William Henry Harrison, by Gail Collins

RATING

N/A

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

Short summary:  (272 words or less)

What did you do over the last month?  Well, whatever it was, it’s probably more than what William Henry Harrison did during his 31 days as President.  In fact, the ultimate irony of this summary is that it took me over six months to read a biography of a President who served for only one.

It’s an unfortunate fate, to be remembered as the most inconsequential US President.  But that’s the hand that Harrison was dealt.  His biggest accomplishment as President was that he was the first to die office.  His funeral set some unfortunate future traditions, the most evocative and eerie being the riderless horse that echoed across time, 122 years later for President Kennedy.

Harrison’s life, though, did have an impact on American history, in the same magnitude as many non-Presidents whose biographies often go unexamined:  Aaron Burr, George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, Hamilton, Clay, Calhoun, etc.  So, it was interesting enough to read about Old Tippacanoe.  But make no mistake, I’m in the midst of a boring stretch.

Harrison’s main contribution came in two ways:  defeating of the powerful Shawnee Chief Tecumseh; and much later in life, his first-of-a-kind folky campaign for President in 1840.  The impact of Tecumseh’s defeat cannot be overstated.  It crushed any hope for the formation of a Native Federation to counterbalance and counterattack American expansion.  The impact of Harrison’s 1840 Log Cabin Campaign cannot be over-exaggerated.  It set the tone for a litany of Presidential candidates’ narratives of the “common man” and running against an ambiguous Washington elite.

Also, the word “booze” became mainstream after the 1840 campaign.  Perfect, because booze is what you’ll need to get through this summary.

Expanded summary
I’m not going to lie, this was a pretty uninspiring biography.  Not because of the author, but because I just couldn’t get into reading about Harrison’s life.  But just like in every great novel, there are the exciting sentences that convey action or emotion or crescendo a plot line, and then there are the boring transition sentences that do the mundane work of opening doors and moving characters across town.  If the story of US Presidencies was a novel, Harrison’s presidency would be the equivalent of a brief sentence about the main character brushing their teeth in the morning.  The deflating thing, too, is that there are some later presidents that are considered to be worse than William Henry Harrison, at least according to organizations filled with nerds who create historical rankings of Presidents.  So, great, I get to look forward to that!

This is also the hardest summary to write about.  For some reason, it’s more difficult to succinctly summarize what he did, mainly because I’m struggling to find a broader theme to write on.  With Jackson, it was populism.  With Van Buren, it was inadequacy.  With William Henry Harrison, it’s more like a WTF summary:  how to retrospectively justify reading this biography and to find some thematic meaning out of it.

Which is a little harsh and a lot unfortunate.  Because Harrison did actually accomplish a fair amount in his life.  I guess when you consider it all, Harrison’s life theme to me might be: “steward of the new West.”

He moved to Kentucky when he was young, and through his political career expanded his role to develop and integrate the western territories into the federal consciousness.  Through the Harrison Act, he expanded the pool of people who could purchase land tracts from the federal government, and I’d venture a guess that a fair amount of present day wealth can be tracked back to that.

As governor of the Indiana Territory for 12 years, he battled and defeated Chief Tecumseh and Tecumseh’s brother, Prophet.  British and Indian forces were growing nervous of US expansion and had joined forces in the War of 1812.  Harrison had once said that, absent American ambitions to expand westward, Tecumseh would have a vast empire to rival contemporary Mexico or Peru.  Harrison’s defeat of Tecumseh was a major victory.  Tecumseh was ultimately killed and with his death died too the hope for a unified Native American opposition to US expansion into the present day midwest.

On the issue of slavery, Harrison expanded the legality of slavery in the western territory, even though Congress had outlawed it.  Basically, Harrison’s viewpoint was that a slavery ban tempered growth in the area and spooked wealthy Virginia aristocrats from settling there.  One can only wonder what tone this may or may not have set as westward expansion continued.  I’m interested in trying to connect those dots as I read later about the Missouri Compromise and “bloody Kansas.”  Harrison himself was a slave owner.  Harrison later declared himself against slavery but voted with the south on the expansion of slavery.

He pretty much hung out for a while after that, served in Congress and in JQA’s administration.  He moved back home (Ohio) and didn’t do much while Jackson became President.  He ran for President in 1836, and though he lost, he carried a few states.  Harrison was nominated by the Whig Party (and backed by a young Abe Lincoln) in the 1840 election, which, to me at least, seems to be the first true “change” election as we would recognize today.  The Panic of 1837 ensured that the Whigs were going to win, it was just a matter of who.

And in that economic climate, with a bizarre caricature of then President Martin Van Buren in the public mind, came Harrison’s lasting legacy.  The Log Cabin Campaign of 1840.  This was the first campaign in which a presidential candidate personally campaigned for the office. The Whigs were able to message and create a brand for Harrison as a the Log Cabin, Hard Cider candidate. They turned the log cabin and hard cider imagery into metaphors for frontier ruggedness.  The irony of it all was that Harrison grew up on a sprawling plantation with tutors to provide his education, Van Buren was the son of a tavern keeper who grew up speaking Dutch and had no former education and was completely self taught.  The slogan to remember:  “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

Harrison won that election, of course, but in the end, he didn’t wear a coat to his inauguration and then gave a long-ass speech when it was rainy and freezing as hell outside, and so he caught a cold and died 31 days later.  It’s all good though, because William Henry Harrison’s grandson, Benjamin, would grow up to become President himself.

And that’s all I have to say about that.