturing laws he had passed in 1803. President Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Northwest Ordinance, had made a secret compact with James Lemen to
defeat the pro-slavery movement led by Harrison. Although a
slaveholder, he did not want slavery to expand into the Northwest
Territory, as he believed the institution should end. Under the
"Jefferson - Lemen compact", Jefferson donated money to Lemen to found
churches in Illinois and Indiana to stop the pro-slavery movement. In Indiana the
founding of an anti-slavery church led to citizens' signing a petition
and organizing politically to defeat Harrison's efforts to legalize
slavery. Jefferson and Lemen were both instrumental in defeating
Harrison's attempts in 1805 and 1807 to secure approval of slavery in
the territory. An Indian resistance movement against U.S. expansion had been growing through the leadership of the Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (The Prophet). The conflict became known as Tecumseh's War. Tenskwatawa convinced the native tribes that they would be protected by the Great Spirit and
no harm could befall them if they would rise up against the white
settlers. He encouraged resistance by telling the tribes to pay white
traders only half of what they owed and to give up all the white man's
ways, including their clothing, muskets, and especially whiskey, which
was becoming known as evil for American Indians. In August 1810, Tecumseh led four hundred armed warriors down the Wabash River to
meet with Harrison in Vincennes. As the warriors were dressed in war
paint, their sudden appearance at first frightened the soldiers at
Vincennes. The leaders of the group were escorted to Grouseland where
they met Harrison. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne Treaty was
illegitimate. He argued that no one tribe could sell land without the
approval of the other tribes; he asked Harrison to nullify it and
warned that Americans should not attempt to settle the lands sold in
the treaty. Tecumseh informed Harrison that he had threatened to kill
the chiefs who signed the treaty if they carried out its terms, and
that his confederation of tribes was growing rapidly. Harrison
said the Miami were the owners of the land and could sell it if they so
chose. He rejected Tecumseh's claim that all the Indians formed one
nation. He said each tribe could have separate relations with the
United States if they chose to. Harrison argued that the Great Spirit
would have made all the tribes speak one language if they were to be
one nation. Tecumseh launched an "impassioned rebuttal," but Harrison was unable to understand his language. A
Shawnee friendly to Harrison cocked his pistol from the sidelines to
alert Harrison that Tecumseh's speech was leading to trouble. Some
witnesses reported that Tecumseh was encouraging the warriors to kill
Harrison. Many of the warriors began to pull their weapons and Harrison
pulled his sword. Since the entire town's population was only 1,000,
Tecumseh's warriors could have defeated the entire town. Once the few
officers pulled their guns to defend Harrison, the warriors backed down. Chief Winnemac,
who was friendly to Harrison, countered Tecumseh's arguments and told
the warriors that since they had come in peace, they should return home
in peace. Before leaving, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless the
treaty was nullified, he would seek an alliance with the British. After the meeting, Tecumseh journeyed to meet with many of the tribes in the region, hoping to create a confederation to battle the United States. In 1811, while Tecumseh was traveling, Harrison was authorized by Secretary of War William Eustis to
march against the nascent confederation as a show of force. Harrison
led an army of more than 1,000 men north to try to intimidate the
Shawnee into making peace. Instead, the tribes launched a surprise
attack on Harrison's army early on the morning of November 6, in what
became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison defeated the tribal forces at Prophetstown, next to the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers. Harrison was hailed as a national hero and the battle became famous.
His troops had greatly outnumbered the attackers, and suffered many
more casualties during the battle.
When
reporting to Secretary Eustis, Harrison informed him the battle
occurred near the Tippecanoe River (which led to its naming), and he
feared an imminent reprisal attack. The first dispatch did not make
clear which side had won the conflict, and the secretary at first
interpreted it as a defeat. The follow-up dispatch made the US victory
clear. When no second attack came, the defeat of the Shawnee was more
certain. Eustis demanded to know why Harrison had not taken adequate
precautions in fortifying his camp against attacks. Harrison countered
by saying he had considered the position strong enough. The dispute was
the catalyst of a disagreement between Harrison and the Department of War that continued into the War of 1812. The
press did not cover the battle at first, and one Ohio paper
misinterpreted Harrison's dispatch to Eustis to mean he was defeated. By
December, as most major American papers carried stories on the battle,
public outrage over the Shawnee attack grew. At a time of high tensions
with Great Britain, many Americans blamed the British for
inciting the tribes to violence and supplying them with firearms. In
response, Congress passed resolutions condemning the British for
interfering in American domestic affairs. A few months later, the US
declared war against Great Britain. The outbreak of war with the British in 1812 led
to continued conflict with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, and
Harrison was kept in command of the army in Indiana. After the loss of Detroit, General James Winchester became the commander of the Army of the Northwest. He offered Harrison the rank of brigadier general, which he refused, as he wanted sole command of the army. President James Madison removed
Winchester and made Harrison the commander on September 17, 1812.
