American History Hit - President William Henry Harrison: 32 Days in Office

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

The ninth President of the United States holds two unique records. William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in US Presidential history. He also served the shortest term, dying on his 32nd day as Commander-in-Chief.In this episode, Don speaks to Dr Robert Owens of Wichita State University. How did Harrison win the presidency? What were his goals? And did he really die of pneumonia?Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Sign up to History Hit at historyhit.com/subscribe using code 'BLACKFRIDAYPOD' at checkout, for $1/£1 per month for 4 months and you’ll get nearly £30 off our normal monthly price over your first 4 months.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's March 4th, 1841. A boisterous crowd lines the route from the White House to the Capitol,

the largest gathering yet for an inaugural procession. And that's despite the rain, clouds, and cold winds. The president-elect William Henry Harrison, who has run a campaign portraying himself as a hard cider-drinking, log cabin-living man of the people, has drawn a cavalcade of militia companies, college students, schoolboys, and veterans to accompany his ride to the oath of office.

Strong and sturdy, despite his 67 years, Harrison sits atop a white horse. His only shelter from the weather, the men around him on other horses. The president-elect, having refused the custom-made carriage. He wears no overcoat, no hat, no gloves. And he would soon deliver an address lasting one hour and 45 minutes. Still outside, still no coat. A month later, on April 7, 1841, President William Henry Harrison would be brought forth in another procession, this time in a funeral carriage, with the White House draped in black and the nation entering a very surprised period of mourning

for their shortest serving commander-in-chief. In view of the fact, well-abouched by history, that the tendency of all human institutions is to concentrate power in the hands of a single-man, man and that their ultimate downfall has proceeded from this cause, I deem it of the most essential importance that a complete separation should take place between the sword and the purse. Good day, glad to be with you. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Today we move further along in our American President series with the story behind our ninth chief executive, also our briefest, William Henry Harrison, who served from March 4th 1841 to April 4th, 1841.

And yes, you heard that right. The poor man died after one month in the mansion. William Henry Harrison, the first U.S. president to perish in office. He comes along as the second in an era of one-term presidencies between Andrew Jackson and Abe Lincoln. It's kind of an era of those sorts of guys. Now, it's hardly fair to compare Harrison's tragically flickered flame to those other torches, but it's also unfair to skip him, as one might be tempted to do. In fact, William Henry Harrison's journey to the president's house is an illuminating political tale

that he happens to die abruptly at the peak of his powers is a real shame, given the impressive military and diplomatic accomplishments of his life. And he was president. He gave the longest inaugural speech in U.S. history, two hours in bad weather. And he was, for all intents and purposes, an unusual leader, an Ohio president with Virginia origins, a southerner and a northerner combo package. And coming as he did after the lackluster term of mutton-chopped Martin Van Buren from New York, William Henry Harrison would be seen hopefully as a unifying man of the people.

Wouldn't come to pass on his watch anyway, but there's much to be gained by learning about the context and issues behind his presidential run, and the baton he would be passing on to his successor, John Tyler, what it all might have been, along with a surprising theory about his early demise. And to learn all about it, we are joined by Dr. Robert Owens, Professor of History at Wichita. State University and author of Mr. Jefferson's Hammer, William Henry Harrison, and the origins of the American Indian policy. Greetings, Robert. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Don. He's an unusual man, an unusual story, which so few Americans generally talk about. This is true. I find this very often with the students, yes. It's an interesting, very brief moment, but I'm excited about it, because I feel like

we're doing a public duty, because if there's one president, you never know much about it's the one who died in office. Much of his time, I imagine, spent bedridden with what had killed him. Anyone's death is a solemn topic, of course, but in this case, it's a president. So no matter how long he served, there's always more than meets the eyes. Politically, Harrison made his hay as a long-serving governor of the Indiana Territory, from 1801 to 1812, made a big name for himself serving the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson. Well, being a governor during those times, played a crucial role in advancing westward expansion through the Northwest Territories. Can you explain why he was such the man for the job, former military man, skilled diplomat, tough negotiator?

Well, Harrison really has a great sort of resume for this job in some respects, even though he was quite young. He was only in his late 20s when he's actually appointed governor of Indiana Territory. And that's an important fact. He's not elected particularly early in his term. he doesn't especially have to wonder what people around him are thinking. He's beholden to the president. In terms of his Native American policy, this is a guy who had joined the army when he was a teenager. He was only 18 and had served. In that time, the army was a particularly rough job out on the frontier.

