Summary

William Henry Harrison, born February 9, 1773 at Berkeley Plantation (Virginia Colony) and died April 4, 1841 in Washington, D.C., was an American military officer, diplomat and statesman, the ninth president of the United States.

After a military and political career in Ohio, he became president in the election of 1840 at the age of 68. His term was brief, however, as he contracted pneumonia shortly after his inaugural address; he died a month later and was succeeded for most of his term by his vice president, John Tyler.

Originally from Virginia, Harrison was the secretary (between 1798 and 1799) and then the first delegate of the Northwest Territory to Congress from 1799 to 1800, before becoming governor of the Indiana Territory in 1801. He became famous after leading American forces against the Native Americans at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the Anglo-American War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames River in 1813 that ended hostilities in the Great Lakes region.

After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio where he was elected federal representative in 1816 and then United States senator in 1824. He did not finish his term of office because he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Colombia in May 1828. There he met Simón Bolívar, with whom he discussed democracy, before returning to his farm in Ohio the following year, where he lived in relative isolation until he was nominated for the 1836 presidential election by the Whig Party and defeated before being elected president in 1840.

His death, which occurred shortly after he took office, triggered a brief constitutional crisis, which nevertheless made it possible to clarify the rules of presidential succession, which were only formalized with the introduction of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1967.

Children and education

William Henry Harrison was born on February 9, 1773 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the youngest son of seven children and his parents, Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth Bassett, were members of an influential planter family. Harrison was the last American president born a British subject before American independence. His father was a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1777 and signed the Declaration of Independence before becoming governor of Virginia from 1781 to 1784. William's older brother, Carter Bassett Harrison, was elected to the House of Representatives.

In 1787, at the age of 14, Harrison entered the Presbyterian school at Hampden Sydney (en) where he learned Latin and French. He remained there until 1790 when his Episcopalian father withdrew him from the school, perhaps because of a religious revival at the school. He studied briefly in Southampton County and may have become close to the Quakers and abolitionist Methodists at the school. Angered, his pro-slavery father sent him to Philadelphia to the merchant Robert Morris, probably because of the city's medical education. Harrison entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1790, where he studied medicine with Benjamin Rush, although, as he explained to his biographer, he was not really interested. When his father died in 1791, Harrison had no money to support his education and was left in the care of Morris.

Joining the army

Governor Henry Lee of Virginia, a friend of Harrison's father, was informed of his poverty and persuaded him to join the army. Harrison was enrolled as a midshipman in the 11th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army and was sent to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory where the unit was engaged in the Northwest Native American War.

General "Mad Anthony" Wayne took command of the Western Army in 1792, replacing Arthur St. Clair after the disastrous Battle of the Wabash. Harrison was promoted to lieutenant in the summer because of his strict adherence to the hierarchy and the following year he served as aide-de-camp. It was under Wayne's influence that Harrison learned to command an army on the "Frontier. Harrison participated in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August 1794, which ended the conflict. After the war, Harrison was a signatory to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which opened Ohio to settlement.

Upon his mother's death in 1793, Harrison inherited a portion of the family property that included about 12 square miles of land and several slaves. Since he was still in the army at the time, Harrison sold his land to his brother.

Marriage and family

In 1795, Harrison met Anna Symmes from North Bend, Ohio. She was the daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, a prominent figure in the state and a former representative in the Congress of the Confederacy. Harrison asked the judge for his daughter's hand in marriage and was refused. Harrison waited until Symmes was out of town, and he and Anna eloped and were married on November 25, 1795. Concerned about Harrison's financial ability to support his family, Symmes sold 65 acres of land in North Bend to the young couple. They had ten children, nine of whom reached adulthood. Anna was frequently ill due to her many pregnancies but she outlived her husband by 23 years and died on February 25, 1864 at the age of 88.

Historians also consider that Harrison had six children with a slave named Dilsia. During his presidential campaign, he did not want to have "bastard slave children" around him and gave four to his brother who sold them to a Georgia planter. Harrison is thus the great-grandfather of Walter White, a civil rights activist who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 to 1955.

Harrison left the army in 1797 and began campaigning for a position in the government of the Northwest Territory. With the help of his friend, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, he was recommended to replace the outgoing secretary of the territory. He was appointed to this position, during which he acted as governor during the frequent absences of Arthur St. Clair

Member of Congress

Harrison had many friends in the upper circles of society and he quickly established a reputation as a leader. Congress had passed legislation that increased the price of land, a decision criticized by many in the territory, and when Harrison campaigned for Congress, he announced that he would change the situation to encourage emigration to the territory. In 1799, the 26-year-old Harrison defeated Arthur St. Clair's son and became the territory's first delegate to Congress. His term of office lasted from March 4, 1799 to May 14, 1800, but as a delegate from a territory, not a state, he had no vote, although he could participate in committees, submit legislation and debate.

He succeeded in passing the Harrison Land Act, which facilitated the settlement of the Northwest Territory by allowing settlers to purchase land in small lots. The availability of inexpensive land was an important factor in the rapid population growth of the territory. He also participated in a committee charged with defining the administrative divisions of the territory. The committee recommended splitting the territory into two parts to create the territories of Ohio and Indiana. The law was passed and the two new territories were formalized in 1800.

Without informing him, President John Adams appointed Harrison as governor of the new territory because of his ties to the "West" and his politically neutral positions. The decision was confirmed by the Senate the next day. Caught off guard, Harrison accepted the offer only after receiving assurances from the Democratic-Republican party that he would not be replaced in his post if the party won the subsequent election. The Indiana Territory included the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota.