Harrison inherited an army of fresh recruits, which he endeavored to
drill. Initially he was greatly outnumbered by the British with their
Indian allies. In the winter of 1812 - 13, Harrison constructed a
defensive position at the rapids on the Maumee River in northwest Ohio. He named it Fort Meigs in honor of the Ohio governor, Return Jonathan Meigs Jr. After receiving reinforcements in 1813, Harrison took the offensive. He led the army north to battle the Shawnee and their new British allies. He won victories in Indiana and Ohio and recaptured Detroit, before invading Canada. He defeated the British at the Battle of the Thames, in which Tecumseh was killed. Secretary of War John Armstrong divided
the command of the army, assigning Harrison to a "backwater" post and
giving control of the front to one of Harrison's subordinates.
Armstrong and Harrison had disagreed over the lack of coordination and
effectiveness in the invasion of Canada. When Harrison was reassigned,
he promptly resigned from the army. His resignation was accepted in the summer of 1814. After
the war ended, Congress investigated Harrison's resignation. It
determined that he had been mistreated by the Secretary of War during
his campaign and that his resignation was justified. They awarded
Harrison a gold medal for his services during the War of 1812. The
Battle of the Thames was considered one of the great American victories
in the war, second only to the Battle of New Orleans. After the war, Harrison was appointed by President James Madison to
serve as a commissioner to negotiate two treaties with the Indian
tribes in the Northwest. Both treaties were advantageous to the United
States as the tribes ceded a large tract of land in the west. It
provided more land for European - American purchase and settlement. Harrison was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to finish the term of John McLean of Ohio, serving from October 8, 1816, to March 4, 1819. He was elected to and served in the Ohio State Senate from 1819 to 1821, having lost the election for Ohio governor in 1820. In 1822 he ran for the U.S. House but lost by only 500 votes to James W. Gazlay.
In 1824 he was elected again to the U.S. Senate, where he served until
May 20, 1828. Fellow westerners in Congress called Harrison a
"Buckeye", a term of affection related to the native Ohio Buckeye tree. Appointed as minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia, Harrison resigned from Congress and served in his new post until March 8, 1829. He arrived in Bogota on
December 22, 1828. He found the condition of Colombia saddening.
Harrison reported to the Secretary of State that the country was on the
edge of anarchy and he thought Simón Bolívar was about to
become a military dictator.
While minister in Colombia, Harrison wrote a rebuke to Bolívar,
stating "... the strongest of all governments is that which is
most free." He called on Bolívar to encourage the development of
a democracy. In response, Bolívar wrote, "The United States ...
seem destined by Providence to plague America with torments in the name
of freedom", a sentiment that achieved fame in Latin America. When the new administration of President Andrew Jackson took
office in March 1829, Harrison was recalled so they could make their
own appointment to the position. He returned to the United States in
June. After Harrison returned to the United States in 1829, he settled on his farm in North Bend, Ohio,
his adopted home state. There, he lived in relative retirement after
nearly 40 years of continuous government service. Having
accumulated no substantial wealth during his lifetime, he subsisted on
his savings, a small pension, and the income produced by his farm.
Harrison cultivated corn and established a distillery to produce whiskey.
After a brief time in the liquor business, he became disturbed by the
effects of alcohol on its consumers, and closed the distillery. In a
later address to the Hamilton County Agricultural
Board in 1831, Harrison said he had sinned in making whiskey, and hoped
that others would learn from his mistake and stop the production of
liquors. In these early years, Harrison also earned money from his contributions to a biography written by James Hall, entitled A Memoir of the Public Services of William Henry Harrison, published in 1836. That year he made an unsuccessful run for the presidency as a Whig candidate. Between 1836 and 1840, Harrison served as Clerk of Courts for Hamilton County. This was his job when he was elected president in 1840. By
1840, when Harrison campaigned for president a second time, more than
12 books had been published on his life. In many he was hailed as a
national hero. Harrison
was the Northern Whig candidate for president in 1836, the only time in
American history when a major political party intentionally ran more
than one presidential candidate. Vice President Martin Van Buren,
the Democratic Candidate, was popular and deemed likely to win the
election against an individual Whig candidate. The Whig plan was to
elect popular Whigs regionally, deny Van Buren the 148 electoral votes
needed for election, and force the House of Representatives to decide
the election. They hoped the Whigs would control the House after the
general elections. (This strategy would have failed as the Democrats
retained a majority in the House following the election.) Harrison was nominated to lead the Whig ticket in most of the states. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Hugh L. White were
put as the Whig candidate in Kentucky, Delaware, Massachusetts, and
Maryland. The plan narrowly failed as Van Buren won the election with
170 electoral votes. A swing of just over 4000 votes in Pennsylvania
would have given that state's 30 electoral votes to Harrison, and the
election would have been decided in the House of Representatives. Harrison was the Whig candidate (and again faced Van Buren, now the incumbent president) in the 1840 election.