And he just arrives out in the West right after what ended up being the single worst defeat the U.S. Army ever faced at the hands of Native Americans. In 1791, Arthur Sinclair's army just gets crushed at what we now call the Battle of the Wabash. And so I'm sure it was rather sobering for him. But he has a very good tutelage on the frontier, particularly when the command of the army devolves to a guy named Anthony Wayne, who ends up being, you know, this is sort of the third attempt of the Washington administration and the federal government to basically win a sizable enough battle in the West that they can then sort of, The government has gone through this weird transition just in a few years from saying Native Americans, you owe us this land. It was given to us by the British and we don't have to pay you to really sort of abrupt turn saying, well, yes, we have to pay you and you have first rights to the land, but you do need to sell it to us. And so there's this weird kind of place where they have to defeat Native Americans on the battlefield just to sort of force them to come to a treaty table.

So Harrison learns quite well, or yeah, I should say he has a very good tutor in Anthony Wayne, because Wayne does win this victory in 1794, a place called the Battle Falling Timbers. This is outside what's now Toledo, Ohio. And so he knows how to do that, but I would argue for Harrison's career, the far more important abject lesson, he was serving as Wayne's aid the next year in 1795 at the Treaty of Greenville, Ohio. And this is one I tend to harp on in classes because it really sets the precedent for future U.S. Native American treaties. You know, you do have to pay tribes. You try and get as many sort of important chiefs to show up and sign as you can. But at the same time, it's understood that you're really paying them pennies per acre for this land that was already considered very valuable. And also, and, you know, Wayne kind of starts this, and Harrison becomes really a day.

at basically saying, well, you know, as long as we get an Indian to sign this treaty, where this Indian actually lives or has good land claims, that's kind of a secondary point. Harrison's going to take that to the next level. Let's back up just a second. We're basically talking about a geography that is called the Northwest Territories, comes along in 1780s, I believe, with the Northwest Ordinance. All of this becomes eventually Ohio, Illinois, Indiana. It's the Great Lakes region, really.

What's fascinating to me about William Henry Harrison is that it kind of splits him. Like he's a dual package, as I mentioned in the beginning there, a Southerner, born in Virginia, on a plantation, slaveholding. And then he joins the military because I can't remember the reason, but he wanted to be a doctor. That's right. It didn't work out for him. And he ends up being this very successful military guy. And that takes him to the really focus of efforts in those days, which is this Northwest region, which so much is happening. But that's an important thing to mark about the man, that there's a duality about him.

And that will come to pass as he runs for president, that he becomes this sort of unifying force, I suppose. The efforts to expand in the Northwest Territories, how much does he get involved in the intricacies of this later on? I mean, he starts as a military guy, but he ends up as a governor and then spends a long time as governor, 1801 to 1812 as the governor of Indiana territory, I guess. And it's in that time frame that he really puts his mark on the way to negotiate treaties. Am I correct? Oh, absolutely. And I would say he kind of takes this Anthony Wayne mold and really kind of refines it almost to an art. The broader context of this is Harrison, his title was Commissioner Plenipotentiary for Indian Affairs north of the River, Ohio.

That sounds pretty good. Yeah, try and put that on a badge. Or a business card. Or a business card. So what really kicks this off is actually, and it's a nice example of how even things along the Ohio River and in Indiana are influenced by world events, when rumors start floating across the Atlantic in 1802 or so that Napoleon is trying to reacquire the Louisiana territory, this kind of sets off a mini panic in the Jefferson administration, even though Jefferson loves all things French. He liked the fact that the Spanish, who are not sort of really aggressive. doing anything in Louisiana territory or handling it. And what looks like Napoleon is going to take the territory back, there's this huge yikes moment. And essentially, what starts Harrison becomes, we finally find something he's really, really good at with Native American treaties,

is Jefferson writes him this letter in February of 1803, and he made a point to note that this was a private letter, which you actually had to do because in this era, people were so desperate for news, if you got a letter from a government official and it didn't say private, it was going to end up in the newspapers often verbatim. So, and he writes him to this private letter and essentially what Jefferson wants to do is get as many, you know, the United States is saying they have, you know, first dibs on this territory east of the Mississippi River. He wants to get as many white settlers along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers as rapidly and as cheaply as possible with the idea, and this is not a great plan, I would argue, that that population then will serve as a militia who are effectively going to be a

speed bump when Napoleon comes rolling through. Well, this is, again, one of the contradictions of Jefferson. When you're trying to have an empire and you massively slash military spending, I'm not making a point for imperialism, but if you're going to do that, you know, if you want to drive to California, don't empty the gas tank. So he basically tells Harris, it gives him. kind of a, you know, a blueprint and almost carte blanche to negotiate, you know, hey, he tells him in this letter very specifically, if some of these Indian chiefs were run into debt at our trading

