William Henry Harrison

President of the United States (1841)

• Born: February 9, 1773
• Birthplace: Near Charles City, Virginia
• Died: April 4, 1841
• Place of death: Washington, DC

Harrison’s victory over the Indian forces of Tecumseh and the Prophet at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 made him a national military hero. As a soldier and later governor of the Old Northwest Territory, he became identified with the ideas and desires of the West, eventually riding his military reputation to his election as president of the United States; however, he served only one month in that office and left no legacy as the nation’s chief executive.

Early Life

The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, William Henry Harrison was born at his family’s famous Berkeley Plantation in tidewater Virginia. He attended Hampden-Sydney College and briefly studied medicine under the famous physician Benjamin Rush. Harrison entered the army in 1791, serving in the campaigns against American Indians in the Northwest Territory and eventually becoming a lieutenant and aide-de-camp to Anthony Wayne. After serving as a frontier army officer for seven years, in 1798 Harrison resigned his commission to accept appointment as secretary of the Northwest Territory. The following year, he was elected the territory’s first delegate to Congress.

In Congress, Harrison was a spokesperson for the West and was author of the Land Act of 1800, which provided for the disposition of public lands on more liberal terms than previously practiced. The same year, he was appointed governor of the newly created Indiana Territory, which included all of the original Northwest Territory except Ohio. His new job would require the talents of both the diplomat and the soldier, and with his tall and slender build, soldierly bearing, and amiable countenance, Harrison looked the part.

Life’s Work

Harrison was given a nearly impossible charge. He was to win the friendship and trust of the Indians and protect them from the rapaciousness of white settlers, yet he was also urged to acquire for the government as much land as he could secure from the Western tribes. It appears that Harrison was genuinely concerned for the Indians: He ordered a campaign of inoculation to protect them from the scourge of smallpox and banned the sale of liquor to them. Nevertheless, he actively pursued the acquisition of Indian lands, and in 1809 negotiated a treaty with Indian leaders that transferred some 2,900,000 acres in the vicinity of the White and Wabash Rivers to the United States. This cession brought the tension between Natives and white settlers in the Northwest to a boiling point and instigated the events upon which Harrison’s fame and later career were founded.

In view of the uneasy relationship between the United States and Great Britain, many Americans assumed that the British had encouraged the “Indian troubles” of the interior. In reality, the growing hostility of the Western tribes was largely an indigenous reaction to the constant encroachments upon their lands by white settlers. Their frustrations finally reached a focus with the rise of two Shawnee half brothers, the chief Tecumseh and a one-eyed medicine man called the Prophet. The concept of a great Indian confederation was developed by Tecumseh, who argued that Indian lands were held in common by all the tribes and that the unanimous consent of those tribes was required if those lands were to be sold. The Prophet promoted a puritanical religious philosophy, and as his following grew, religion and politics gradually merged.

Harrison developed a healthy respect for the brothers’ abilities and hoped to be able to find a way to placate them. Finally, however, in what must be considered an aggressive move, Harrison marched a force of about one thousand men north from his capital at Vincennes toward Indian lands in northwestern Indiana. Early on the morning of November 7, 1811, Harrison’s encampment near an Indian settlement called Prophetstown in the vicinity of the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers suffered a surprise attack. The Indians who attacked Harrison were led, or at least inspired, by the Prophet; Tecumseh was in the South, organizing the tribes of that area. Harrison’s forces beat back the attackers and later burned the Indian settlement.

Almost immediately there was controversy concerning the particulars of the Battle of Tippecanoe and Harrison’s performance. Questions were asked about whether his troops were prepared for the Indian attack, why they had camped in a vulnerable position, whether Harrison or companion officers had actually commanded the defenses, and whether Harrison’s men were outnumbered. What, in fact, was the size of the attacking Indian force? In any case, Harrison, who was not a paragon of modesty, and his supporters immediately began to tell the story of a “Washington of the West” who represented the bravery and ambitions of Western Americans.

During the War of 1812 with Great Britain, Harrison served militarily in several positions, becoming supreme commander of the Army of the Northwest. He broke the power of the British and the Indians in the Northwest and southern Canada, his ultimate victory occurring in early October 1813, at the Battle of the Thames . Although his reputation among the general public was apparently enhanced, his military performance once again met with controversy. In May 1814, he resigned from the army and took up residence on a farm at North Bend, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River near Cincinnati.

