William Henry Harrison was an American military officer, and politician. Way before becoming the ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison had become a household name and a military hero. He managed to gain such reputation as a result of the victory that he achieved after winning the Battle of Tippecanoe, against the Native American forces.
Background
Ethnicity:
William Henry Harrison's family was of English descent.
William Henry Harrison was born on February 9, 1773, at Berkeley Plantation, the Harrison family home, in Charles City County, Virginia, United States. Harrison was descended from a wealthy and well-connected Virginia family. His father, Benjamin Harrison, was long prominent in Virginia politics, signed the Declaration of Independence, and was a member of the Continental Congress. His mother, Elizabeth Bassett Harrison, was from a distinguished Virginia family. Out of his six siblings, Harrison’s elder brother, Carter Bassett Harrison served as a member of the United States House of Representatives.
Education
Tutored at home through his teenage years, Harrison studied Latin and basic French at the Presbyterian Hampden-Sydney College, between 1787 and 1790. His father wanted him to become a doctor so, in 1790, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and studied medicine under the guidance of Dr. Benjamin Rush, another co-signer of the Declaration of Independence. Later that year, following his father's death and without funds to continue school, Harrison turned to his own career choice, which was the military.
Harrison decided to enlist in the Army and was commissioned an ensign in the First Infantry, serving in the Northwest Territory. He rose quickly through the ranks of the military, becoming a lieutenant in 1792 and acting as aide-de-camp to Major General Anthony ("Mad Anthony") Wayne, who was responsible for pacifying the Ottawa, Chippewa, Shawnee, and Pottawatomie tribes. At the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in August 1794, Harrison was responsible for holding the line against the tribes and received an official commendation from General Wayne for his efforts. He was later promoted to captain, but in 1798 resigned from the Army.
In subsequent years Harrison held several government positions. After Harrison resigned from the Army in 1798, President John Adams (1735-1826) named him secretary of the Northwest Territory, a region encompassing the present-day states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. The following year, Harrison became the Northwest Territory’s first congressional delegate. As the territory's first congressional delegate, Harrison helped obtain legislation that divided the land into the Northwest and Indiana territories.
He would serve as governor for 12 years. In 1803 Harrison also became a special commissioner charged with negotiating with Native Americans "on the subject of boundary or lands." Succumbing to the demands of land-hungry whites, he negotiated a number of treaties between 1802 and 1809 that stripped Indians of millions of acres of land - in the southern part of the present state of Indiana and portions of the present states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. For a few months after the division in 1804 of the Louisiana Purchase into the Orleans Territory and the Louisiana Territory, Harrison also acted as governor of the Louisiana Territory (all of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 33rd parallel), the largest jurisdiction ever exercised by a territorial official in the United States to that date.
In 1809, the native populations became fierce in their resistance. They were led by Tecumseh, who proved to be a tenacious adversary. In 1809 Harrison negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne with the Delaware, Potawatomi, and Eel tribes. This agreement called for the Native Americans to trade about three million acres of land for payments to each tribe that ranged from two to five hundred dollars.
In 1811, Harrison received permission to attack Tecumseh and his confederacy, but before he could fully proceed, on November 7, the Indians attacked Harrison's camp on the Tippecanoe River. Harrison and his men repelled the attacked but sustained 190 dead and wounded. The stand at Tippecanoe would do little to stem the Indian revolts, but it would serve as a touchstone for Harrison and his future political career.
A few months after the War of 1812 broke out with Great Britain, Harrison was made a brigadier general and placed in command of all federal forces in the Northwest Territory. During the War of 1812, Harrison further built his reputation commanding the army in the Northwest, defeating the British and Indian forces and killing Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie. This sent the Indians scrambling for good, and their presence in the region would never again pose a threat. He would be promoted to the rank of major general in March 1813.
In 1814, Harrison resigned from the Army as a major general and moved with his family to a farm in North Bend, Ohio. Two years later, Harrison was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. From 1816 to 1819, Harrison represented his district in the United States Congress, serving as chair of the committee on the militia. He served in the Ohio state senate (Ohio had become a state in 1803) from 1819 to 1821. Elected to the United States Senate in 1825, Harrison served for three years, chairing the committee on military affairs and the militia.