houses that the government was running, that would be a good thing because they're more likely to sell their land cheaply. And, you know, maybe we should send confidential agents to sort of reside among the Native Americans and kind of spy on them. And it's actually, you know, again, you can see why he wanted the letter to be private. Yeah. And so beginning in 1803, Harrison essentially settles on what proves to him to be this very winning formula of, first of all, kind of twisting arms to get people to show up to a Native American treaty, you know, essentially saying even though, like, for example, the Greenville Treaty, they are legally required to deliver annuities, these annual payments to the tribes and various forms, cash or goods or whatever. Harrison basically says,

if you don't come to my new treaty council, I'm not going to give you your old treaty annuities. and the economy, the Napoleonic wars have wrecked the economy for a lot of these native peoples, and that's a real threat. And then where he gets really kind of insidious is he gets very good at not inviting the people who actually reside on a patch of land that he wants to buy. And we catch him once or twice in his own document saying, well, they're not going to want to sell the land because they're using it. And he gets really, really good at that. And it also comes at a time, if you're having trouble sleeping, you can read my book. It comes at a time where in Indiana, he's actually starting to get some political opposition.

He was actually at this point in his career ardently pro-slavery. You're not supposed to have slaves north of the Ohio River, and they try and work around this. He's people, a lot of people in Indiana thought he was autocratic and so forth, and they don't. But he finds almost everybody, or at least almost every white person, loves when he can buy Native American lands for pennies on the acre very quickly. One of the classic examples, he buys what's going to be most of the future state of Illinois from a tribe called the Cascascus who, by his own admission, were like three dozen people at that point. So, yeah, he gets very good at that.

And this is something Jefferson is never going to say no to a cheap land session. He loves that. And that keeps him in the good graces of the administration. What I am vague about, and I would, I dare say many listeners, is how engaged Native American tribes were in this real estate process. Like, it's surprising for me to hear you talk about them coming to the table and talking about land values and so forth and so on. Had this system been in place for a long time, were they now completely engaged in the white man's version of what real estate is? Yeah. So, I mean, one of the, I guess, the pervasive myths is that Native Americans

didn't understand like cash value of land or something. By the early 19th century, enough, you know, Native Americans did talk to each other. And so this is understood. In fact, you'll get in some of Harrison's later treaties, you'll get Native Americans saying, oh, we know for a fact that this land is worth $4 an acre or $6 an acre, and you're offering us like seven cents. Now, I suppose in theory and annuity payment, we still paid them, it's still, it's a huge bargain. I think the most he ever paid was like seven cents per acre.

And keep in mind, the U.S. government itself had said this land back in the 1780s, was a minimum of a dollar per acre. So he's already getting these things at a huge discount. The other thing that he's really good at sort of playing off different tribes against each other. If you got like a minute, I'll run through a silly scenario. I do this in class. So I'll ask for two volunteers from the students. You don't have to stand up. Just give me your name. Okay, so, you know, Fred and Jennifer. Okay. So Fred, Jennifer and Malia. Okay, great. Now, I'll be playing William Henry Harrison because I'm wearing a sport coat. You have to have a few bad jokes in the quiver.

Anyway, so, okay, so Fred, Jennifer, and Malia, you're playing Native American tribes, and I'm Governor Harrison. So, okay, Fred and Malia, thank you for coming to my counsel. What I wanted to ask you guys is, would you mind terribly if I paid you some money for Jennifer's land? And Fred and Malia kind of look at each other, like, well, it's not my land, sure. And you do this, and then you sign a treaty. And I send it to Washington, and the United States government announces that they bought a bunch

of Jennifer's land. And then, you know, six months or a year later, I call another council. And this time, I invite Fred and Jennifer. And, you know, I say, oh, Fred, Jennifer, lovely to see you. Thanks for coming. Tell you what I'd like to do. I'd like to pay the both of you for some of Malia's land. Is that okay? Would it be all right if I gave you some money for her land? And Fred again would say, well, yeah, I don't care. It's not my land. And Jennifer would say, yeah, somebody told me she sold some of my land. And that seems really silly and childish. But that is. is actually kind of how these things worked over and over again. Again, another pervasive myth is that U.S. agents were getting Native Americans drunk to sign these treaties, right?

