William Henry Harrison

William Henry Harrison was born on February 9, 1773, at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, the youngest of seven children; his mother was Elizabeth Bassett Harrison. His father, Benjamin Harrison V, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1764, sat in the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776, and was governor of Virginia from 1781 to 1784. In 1781 British forces looted the family home. He was the last president born under British rule.⁠[1][2][3][4]

Educated at home in his early years, Harrison entered Hampden-Sydney College in 1787 at the age of 14 and stayed until 1790, studying classics and history. He then studied medicine in Richmond and with Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia. His father died in April 1791, leaving him little money, and he gave up medicine for a military career.⁠[4][3][5][2]

In November 1791, at the age of 18, Harrison received a commission as an ensign and was posted to Fort Washington, near present-day Cincinnati. Promoted to lieutenant in 1792, he served as aide-de-camp to Gen. Anthony Wayne, fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, and attended the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795. He was promoted to captain in 1797, briefly commanded Fort Washington and resigned from the army in June 1798.⁠[3][4]

On November 25, 1795, Harrison married Anna Tuthill Symmes. Because her father opposed the match, the couple married in secret.⁠[6][3]

In 1798 President John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry appointed Harrison secretary of the Northwest Territory. In 1799 he became the territory’s first delegate to Congress, where he wrote the Land Act of 1800 and helped secure legislation dividing the territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories.⁠[3][5][4]

In May 1800 Harrison was appointed the first governor of Indiana Territory, a post he held for 12 years as Presidents Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. He had earlier been governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state and vice president.Open the full entry and James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison (1751–1836) was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. He helped frame the Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist and guided the Bill of Rights through Congress, and earlier served as a U.S. representative and secretary of state.Open the full entry kept him in office. He lived in Vincennes, where his mansion, Grouseland, was completed in 1804. In 1803 he was named a special commissioner for negotiations with Native Americans, and in 1804 he briefly served as acting governor of the Louisiana Territory.⁠[3][7][4]

Between 1802 and 1809 Harrison negotiated treaties under which Native nations ceded millions of acres to the United States, among them the Treaty of Vincennes in August 1804, the Treaty of Grouseland in 1805 and the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. The Treaty of Fort Wayne gave the United States about three million acres in a single document, for which Harrison offered just under two cents an acre; by opening large areas to settlement it sparked Tecumseh’s War.⁠[3][4][7][2]

The Miller Center’s essay judges that Harrison often acquired Native land by coercive or fraudulent means. The National Park Service describes his governorship as a key stage in the shift of federal land policy from treaties to taking land by force, in which he put government interests and territorial expansion first, while Harrison himself blamed British intervention for the hostilities.⁠[2][1]

By 1809 the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, had built an Indian confederacy to halt further white encroachment. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack it and, while Tecumseh was away recruiting allies, marched about 1,000 men toward Prophet’s town. Before dawn on November 7, Indigenous forces attacked his camp on the Tippecanoe River; Harrison repelled them but suffered 190 dead and wounded.⁠[5][3]

The battle made Harrison’s reputation and earned him the nickname “Old Tip.” It disrupted Tecumseh’s confederacy but did not end the raids, which resumed on the frontier by the spring of 1812.⁠[5][7]

After the War of 1812 began, Harrison was made a brigadier general in command of the army in the Northwest; he resigned as territorial governor that year and was promoted to major general in March 1813. On January 22, 1813, American forces in the Northwest were defeated at Frenchtown (River Raisin), and from May 1 to 5 Harrison held Fort Meigs against a siege.⁠[3][5][4]

After Oliver Hazard Perry’s naval victory on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, Harrison advanced into present-day MichiganMichiganMichigan is a state of the United States nearly surrounded by the Great Lakes and made up of the Upper and Lower peninsulas; its capital is Lansing and its largest city is Detroit. It was admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837, as the 26th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 10,077,331.Open the full entry. On October 5 he defeated a combined British and Indian force of 1,700 men at the Battle of the Thames in present-day Ontario, Canada, where Tecumseh was killed. The victory made Harrison a national hero. The White House biography judges that Indian forces in the Northwest never again mounted serious resistance.⁠[3][7][5]

In May 1814, at the age of 41, Harrison resigned from the army.⁠[2]

From 1816 to 1819 Harrison represented OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry in the U.S. House of Representatives. He supported Henry Clay’s “American System” of federally funded internal improvements, joined the congressional effort to censure Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson (1767–1845) was an American soldier and politician who served as President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, after leading U.S. forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.Open the full entry for his raid into Spanish Florida during the First Seminole War (1818), which left lasting animosity between the two men, and opposed congressional limits on the spread of slavery. He sought the post of secretary of war under James MonroeJames MonroeJames Monroe (1758–1831) was an American politician and diplomat who served as President of the United States from 1817 to 1825; his administration proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine.Open the full entry, but it went to John C. Calhoun.⁠[2][7]

