Harrison, William Henry

Harrison, William Henry, 1773–1841, 9th President of the United States (Mar. 4–Apr. 4, 1841), b. "Berkeley," Charles City co., Va.; son of Benjamin Harrison (1726?–1791) and grandfather of Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901).

Military and Political Careers

Harrison attended Hampden-Sydney College and studied medicine briefly under Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia before joining (1791) the army and taking part in campaigns against Native Americans in the Northwest Territory. In 1798 he resigned to become secretary of the territory, and the next year he became territorial delegate to Congress. He helped secure the division of the territory into Ohio and Indiana and served (1800–1812) as governor of Indiana Territory at Vincennes. He was perhaps more important than any other man in opening Ohio and Indiana to settlement, negotiating a number of treaties with various tribes, notably the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809). Native American opposition to the white advance then concentrated in hostile demonstrations directed by Tecumseh. Harrison engaged the forces of Tecumseh at the famous battle of Tippecanoe.

In the War of 1812, after the failure of Gen. William Hull, Harrison was made commander in the Northwest. Taking Detroit (Sept. 29, 1813), he advanced to defeat Gen. Henry Procter and establish American hegemony in the West at the battle of the Thames River on Oct. 5, 1813 (see Thames, battle of the), in which Tecumseh was killed. Later Harrison concluded treaties with Native Americans—Greenville (1814) and Spring Wells (1815)—that ushered in an era of peace and white expansion in the Old Northwest. He served in the House of Representatives (1816–19) and the Senate (1825–28). He was appointed (1828) minister to Colombia but was recalled (1829) by Andrew Jackson. His political fortunes rose as he became regarded as a compromise Whig candidate between Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

Presidential Campaigns

A group of Whig Anti-Masons nominated Harrison for President in 1836, and in 1840, Webster went over to Harrison's candidacy for the presidency as a Whig. Clay, although bitterly disappointed, had to support Harrison. The campaign that followed was the first of the "rip-roaring" campaigns in U.S. history. Harrison and his running mate, John Tyler

Early Career

Educated at the College of William and Mary, he studied law under his father, John Tyler (1747–1813), governor of Virginia from 1808 to
..... , were transformed by publicity. Harrison, an aristocratic Virginian, was made into a simple backwoods frontiersman, Tyler into his faithful lieutenant.

The "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign was launched in answer to ill-judged jeers from the supporters of the Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren

Early Career

He was reared on his father's farm, was educated at local schools, and after reading law was admitted (1803) to the
..... . Van Buren was pictured as an effete, "silver-spoon" man, Harrison as a rugged Westerner, despite his Virginia upbringing. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" won—partly because the Panic of 1837 had turned many against Van Buren. Harrison then selected a brilliant Whig cabinet headed by Webster and adopted a program outlined by Clay, but the strain of the campaign was too much. He died a month later, Tyler became President, and the Whig party fell prey to factionalism.

Bibliography

See biographies by D. B. Goebel (1926, repr. 1973), F. Cleaves (1939, repr. 1969), and J. A. Green (1941); R. G. Gunderson, The Log Cabin Campaign (1957); W. M. Hoffnagle, Road to Fame (1959); N. L. Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (1989).

---

Harrison, William Henry

William Henry Harrison, detail of an oil painting by Abel Nichols; in the Peabody Essex Museum, …

(credit: Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts)

(born Feb. 9, 1773, Charles City county, Va.—died April 4, 1841, Washington, D.C., U.S.) Ninth president of the U.S. (1841). Born into a politically prominent family, he enlisted in the army at age 18 and served under Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. In 1798 he became secretary of the Northwest Territories and in 1800 governor of the new Indiana Territory. In response to pressure from white settlers, he negotiated treaties with the Indians that ceded millions of acres of additional land to the U.S. When Tecumseh organized an uprising in 1811, Harrison led a U.S. force to defeat the Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe, a victory that largely established his reputation in the public mind. In the War of 1812 he was made a brigadier general and defeated the British and their Indian allies at the Battle of the Thames in Ontario. After the war he moved to Ohio, where he became prominent in the Whig Party. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1816–19) and Senate (1825–28). As the Whig candidate in the 1836 presidential election, he lost narrowly. In 1840 he and his running mate, John Tyler, won election with a slogan emphasizing Harrison's frontier triumph: “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” The 68-year-old Harrison delivered his inaugural speech without a hat or overcoat in a cold drizzle, contracted pneumonia, and died one month later; he was the first U.S. president to die in office.

---

Harrison, William Henry (1773–1841) ninth U.S. president; born in Charles City County, Va. Wellborn and well-educated, Harrison opted for the army and in the 1790s fought Indians in the Northwest Territory under Anthony Wayne. As governor of the new Indian Territory (1800–12), he extracted millions of acres from the Indians and fought Tecumseh's rebels in the battle of Tippecanoe (November 1811); though the battle was inconclusive, it made Harrison a hero. Commanding regular army forces in the Northwest during the War of 1812, he reoccupied Detroit in 1813 and soundly defeated the British and Indians at the Thames River in Ontario, Canada (October 1813). He went on to serve Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives (1817–19) and in the U.S. Senate (1825–28). After an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1836, Harrison won (as a Whig) with Tyler as vice-president in 1840, on a campaign of ballyhoo and mudslinging, with its slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." An exhausted Harrison caught a cold at the inauguration and he died of pneumonia a month later.