You heard that all the time. No, I actually don't see any evidence for that. Harrison and Jefferson were wildly against, you know, they knew alcohol was a huge problem in Native American country at this point. They actually passed all these laws, remarkably ineffectual, but to try and stop this, and I would argue they don't like this. they want to see themselves as being benevolent. That was another thing in the Jefferson letter. He's arguing, oh, this is all, you know, secretly for the Native Americans benefit because

it'll force them to become more civilized if they sell off their surplus lands. But Harrison, part of the reason they don't get Native Americans drunk for these treaties is they don't need to, right? They've already got all these other tricks up their sleeves that are quite effective. Well, this is where Ticcumse comes into play. And again, this is a, I feel like I'm off the track of talking about our president, but he remember only serves for one month and all of this goes into what makes him president. So Tecumso was a major chieftain out there in the Northwest Territories, and he challenges Harrison

and his like on the legalities of this and the impropriety of it. And this is what really raises the hackles on these Native American forces and ends up in a very, very pivotal moment in Harrison's life, which is the battle for Tippa Canoe? Can we take us to that place via the negotiating tactics of William Henry Harrison? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Actually, I guess for your UK audience, I'd point out one of the absolute best historians of DeCompses, a guy named John Sugden. So Harrison, 1803 to 1805, he's just essentially getting away with murder when it comes to buying up Native American lands really quickly, really cheaply. These tribes are also very divided and so forth. But the crystallization for resistance comes in 1805 when you have the rise of what American history we'd call a classic Native American. revitalization movement. And it's led by a Shawnee Indian. His Shawnee name is Tenkwattawa.

I'm told you punched the last syllable in Shawnee. But Americans just call him the Shawnee Prophet, because that's a lot easier for them to say and spell. And the Shawnee Prophet begins preaching against, first against alcoholism. And it's very classic in these revitalization movements. The basic argument is, yes, things are bad because the Great Spirit is angry with us. Why is the great spirit angry with us? Well, he's angry, you know, essentially, and you'd seen this during Pontiac's war and elsewhere, the idea, well, we're living way too much like these white people and we need to sort of get back to our roots, if you will. Now, where that brings us to Tacomsa is, Tecumse was actually the Prophet's older brother.

Now, initially, William Henry Harrison hears about the Prophet and he's, oh, he's preaching, you know, abstinence from alcohol. Well, that's a good thing. This could be a positive development. But eventually the message morphs into the Great Spirit really does not want us to sell any more land to the Americans. And also, this is an interesting thing that for Americans for a long time said, oh, well, you know, the prophet was preaching against white people. Not so much he's preaching against the Americans. Those are the ones. He's not, you know, complaining about the British or the Spanish or anybody else. It's the American government and these land policies, you know, these treaties by Harrison, that's what really.

really is sort of drawing his ire. And eventually, Tecumseh is going to sort of slide in. And I think he's, you know, Sugden and others would be correct. It's not like he completely takes over the movement because his brother is still this very important religious leader. But increasingly, he's going to be sort of doing strategy. And he has this fantastic reputation as a warrior. He was a veteran of these Indian Wars of the 1790s and so forth. And Tecumse, it's kind of funny. He gets so famous because he's really just crazy famous, maybe the last two or three years of his life, where he, you know, for a long time in the correspondence, they just call him the Prophet's brother. They don't even sort of name him. But his conflict with Harrison comes. In 1810, is after Harrison had negotiated a new

round of land session treaties at a place called Fort Wayne, Indiana. And these were kind of especially egregious because even a lot of people in Indiana recognize, like, well, we've got plenty of land for the number of settlers we have, that we don't need to be sort of kind of stabbing up in Native American lands. But Harrison knew this is one of the few things he could do that was politically popular back in Washington. So he negotiates with a number of settlers. So he does these treaties and again, even more sort of egregious in terms of inviting different people. That was the other thing, too. Once he's got two different tribes who maybe don't own a patch of land, they've signed it over. Well, then he can use them essentially as kind of indirect muscle on the folks who

actually live there by saying, well, you know, if, you know, you don't go along with this treaty, we're not going to get our money either. And so, you know, it's very much divide and conquer. So in 1810, there's a conference at Harrison's house, well, outside his house in Vincennes, Indiana, the capital. And he and Tecumse actually end up sort of squaring off. Basically, Harrison says his speech, well, the United States has always dealt honorably with Native Americans, and we've always been very above board. And Tecumse doesn't even have to wait for the translator on that one. stands up and starts, no, you're a liar, he starts chewing him out in Shawnee. Thing is, Harrison has guys on his staff who'd actually knew natives quite well, and they