The Whig party unified behind a single candidate, and Harrison was
chosen over more controversial members of the party, such as Clay and
Webster. Harrison based his campaign on his heroic military record and
on the weak U.S. economy, caused by the Panic of 1837. In a ploy to blame Van Buren for the depressed economy, the Whigs nicknamed him "Van Ruin". The
Democrats ridiculed Harrison by calling him "Granny Harrison, the
petticoat general," because he resigned from the army before the War of 1812 ended. When asking voters whether Harrison should be elected, they asked them
what his name backwards was, which happens to be "No Sirrah." Democrats
cast Harrison as a provincial, out-of-touch old man who would rather
"sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider" than attend to the
administration of the country. This strategy backfired by Harrison and
his vice presidential running mate, John Tyler's
adopting the log cabin and hard cider as campaign symbols. They used
the images in banners and posters, and created bottles of hard cider
that were shaped like log cabins, all to connect to the "common man". Although
Harrison had come from a wealthy, slaveholding Virginia family, in this
campaign he was promoted as a humble frontiersman in the style of the
popular Andrew Jackson. A memorable example was the Gold Spoon Oration, delivered by a Whig representative. Van Buren, by contrast, was presented as a wealthy elitist. A Whig chant from the time of the election exhibited the difference between candidates: Old Tip he wore a homespun coat, he had no ruffled shirt: wirt-wirt, People singing the chant would spit tobacco juice while singing "wirt-wirt".
The Whigs boasted of Harrison's military record and reputation as the
hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. Their campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too", became among the most famous in American politics. On election day, Harrison won a landslide electoral college victory, though the popular vote was much closer, at 53% to 47%. When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe.
He took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day. He
wore neither an overcoat nor hat, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. It took him nearly two hours to read, although his friend and fellow Whig Daniel Webster had edited it for length. Harrison rode through the streets in the inaugural parade. The inaugural address was a detailed statement of the Whig agenda, essentially a repudiation of Jackson and Van Buren's policies. Harrison promised to reestablish the Bank of the United States and extend its capacity for credit by issuing paper currency (Henry Clay's American System); to defer to the judgment of Congress on legislative matters, with sparing use of his veto power; and to reverse Jackson's spoils system of executive patronage. He promised to use patronage to create a qualified staff, not to enhance his own standing in government. As
leader of the Whigs and a powerful legislator (as well as a frustrated
Presidential candidate in his own right), Clay expected to have
substantial influence in the Harrison administration. He ignored his
own platform plank of overturning the "Spoils" system. Clay attempted
to influence Harrison's actions before and during his brief presidency,
especially in putting forth his own preferences for Cabinet offices and
other presidential appointments. Harrison rebuffed his aggression,
saying "Mr. Clay, you forget that I am the President." The dispute intensified when Harrison named Daniel Webster,
Clay's arch-rival for control of the Whig Party, as his Secretary of
State, and appeared to give Webster's supporters some highly coveted
patronage positions. Harrison's sole concession to Clay was to name his
protegé John J. Crittenden to the post of Attorney General.
When Clay pressed Harrison on the appointments, the president told him
not to visit the White House again, but to address him only in writing. Despite this, the dispute continued until the president's death. Clay was not the only one who hoped to benefit from Harrison's election. Hordes of office applicants came to the White House,
which was then open to all comers who wanted a meeting with the
President. Most of Harrison's business during his month-long presidency
involved extensive social obligations — an inevitable part of his high
position and arrival in Washington — and receiving visitors at the
White
House. They awaited him at all hours and filled the Executive Mansion. As
he had with Clay, Harrison resisted pressure from other Whigs over
patronage. When a group arrived in his office on March 16 to demand the
removal of all Democrats from any appointed office, Harrison
proclaimed, "So help me God, I will resign my office before I can be
guilty of such an iniquity." Harrison's
only official act of consequence was to call Congress into a special
session. He and Henry Clay had disagreed over the necessity of such a
session, and when on March 11 Harrison's cabinet proved evenly divided,
the president vetoed the idea. A few days later, however, Treasury
Secretary Thomas Ewing reported
to Harrison that federal funds were in such trouble that the government
could not continue to operate until Congress' regularly scheduled
session in December; Harrison thus relented, and on March 17 proclaimed
the special session in the interests of "the condition of the revenue
and finance of the country." The session was scheduled to begin on May
31. On March 26, Harrison became ill with a cold.
According to the prevailing medical misconception of that time, it was
believed that his illness was directly caused by the bad weather.
