Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed “seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them.” When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60. Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh. In the War of 1812 Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier. The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison’s fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh’s confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. While Tecumseh was away seeking more allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet’s town. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack the confederacy. An eloquent and energetic chieftain, Tecumseh, with his religious brother, the Prophet, began to strengthen an Indian confederation to prevent further encroachment. The threat against settlers became serious in 1809. When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements. His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness. In 1801 he became Governor of the Indiana Territory, serving 12 years. After resigning from the Army in 1798, he became Secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the Territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In the campaign against the Indians, Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General “Mad Anthony” Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened most of the Ohio area to settlement. He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the Regular Army, and headed to the Northwest, where he spent much of his life. Suddenly, that same year, 1791, Harrison switched interests. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond. Harrison was in fact a scion of the Virginia planter aristocracy. ” The Whigs, seizing on this political misstep, in 1840 presented their candidate William Henry Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren. “Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it,” a Democratic newspaper foolishly gibed, “he will sit … by the side of a ‘sea coal’ fire, and study moral philosophy. On his 32nd day, he became the first to die in office, serving the shortest tenure in U.S. William Henry Harrison, an American military officer and politician, was the ninth President of the United States (1841), the oldest President to be elected at the time. The biography for President Harrison and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association. Get Involved Show submenu for “Get Involved””.
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