understand exactly what he's saying. Also, I think the gesture and the pointing kind of conveyed the point that Tacomso was not happy. And they very nearly get into this melee right outside of, you know, Harrison's kitchen, essentially. And Harrison's able to sort of calm things down and they close up the conference for the day. But after that, it becomes very, very obvious. obvious that Tecumse's position is no Indians, no Native peoples should be selling land to the Americans unless all of them consent because the ideas they own this land in common. Well, of course, that's really, really unlikely to happen, which I think was probably part of the point is. And from that point on, Harrison and Tecumse are basically just kind of, you know, on a collision course

because Harrison's not going to stop trying to buy Native American land and move settlers onto it, and Tecumseh is not going to give on that point. And, of course, when we roll into the war of 1812, it's going to be fairly obvious which side Tecumse is going to pick. And so Tecumse is killed in a battle, and Harrison can take credit for that, perhaps indirectly, during his campaign for presidency later on, with the famous motto, Tippecadu and Tyler, too.

That just trips off the tongue, doesn't it? Well, it does rhyme. I'll give them that. I always found it weird that the emphasis is going to, if you look at Harrison's actual military accomplishments, the November 1811 Battle of Tip Canoe, that's really not a good one. I mean, well, in terms of casualties, he actually, it doesn't go that well. He actually takes way more casualties than the Shawnee Prophets Forces. The initial newspapers reported this as an American loss. But one thing Harrison had acquired in all those

years as governor of Indiana territory, his political spin machine was just fantastic. The the only newspaper editor in the area was a neighbor and a buddy of his. So that helps. And that and the fact by now we're on James Madison's administration and their war clouds looming with the British, they're eager to promote the idea of a victory. So it gets spun as this great victory. But I've always found it weird in his later career. Harrison should be running on what he does in the actual war of 1812. He was very successful in defending Fort Meg's Ohio from a British and native invasion, you know, actually a couple times. And it is his army that kills the Battle of the Thames in, well, I thought it was for the American audience, upper Canada,

which of course is the southernmost part near Ontario, because you have to sail up the St. Lord's River to get to the lakes. Anyway, yeah. I think the takeaway, Robert, is he's a remarkable man in the fact that he's a politician soldier. I mean, that's really an extraordinary thing to have gone back and forth over his several decades there. After he retires from the Army, he goes back. to being a soldier. I mean, he's a real fighter. And I think he can claim that as a facet of himself that is very unusual and perhaps electable for many people. Oh, yeah, especially in the early 19th century. And the other thing I would argue, I really think when he becomes a politician, he loved the army. He actually really enjoyed that life. And one or two hiccups, he's actually

pretty good at it. The thing is, this is a married guy with a bunch of kids, and he needs a bigger salary. He's looking for a steady paycheck. That's why he becomes a government servant rather than the army. Yeah, which is the other irony of him is he's actually born into wealth, but it doesn't happen that way in his own life. He's chasing dollars later on. Well, yeah, I mean, so he's born in 1773. And of course, his father, Benjamin ends up signing the Declaration of Independence, was a governor of Virginia. They're big time. Although a lot of those, and I don't throw pity parties, usually for slave owners, but the American Revolution did kind of wreck them. financially. I mean, they're still kind of rich, but not the way they had been before. So this is one of the

reasons why Benjamin ships William Henry off to medical school in Philly is the kid's going to need a career. He can't just, you know, and then, you know, when the father dies, Harrison sort of takes this as his cue to join the army. When he runs, he's running in a very transitional phase in American politics. And I don't want to get too much into the wigweeds here, but I would like to understand. I think the audience could use it too. The, why? Why and how the wigs? What was the name from? It's quick evolution.

And what happened to it? Okay. So you were talking about this soldier turned politician. Well, of course, the classic soldier politician of the early 19th century is Andrew Jackson, who had a little bit of political experience, but basically becomes president because he killed a lot of people that Americans didn't like. He kills a lot of Native Americans and a lot of British soldiers at the Battle of New Orleans. And this just makes him a rock star. And that's basically, whenever he's...

he runs for office, that's the motto is, I'm Andrew Jackson and you love me. So the problem, of course, for Harrison and a lot of others is if you don't like Andrew Jackson's policies, and of course, Jackson is the founder of the modern Democratic Party, how do you run against this sort of popularity? Well, one of the things they do as a rhetorical device, they start referring to him by the early 1830s as King Andrew the First, which with someone with Jackson's resume, I'm not a huge Jackson fan, but that's cutting deep. It's a little harsh for him. And so then, barring from the British political influence, these opponents of Jackson,

they're kind of scrambling around looking for a rallying point. And they start, Henry Clay, actually, the most famous of the Whig politicians, start adopting the name Whig. The reference course being in Britain, the Whigs are the champions of the powers of parliament as opposed to the monarchy. And just to be clear, for anybody who's wondering, it's not Whig like you wear it. It's Whig, W-H-I-G-W-H-I-G-W-W-G. Yes. It's Whig spelled in a way to confuse undergraduates. That's right.