In 1828, after failing to secure for Harrison either the command of the army upon the death of Major general Jacob Jennings Brown or the nomination as vice president on the ticket with John Quincy Adams, Harrison’s friends managed to get him appointed as the first minister of the United States to Gran Colombia. He became, however, an early sacrifice to Jackson’s spoils system and was recalled within less than a year, though not before he had involved himself in some awkward diplomatic complications with the short-lived republic’s government.
For some years after his return from Colombia, Harrison lived in retirement at North Bend, Ohio. He was occasionally mentioned as a candidate for governor, senator, or representative by the anti-Jackson forces, and during this period he delivered a few addresses on agricultural or political topics. Later he obtained the lucrative post of clerk of the court of common pleas of Hamilton county, Ohio.
In 1836, Harrison was a Whig Party candidate for the United States presidency (the recently established Whigs ran three presidential candidates in different parts of the nation that year). Harrison lost the election to Democrat Martin Van Buren (1782-1862). Four years later, the Whigs nominated Harrison again, with Virginia politician John Tyler (1790-1862) as his running mate. During the campaign, a pro-Democrat newspaper mocked Harrison, then in his late 60s, for being too old to run for president.
The race has been viewed by historians as the first modern presidential campaign, one with advertising and slogans, including the famous Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too, a reference to Harrison's strong military record on the frontier. Harrison and Tyler won the election with 53 percent of the popular vote.
Harrison was inaugurated amid great enthusiasm and gave one of the longest inaugural speeches in history (nearly an hour and a half) outdoors in early March without a hat, gloves, or an overcoat. He soon came down with a cold, which grew progressively worse and eventually developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison died in the White House, before his wife had even moved to Washington, D.C. to become the first lady. Harrison was the first president to die in office.
Way before becoming the ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison had become a household name and a military hero. He managed to gain such reputation as a result of the victory that he achieved after winning the Battle of Tippecanoe, against the Native American forces. His military accomplishments paved way for a colorful political career.
In 2009, the United States Mint released the coin in the Presidential $1 Coin Program, honoring Harrison.
Religion
William Henry Harrison was an Episcopalian.
Politics
Harrison was a Democratic-Republican before 1828. He then changed his affiliation and became a member of the Whig Party.
As governor, Harrison spearheaded the acquisition of land that belonged to Native American tribes. This duty ratcheted up the already high tensions between tribes and the American government’s expansion plans, which drove Harrison into a quarrel with the legendary Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother, the self-proclaimed prophet Tenskwatawa. He also was supposed to encourage a friendly relationship with the Native Americans, a task that would prove impossible.
Harrison first ran and lost the presidency in 1836. In 1840, however, he easily won the election with 80% of the electoral vote. The election is seen as the first modern campaign complete with advertising and campaign slogans.
Connections
Harrison met his future wife, Anna Symmes, in 1795. She belonged to a wealthy family and her father, Judge John Cleves Symmes was a man of great influence. At first, Judge Symmes was against a match between the two, believing his prospective son-in-law’s military career on the frontier was not conducive to marriage.
Due to the disapproval of Anna’s father, she and Harrison eloped and got married on November 25, 1795. The couple had ten children, and one of Harrison's grandsons, Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), would become the twenty-third president of the United States.
Father:
Benjamin Harrison
Mother:
Elizabeth Bassett Harrison
Spouse:
Anna Harrison
First lady Anna Harrison, who outlived her husband by two decades, became the first presidential widow to receive a pension from Congress - a one-time payment of $25,000, the equivalent of one year of her husband’s White House salary. She was also given free postage on all her mail.
Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became the president in 1889, making the two of them the only grandparent-grandchild pair of presidents to date.
father-in-law:
John Cleves Symmes
John Cleves Symmes was a political leader, businessman, and real estate entrepreneur in the years after the American Revolution.