Modern studies have shown that exposure to adverse weather does not
cause respiratory illnesses, and Harrison had become ill more than
three weeks after the inauguration. The cold worsened, rapidly turning to pneumonia and pleurisy. He
sought to rest in the White House, but could not find a quiet room
because of the steady crowd of office seekers. His extremely busy
social schedule made any rest time scarce. Harrison's doctors tried cures, applying opium, castor oil, leeches,
and Virginia snakeweed. But the treatments only made Harrison worse,
and he became delirious. He died nine days after becoming ill, at 12:30 a.m. on April 4, 1841, of right lower lobe pneumonia, jaundice, and overwhelming septicemia. He was the first United States president to die in office. His last
words were to his doctor, but assumed to be directed at John Tyler,
"Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I
wish them carried out. I ask nothing more." Harrison served the
shortest term of any American president: March 4 – April 4, 1841, 31
days, twelve hours, and 30 minutes. Harrison's funeral took place in the Wesley Chapel in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841. His original interment was in the public vault of the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. He was later buried in North Bend, Ohio. The William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial was erected in his honor. The untimely death of Harrison was a disappointment to Whigs, who hoped to pass a revenue tariff and enact measures to support Henry Clay's American System. John Tyler, Harrison's successor and a former Democrat, abandoned the Whig agenda, effectively cutting off from the party. Due
to the death of Harrison, three presidents served within a single
calendar year (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler). This has happened on only
one other occasion, in 1881, when Rutherford B. Hayes was succeeded by James A. Garfield, who was assassinated later in that year. With the death of Garfield, Chester A. Arthur stepped into the presidency. Harrison's death revealed the flaws in the constitution's clauses on presidential succession. Article II of the Constitution states
that "In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his
death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of
the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, ... and
[the Vice President] shall act accordingly, until the disability be
removed, or a President shall be elected". Scholars at the time
disagreed whether the vice president would become President or merely
Acting President. Further, the Constitution did not stipulate whether
the vice president could serve the remainder of the president's term,
until the next election, or if emergency elections should be held.
Harrison's cabinet insisted that Tyler was "Vice President acting as
President." After the cabinet consulted with the Chief Justice Roger Taney they decided that if Tyler took the presidential Oath of Office he
would assume the office of President. Tyler obliged and was sworn in on
April 6. In May, Congress convened. After a short period of debate in
both houses, it passed a resolution that confirmed Tyler in the
presidency for the remainder of Harrison's term. Once established, this
precedent of presidential succession remained in effect until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967. Following
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the succession of Lyndon B.
Johnson to the presidency in 1963, the Twenty-fifth Amendment dealt
with the finer points of succession. It defined in what situations the
vice president was acting president, and in what situation the vice
president could become president. As the shortest-serving president, Harrison was the only one not to appoint a single federal judge at any level. No states were admitted to the union during his term. Harrison was the first sitting president to have his photograph taken. The original daguerreotype, made in Washington on his Inauguration Day, has been lost — although at least one copy exists in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His
chief presidential legacy lies in his campaigning methods, which laid
the foundation for the modern presidential campaign tactics. Harrison died nearly penniless. Congress voted to give his wife a Presidential widow's pension, a payment of $25,000, one year of Harrison's salary. This is equivalent to over $500,000 in 2009 dollars. She also received the right to mail letters free of charge. Harrison was the first of only four presidents who did not have an opportunity to nominate a judge to serve on the Supreme Court. Harrison's son John Scott Harrison served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio between 1853 and 1857. Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, was the 23rd president, from 1889 to 1893, making them the only grandparent – grandchild pair of presidents. Numerous places were named after the military hero and president: Harrison County, Indiana; Harrison County, Mississippi; Harrison County, Iowa; Harrison County, Ohio; and three schools named William Henry Harrison High School (in Evansville and Battle Ground, Indiana and Harrison, Ohio). Because of his short service, no military vessel was named after him as president. During the American Civil War, the Union Army named a post near Cincinnati Camp Harrison. A military fort in Montana was named for him. A statue of Harrison was erected on Monument Circle in Indianapolis. |