And so this is a reference to those who oppose the king, and therefore it's sort of a quick reference to how we don't like Andrew Jackson. So go with us. Yes. Yeah, it's a dual. You know, you're talking essentially about the power of the people, and also it's a dig at Andrew Jackson. So it serves those two functions.

It's a short-lived party. It only lasts about 20 years until it's renamed by the likes of a, Abe Lincoln and his folks in that campaign, I guess it played its purpose out. Yeah, I mean, not every single person who was a wig ends up becoming a Republican, but there's a lot of crossover, yes. So in terms of Harrison, what's going to end up throwing him into the office, I would argue he's fairly pliable early in his life, right? He's appointed by John Adams, but he keeps his job as Indiana governor under the exact opposite

of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson. And so he's pretty flexible. But he wants very much to be president. And by the mid-1830s, the Whig Party, they basically, well, you know, the Democrats keep running this really popular war hero. Why don't we do that? And so essentially, Harrison was touted as a Whigish Andrew Jackson. He's going to do surprisingly well in the election of 1836, but he doesn't quite get there. And then, unfortunately, for Martin Van Buren, the panic of 1837 happens.

And this depression, years-long depression just crushes his presidency. And so when you get to 1840, running William Henry Harrison as a popular war hero, there are a lot of dividends to that. Sure. Did his North-South identity play any role at all? I've made several references to this. Well, I mean, this is the thing. It's a lot of times historians will refer to the 1840 campaign and particularly the long cabin aspect, if you will, as the first modern political campaign, which I find kind of depressing because it's. It's accurate, but it was a campaign about nothing, essentially.

It had very little due with real issues. Basically, what the Whigs do. Well, the Democrats criticized Harrison when they see he's going to be the nominee, and they basically try to paint him as this country bumpkin from Ohio who sits on the porch of his cabin and he drinks hard cider. Now, in a phenomenal move of political jiu-jitsu, the wigs just lean into this and they say, because, again, they realize something has taken place in the last 20 years. the voting population has shifted drastically. In the United States, you don't have property qualifications for voting anymore.

It's basically if you're a free white adult male, you get to vote. So there's a much larger pool to draw from. And the Whigs pitch Harrison. They lean into this and say, hey, yeah, he likes to drink hard cider and so forth. And he's just a sort of simple man, but he's one of you and you should vote for him. Now, where this is going to play in arguably tragically for Harrison is he goes along with this because he really wants to be president. So, yeah, okay, this is.

fine. So during the campaign itself, he's a champion of the common man, he's an Indian fighter, all this stuff. The Democrats go after him saying, well, he's too old. And Harrison was, he's going to be 68 by the time he gets inaugurated, which of course today in the United States, we call that a youngster. But at the time, that's the oldest we'd ever elected for a president. They say he's old. They say he's kind of feeble. They also say, yeah, he's a bumpkin. He doesn't know what he's doing. And that really sort of sticks in Harrison's craw, if that's not too idiomatic in expression. It really bothers him because, again, he'd had two years of college at Virginia. Again, he comes from this, as you say, this Virginia planter family.

He actually has pretty good aristocratic roots, and, you know, he doesn't consider himself a dummy. And so he goes along with this to win the election, and he does. But this is going to lead to that inaugural address where he decides, oh, I'm going to show them how youthful and vigorous I am. I'm going to show them how smart I am. And this is why he gives this absurdly long two-hour, very detailed policy speech. I have to just stop you. I have to stop you. Because I was like, I'm looking at how am I going to do a show about William Henry Harrison? And the first thing I did was the famous inaugural speech, and I printed it. I printed it offline. And it's nine pages of single space small font. Maybe more than that. Probably with applause breaks too. I'm going through right now.

It's eight and a half pages. And I thought, oh, I'll be really clever. I'll read this to myself and I'll do it fast so that I don't spend two hours of my life at it. But I'm not kidding. I got to the second page and I nearly fell asleep. I mean, it was really boring. It's really hard. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially a long, like, policy paper that it's just dry as dust.

It's awful. No, I never assigned it to students because it's too much. I mean, people were writing good things back then. Yes. This isn't like it's of times, you know, like not everybody was writing nine-page speeches. say what you will about Jefferson, the man could craft a phrase. But, yeah. I mean, it's really intended to sort of just like flower on text after text.