At North Bend, Harrison worked at farming and undertook several unsuccessful commercial ventures, and the foundation for another aspect of his public image was established. Harrison’s home at North Bend, a commodious dwelling of sixteen rooms, was built around the nucleus of a log cabin. This humble kernel of his residence became one of the misrepresented symbols of “Old Tip’s” 1840 presidential campaign. In 1816, Harrison resumed public life. He served successively as a congressman, senator, and United States minister to Colombia with competence but without distinction. In 1830, he returned to North Bend, where he seemed destined for a quiet life in retirement.

During the height of “Jacksonian Democracy” during the 1830’s, there was a growing reaction against the alleged pretensions and aspirations of “King Andrew” Jackson. This contributed to the emergence of the Whig Party, made up of old National Republicans, former Anti-Masons, and various others who reacted strongly against Jackson or his policies. In 1836 the Whigs made their first run for the presidency against Jackson’s chosen successor, Martin Van Buren . Harrison ran as the candidate of Western Whigs and showed some promise as a vote getter. As a result, he became a leading contender for the nomination in 1840.

By now widely known as “Old Tippecanoe,” Harrison the military hero presented an obvious opportunity for the Whigs to borrow a page from the Democrats who had ridden “Old Hickory,” Andrew Jackson, to great political success. The general’s positions on key issues of the day were almost irrelevant, for he was to be nominated as a symbol of military glory and the development of the West. The Whigs wanted a candidate who would appeal to a broad range of voters and who was not too closely identified with the issues of the Jacksonian era. They did not offer a real platform, only a pledge to “correct the abuses” of the current administration. If the campaign were successful, the real decisions in a Harrison administration would be made by Whig leaders in Congress.

When, during the battle for the nomination, a Henry Clay partisan suggested that Harrison should be allowed to enjoy his log cabin and hard cider in peace, the tone and lasting fame of the campaign were established. A Baltimore newspaper said that if Harrison were given a barrel of hard cider and a pension, he would spend the remainder of his days in a log cabin studying moral philosophy. Whig strategists, recognizing a good thing when they heard it, created a winning campaign by portraying Harrison as a man of the people, a wise yet simple hero whose log cabin and hard cider were vastly preferable to the pretensions and trickery of “Old Kinderhook” Martin Van Buren. The Whigs waged the first modern presidential campaign, selling souvenirs, publishing and widely distributing campaign materials, flooding the country with speakers, and using songs, slogans, and verses, including the famous cry “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Harrison made numerous speeches to large crowds and became the first presidential candidate to stump the country on his own behalf.

Inauguration day was chilly and rainy, and the new president caught a cold, which continued to nag him. Overburdened by the demands of his office, Harrison attempted to escape its pressures by concentrating on such minor details as the efficiency of operations in various government offices and even the purchase of supplies for the White House—leaving the weightier matters to Congress and his cabinet. The only major problem of his anticlimactic presidency, the Caroline Affair, was handled by his secretary of state.

On a cold March morning, the president went to purchase vegetables for the White House and suffered a chill that aggravated the cold he had contracted on inauguration day. The cold developed into pneumonia, and on April 4, 1841, Harrison died in the White House. He was carried back to North Bend for burial.

Significance

The fame of William Henry Harrison was somewhat out of proportion to the actual accomplishments of his life and career. He first became a major public figure through his victory in the Battle of Tippecanoe, a frontier conflict that was blown up to epic proportions by Harrison and his idolaters. There is even some doubt concerning the quality of Harrison’s leadership in the battle, but it did establish him as a national hero who was particularly identified with the ideas and desires of the West.

Many Americans believed that the battle was the product of British machinations among the Indians of the West, and the bad feelings generated became part of the package of Western grievances that helped trigger the War of 1812. Harrison later rode his military reputation and identification with the common man of the West into the presidency, but he served only about a month and had virtually no direct impact on the office. The method of his election and the circumstances of his death, however, were of lasting importance. The 1840 campaign established a new style of presidential campaigning, and Harrison’s death forced the nation for the first time to experience the elevation of a vice president to the Oval Office.

Bibliography

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