Harrison served two terms in the Ohio state Senate from 1819 to 1821. He lost the race for governor of Ohio in 1820 and a race for the U.S. House in 1822.⁠[4][2]

Harrison served as a U.S. senator from Ohio from 1825 until May 1828.⁠[4]

In 1828, with Henry Clay pressing for the appointment, Harrison was named U.S. minister to Colombia; he was recalled after Andrew Jackson took office in March 1829.⁠[2][4]

Harrison returned to his farm in North Bend, Ohio, which did poorly, and his debts grew. He became active in organizing the Whig opposition to Andrew Jackson. He lost another bid for the U.S. Senate in 1831 and served as clerk of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas from 1834 to 1840.⁠[7][2][4]

In the 1836 presidential election, anti-Jackson forces ran four regional Whig candidates in an attempt to deny Martin Van BurenMartin Van BurenMartin Van Buren (1782–1862) was an American politician who served as governor of New York, secretary of state and vice president before becoming President of the United States from 1837 to 1841; in 1848 he ran for president again as the Free Soil Party candidate.Open the full entry an electoral majority and send the election to the House of Representatives. Harrison, the Western candidate, finished second, and Van Buren won majorities of both the popular and the electoral vote.⁠[7]

In December 1839 the Whig national convention at Harrisburg nominated Harrison for president, with John TylerJohn TylerJohn Tyler (1790–1862) was an American politician who served as governor of Virginia and U.S. senator. Elected vice president in 1840, he succeeded William Henry Harrison on Harrison’s death in April 1841 and served as the tenth president of the United States (1841–1845), the first vice president to succeed to the presidency on the death of his predecessor.Open the full entry as his running mate.⁠[4]

During the 1840 campaign a Democratic newspaper mocked Harrison as content to sit by the fire with “a barrel of hard cider”; the Whigs turned the jibe into a theme, presenting him as a frontier Indian fighter living in a log cabin, in contrast to the wealthy Van Buren. The Miller Center’s essay judges that the Whigs ran the first modern presidential campaign in American history, with songs, advertising, slogans and rallies, free hard cider handed out in log-cabin-shaped bottles, and the slogan “Old Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.”⁠[5][7]

In the election held in November and December 1840, Harrison won about 53 percent of the popular vote, a margin of fewer than 150,000 votes, and defeated Van Buren 234 to 60 in the Electoral College; more people voted than ever before.⁠[5][7][4]

Harrison was sworn in on March 4, 1841, at the age of 68, becoming the first Whig president; until 1981 he remained the oldest person inaugurated as president. He delivered his inaugural address outdoors in cold weather without a hat or coat.⁠[4][8][7]

The address ran to more than 8,000 words, about double the length of the next longest. Daniel Webster edited the draft and joked that he had killed “seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them.” In the speech Harrison said he would follow the will of the people as expressed through Congress, set out a limited conception of the presidency, pledged not to accept a second term, and warned that interference by states in the institutions of other states could lead to “disunion, violence, and civil war.”⁠[9][5]

On March 17, 1841, Harrison called a special session of Congress on the economy.⁠[4]

Less than a month after his inauguration Harrison developed pneumonia from a cold, and he died in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1841; Vice President John Tyler succeeded him. The National Portrait Gallery’s label notes that his death was long attributed to pneumonia but that newer evidence points to enteric fever and septic shock. A national day of mourning was observed on May 14, 1841.⁠[5][1][10][4]

On July 7, 1841, Harrison was buried in a simple family tomb on the summit of Mt. Nebo in North Bend, Ohio, overlooking the Ohio River. The tomb holds 24 vaults, including those of his wife, his son John Scott Harrison and other family members; several sealed vaults are unmarked.⁠[11]

Harrison and Anna Tuthill Symmes (1775–1864) had 10 children: Elizabeth Bassett, John Cleves Symmes, Lucy Singleton, William Henry, John Scott, Benjamin, Mary Symmes, Carter Bassett, Anna Tuthill and James Findlay; their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1796. Their son John Scott Harrison was the father of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president (1889–1893), who was born in North Bend.⁠[6][4][11][3]

In 1871 John Scott Harrison offered the site and tomb to the State of Ohio on condition that it be preserved. Now known as the William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial, it is managed locally by the Harrison–Symmes Memorial Foundation.⁠[11][1]

The National Park Service judges that Harrison’s brief presidency symbolized American fascination with military glory and westward expansion. The National Portrait Gallery’s label judges that he had no notable political skills but was an ideal figurehead for the Whigs in 1840 because of his War of 1812 record and frontier campaigns, in a festive campaign that gave little attention to substantive issues. The White House biography judges that the Whig program died with him. An essay published by the Miller Center judges that his inaugural address rejected the “monarchical” tendencies of Jacksonian Democracy.⁠[1][10][5][9]

William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial: Official website: https://www.ohiohistory.org/historical_sites/william-henry-harrison-tomb/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]