It's like layers and layers of appositional phrases. Finally, I had a reason to think about that from sophomore English. You know, he just qualifies everything he says like four times within every sentence. It's amazing. Yeah. What of substance was in the speech that indicated what kind of present he would have been? You know, what were his concerns? So he's essentially trying to reassure people, because again, the Wigs have won, that he's going to be not like Andrew Jackson.

So, for example, the Wigs were big fans of the National Bank. This was an old Alexander Hamilton idea that Jackson had managed to sort of kill off. He's going to stabilize the economy. Stabilize it. I submit, honestly, the Bank of United States, it's not a bad idea at all. There are a number of tangible benefits. But Democrats attack it as basically a way to use government money to make. rich guys richer, which, you know, well, there's something to that. He also, Gerald Ford is going to

just blow past him, but Jackson at the time had the record for vetoes. I think he vetoed like eight or nine bills. And that was part of the origin of the King Andrew critique that he's being arbitrary. He's going to uplift the Constitution. He's going to be a supporter of what the founding fathers meant this place to be. Absolutely. He is going to give the elected legislature its due and so forth. But again, yeah, we're not going to go through the whole eight and a half pages because we'd both die. No, no, no. But I just want to point out, he had some causes. He also was very big into infrastructure.

And no wonder, by this time, the canal in New York is the Erie Canal is going crazy and they're making lots of money off of that. The future is obviously in roads and canals, so let's get them built. I mean, he had a real vision for what it was. He just was kind of confused in how to communicate it. Yeah, and he's going to have very little time to implement it. And little do we know. he may be coming down with something. Yeah.

And again, that program, which I argue for a 19th century is a fantastic political platform. The Wigs was Clay champion this the most. Henry Clay was the American system, right? We're going to have a national bank. We're going to invest in infrastructure. And this was, you know, I think a very good idea. The problem is, while there was something for everybody in the American system, there are also things that people didn't like.

You know, people in the East don't care about building. roads across Kentucky. And so that, you know, gets him into trouble. People in the East liked the National Bank, but a lot of Westerners, like Andrew Jackson, hated it. And so that gets him into trouble. None of which ever happens. As soon as he comes into office, he's struck down by, I guess, some sort of respiratory illness, I suppose, but it's up for debate. So he gets up there, and it's a bad weather day, too, when he's inaugurated in March. Yes. Yeah, again, if your audience hasn't been to Washington, it's one of these are odd places that can be roastingly hot and humid in the summer usually is. But in the winter, it can be surprisingly

chilly and nasty. And yeah, in early March of 1841, it was a very cold day. And further, to sort of show, oh, I'm young and vigorous, he refuses to wear a top coat. He doesn't wear gloves. He goes out there. He gives us two-hour speech. And then he's not done. He actually attends, I think, three or four parades after this, and he's sort of showing off how vigorous he is. Now, his actual death, though, sort of a traditional story to it, and then there's the one that's probably more likely. So for a long time, it was reported, well, the president had died of pneumonia, right? And we went through that for a long, long time. And I should preface this part by saying, I'm not the kind of doctor who actually helps people. I'm an historian. But if you read, you know, and there's a great

article about this some years back in the New York Times, if you actually read his symptoms, They don't sound at all like pneumonia. In particular, as he's getting sicker and sicker, his pulse drops, and his extremities turn blue. But he wasn't complaining of any problem with his lungs. So that really doesn't sound like pneumonia. It sounds essentially like a textbook case of septic shock. And people point out, in the 19th century, aside for being mosquito-ridden and very humid, Washington was notorious for bad water quality.

Lots of presidents get sick while they're there. And I think the last time I looked at this, like seven blocks upstream from where the White House drew its water that Harrison would be drinking is where they were dumping the evening soil, as they used to euphemistically say. So the president may very well have consumed something with fecal coliforms in it. And you know, you hear about these things, the swamp and all these things about Washington. So many of these are old tropes that have been carried down through the ages, you know. And the swanour. And the swan, you know, and the swan swamp, I would suggest, it has a lot to do with the old sewage system of D.C., which was infamous. You know, up until a certain period of time when they finally built those beautiful sewers, I've been in them. Oh, the water's great now. Yeah. Go visit Washington. Some of the most beautiful pieces of masonry you've ever seen is under Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, really extraordinary Italian masonry. It's carrying, you know, sewage water through it. But until, you know, later on, I forget, I mean, the late 1800s, I suppose, they weren't even covering up those ditches.

and that was a real stench to Washington. So talk about a metaphor. You know, if you wanted to paint the town badly, that was it. And sure enough, it actually affected people's health in a big way. And you're suggesting that that was the source exactly of the, was it a cholera? I mean, what was he dying of? Well, some type of septic shock. So, again, he's probably ingesting the fancy term would be fecal coliforms.

