PR9
William Henry Harrison
At a Glance
9th President of the United States (1841)
Born: February 9, 1773, Berkeley plantation, Charles City County, Virginia
Nickname: "Old Tippecanoe"; "Old Tip"
Formal Education: Hampden-Sydney College
Marriage: November 25, 1795, to Anna Tuthill Symmes (1775-1864)
Children: Elizabeth Bassett (1796-1846), John Cleves Symmes (1798-1830), Lucy Singleton (1800-1826), William Henry (1802-1838), John Scott (1806-1840), Mary Symmes (1809-1842), Carter Bassett (1811-1839), Anna Tuthill (1813-1865), James Findlay (1814-1817)
Religion: Episcopalian
Career: Soldier
Political Party: Whig
Died: April 4, 1841, Washington, D.C.
Buried: William Henry Harrison Memorial State Park, North Bend, Ohio
Presidential Life in Brief: William Henry Harrison served the shortest time of any American President -- only thirty-two days. He also was the first President from the Whig Party.
In 1836, the opponents of Andrew Jackson desperately wanted to defeat his handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, but they had no real party basis from which to work. The anti-Jackson forces tried a very impractical and unusual scheme. They adopted the name "Whigs" (the name of the British party opposed to the monarchy) and ran four candidates from four different regions. They hoped that this tactic would deny Van Buren a majority in the electoral college and thus throw the election into the House of Representatives. Harrison was the Whig candidate of the West. In the election, Harrison came in second, but Van Buren won a majority of both the popular and electoral college vote.
Four years later, the Whigs ran the first modern presidential campaign in American history, with Harrison as their presidential candidate. It was a race filled with songs, advertising, slogans, and organized rallies. In the election campaign of 1840, the Whigs handed out free hard cider in little bottles shaped like log cabins at barbecues and bonfires -- and they used the slogan "Old Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too" to promote Harrison's candidacy. (John Tyler was his running mate.)
The incumbent President Martin Van Buren, who came across to the American people as a dandy, as a man who looked and acted like an aristocrat, could not overcome his image. People also held him responsible for the economic collapse in the late 1830s. Harrison won the election with 53 percent of the vote, and more people voted in 1840 than ever before.
Harrison, the oldest man at age sixty-eight (before Ronald Reagan) to be inaugurated President, died after serving only one month in office. He had become ill after delivering his inaugural address outdoors in the cold March weather without a hat or a coat and died of a respiratory infection, probably pneumonia. He was the first President to die in office. Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison, would become President of the United States in 1889.