William Henry Harrison (1773 - 1841) was an American military officer, territorial governor and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. [1] He came to national prominence as a commander in the wars against Native American confederacies in the Northwest Territory and in the War of 1812. Elected in 1840, he died in Washington a month after his inauguration, the first United States president to die in office. [2]
Early life
William Henry Harrison was born on 9 February 1773 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, the youngest son of Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia. [1] He studied at Hampden-Sydney College and began medical training in Philadelphia under Benjamin Rush, but abandoned it after his father's death left him without means, obtaining an army commission in 1791.
Soldier and territorial governor
Harrison served in the campaigns in the Ohio country under General Anthony Wayne and was present at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and at the Treaty of Greenville negotiations. He resigned his commission in 1798 to become secretary of the Northwest Territory and then its delegate to Congress, promoting legislation making it easier for settlers to purchase public land. [3]
Appointed governor of the newly created Indiana Territory in 1801, Harrison held the post for twelve years. He negotiated a long series of treaties that transferred vast areas of Native American land to the United States, including the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, which was repudiated by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa as invalid. [1] In November 1811 Harrison marched on their settlement at Prophetstown and fought the Battle of Tippecanoe, an engagement that gave him a lasting popular nickname. During the War of 1812 he commanded the Army of the Northwest, retook Detroit, and in 1813 defeated a British and Native force at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, where Tecumseh was killed. [2]
Political career
After resigning from the army Harrison settled at North Bend, Ohio, and held a succession of offices: member of the United States House of Representatives, Ohio state senator, United States senator, and briefly minister to Gran Colombia. [3] He was one of several Whig candidates in the presidential election of 1836 and ran again as the party's sole nominee in 1840, with John Tyler of Virginia as his running mate.
The 1840 campaign is remembered as the first modern American presidential campaign, conducted through mass rallies, songs and the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," with the log cabin and hard cider adopted as emblems of a candidate who in fact came from the Virginia gentry. [2] Harrison defeated the incumbent Martin Van Buren decisively.
Presidency and death
Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in American history on 4 March 1841, speaking for nearly two hours in cold weather without a coat. He fell ill within weeks and died in the White House on 4 April 1841, having served thirty-one days. [1] The cause was recorded as pneumonia; later analyses have pointed to enteric fever contracted from the capital's contaminated water supply.
Legacy
The immediate constitutional consequence of Harrison's death was decisive: Vice President John Tyler insisted that he had become president in full rather than acting in the office, a position that established the precedent later written into the Twenty-fifth Amendment. [3] Harrison's own presidency was too brief for policy, and his historical reputation rests on his military and territorial career, above all on the treaties and campaigns through which Native American nations were dispossessed of land north of the Ohio. His grandson Benjamin Harrison became the twenty-third president in 1889.