At this point in class, I usually make some type of crude joke because that's how I am. But he drank polluted water, basically. And Harrison, of course, because of his age, he also, while he'd been in a lenient fire or so forth, he had a semi-frail constitution himself. He'd had intestinal problems most of his adult life. And so that would have made him more susceptible. Furthermore, the way they treated these kind of things at the time, right? American medical technology in 1841 is not great. They would give him a bunch of laxatives, which actually would make this worse.

They gave him, I forget now, is something that actually would have killed some of the natural bacteria in his colon that would have fought a lot of this stuff. Were they still bloodletting then? Well, and that's another argument for why it wasn't pneumonia. If he'd had actually pneumonia, leeches or a lancet would have been sort of standard operating procedure, and they don't do that with Harrison. So, yeah, that also would not have helped, right? You know, bleeding kills Washington and others.

Just to put a pin, chances are he does. did contract something from the famous bad weather to our speech, but then he carries maybe a cold back to the White House and then other things kick in. Who knows, right? Well, I'm, again, I'm not an MD. I don't know. It's such a good story that he gives, you know, this long speech. I'm not sure that actually, it's not going to help, right? I mean, you don't, being in cold weather doesn't give you a cold, but it can weaken your immune system, particularly if you're 68 years old. But I think it's sort of like the epilogue to this is interesting. So many, many years later, his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, becomes president. And he has heard this story about, oh, you know, Grandpa gave this, you know,

speech in the cold wind and he got pneumonia and died. And so when Benjamin Harrison gives his inaugural dress, he wears like special thermal underwear under his suit. And he makes sure to give like a reasonably short speech, like a little under an hour. Because he's not, you know, say what you will about Benjamin. He's not an idiot. He's not looking to sort of repeat this trend. And he's not. You can learn from an example. There you go. I have one more question to ask you, Robert. So from Martin Van Buren to James Buchanan, you have, I think, eight presidencies in there that are all one term.

And I've always been struck by that, that there's this whole era of American presidential history that's unique in that way, that you just have one term, one term, one term. Why was that happening? Were they just not interested in running again? Or what was the tendency with these guys, other than dying, of course, in William Henry? I think, well, dying. Well, and that's the thing, right, Daniel Webster, right? You know, the great orator and Secretary of State, he was twice offered the opportunity to be vice president, both for Harrison and then for Zachary Taylor. And both times he says, no, I don't want to be vice president.

And both times he would, of course, ended up being president. Wow. That's a wacky thing. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you have to imagine Daniel Webster smacking his forehead repeatedly throughout the 1850. But because that was his chance. I don't know. I think maybe these things kind of go in cycles.

You can only have maybe so make great leaders. But it's probably also an example, too, of just how politically fickle, if you will, the American voters were in this era. And there are a lot of big issues. But that's, yeah, when we get to the 1850s, I, you know, I always tell students, this is what a huge problem leading towards a civil war is we have literally some of the crumbiest presidents will ever have. So they are not up to the task. But you also have these multi-candidate elections, right, that sort of split the vote a lot.

And that might have a lot to do with it, too. There's probably some definitive answer out there. The legacy of William Henry Harrison, if there really is one, it comes along in the presidency of John Tyler, as he takes over as his vice president. And we will cover that in the John Tyler episode. So I am letting you off the hook, sir. This is a fascinating little snippet of a president who barely served. But I really thank you for this. It's really interesting to learn.

Not for lack of trying. I know, right. Poor guy. You just feel so sorry for him. Or do you don't because he did some bad things in his life? Who knows? I don't think the Seanese feel that bad for him. Exactly.

We could ask. We could ask. Okay. Dr. Owens, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it. Dr. Owens specializes in colonial, revolutionary, and early American history, particularly Native American Affairs. And his book that we've been talking about has been Mr. Jefferson's Hammer,

William Henry Harrison, and the origins of the American Indian policy. Professor, what's new on your horizon? What new books are coming out? Well, I'm sure University of Oklahoma Press would very much like me to mention that new book coming out next year, hopefully early next year, is called Killing Over Land, Death and Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier. And it's basically about how murder influences diplomacy in early America. A lively subject. Yeah, well, not something for the kids. I'll be honest.

Yeah. Good for you. All right. Thanks for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Hello, folks. Thanks for listening to American History Hit.

Each week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content, like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman.

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