Governor

Harrison moved to Vincennes, the capital of the new Indiana Territory on January 10, 1801. There he built a plantation, which he named Grouseland because of the many birds that lived there. It was one of the first brick structures in the territory. The house, which has been restored and has become a popular tourist attraction, became the center of the territory's political and social life. He built another near Corydon, the second capital, at Harrison Spring.

As governor, Harrison had broad powers in the new territory and had the authority to appoint all territorial officers and organize the division of the territory into political districts. One of his responsibilities was to obtain titles to Native American lands that would attract more settlers and increase the population to achieve statehood. Harrison was eager to expand the territory for personal reasons because his political future depended on Indiana achieving statehood. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson granted Harrison the authority to negotiate and make treaties with the Native Americans.

Harrison oversaw the signing of 13 treaties that resulted in the acquisition of nearly 240,000 square miles of Native American land, primarily in southern Indiana. The 1804 Treaty of St. Louis with Chief Quashquame resulted in the cession by the Sauks and Mesquakies of much of western Illinois and portions of Missouri. This treaty and loss of territory was rejected by many Sauks including Black Hawk and was one of the reasons they allied with the British in the War of 1812. Harrison believed that the Treaty of Grouseland of 1805 would ease tensions, but they remained high on the frontier.

In 1809, the Treaty of Fort Wayne aggravated tensions because Harrison had purchased 10,000 square kilometres of land from the Miamis, who claimed but did not occupy this area inhabited by the Shawnee, Kickapou, Piankashaw and Wea tribes. Harrison expedited the process by offering large grants to the tribes and their chiefs to get the treaty through before Jefferson left office. The tribes living on these lands were furious and sought unsuccessfully to have the treaty nullified.

In 1803, Harrison lobbied Congress to repeal Section 6 of the Northwest Ordinance to allow slavery in the Indiana Territory. He argued that this was necessary to make the region more attractive to settlers and economically viable. Congress suspended the article for 10 years, during which time territories covered by the ordinance could decide whether to allow slavery. That year, Harrison obtained legalization of indentures by the territorial legislature. He attempted to legalize slavery in 1805 and 1807, which caused tension in the territory. When the legislature was first elected by the people in 1809, the ruling abolitionist party repealed all the pro-slavery decisions Harrison had passed since 1803.

President Jefferson, the principal drafter of the ordinance had made a secret agreement with James Lemen, a justice of the peace and one of the abolitionist leaders in Indiana, to defeat the slave movement led by Harrison. Although a slave owner himself, he did not want slavery to spread in the Northwest Territory because he felt it should be outlawed. Under the terms of the agreement, Jefferson funded Lemen to build anti-slavery churches in Indiana and Illinois. Thus, citizens signed petitions, organized politically, and their actions proved decisive in defeating Harrison's attempts to legalize slavery.

Tecumseh and Tippecanoe

A Native American resistance movement against American expansion developed under the leadership of the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (the Prophet). In what became known as the Tecumseh Rebellion, Tenskwatawa convinced the tribes that they would be protected by the Great Spirit if they rose up against the white settlers. He encouraged resistance by asking the tribes to pay the white traders only half of what they owed them and to abandon all white man's practices including clothing, guns, and especially alcohol, which was taking its toll on the Native Americans.

In August 1810, Tecumseh led 400 armed warriors down the Wabash River to meet Harrison at Vincennes. Because the warriors were covered with war paint, their appearance frightened the American soldiers. The leaders of the group were escorted to Grouseland where they met with the governor. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegitimate because one tribe could not sell land without the approval of the others; he asked Harrison to cancel the treaty and warned that the Americans should not attempt to settle on treaty lands. He also told him that he had threatened to kill any chiefs who enforced the terms of the treaty and that his confederacy of tribes was rapidly gaining strength. Harrison countered that the Miamis owned the land and could sell it if they wished and rejected Tecumseh's assertion that the Native Americans were one nation. The governor stated that each tribe could have separate relations with the United States if they wished and that the Great Spirit would have given all tribes the same language if they were part of the same nation.

Tecumseh launched into a fiery speech, but Harrison could not understand what he was saying. A Shawnee who favored Harrison drew his pistol to alert Harrison that Tecumseh's words were belligerent. Some witnesses reported that Tecumseh encouraged the warriors to kill Harrison. Many warriors began to raise their weapons, and Harrison drew his sword. Since the total population of the town was only 1,000, Tecumseh's warriors could have slaughtered everyone. The warriors retreated, however, when the American officers drew their pistols to defend their commander. Chief Winnemac, sympathetic to Harrison, countered Tecumseh's argument by telling the warriors that since they had come in peace, they should leave as well. Before leaving, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless the treaty was cancelled, he would seek an alliance with the British. After the meeting, Tecumseh scoured the region in hopes of forming an anti-American alliance.

In 1811, while Tecumseh was away, Harrison received permission from Secretary of War William Eustis to advance into Native American territory for a show of force. Harrison led a thousand men and marched north to intimidate the Shawnee into negotiation. Instead, the tribes launched a surprise attack on Harrison's army on the morning of November 6 in what became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison defeated the tribal forces at Prophetstown near the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers and was celebrated as a national hero.

In his report to Secretary Eustis, Harrison informed him of the battle and indicated that he feared an imminent counterattack. The first dispatch did not clearly state the winner of the confrontation and Eustis initially interpreted it as a defeat before the next message informed him of the American victory. Since no counterattack was organized, the Shawnee defeat was more than certain. Eustis demanded to know why Harrison had not taken the precaution of fortifying his camp against attack, and Harrison replied that he considered his position strong enough. The dispute was the catalyst for a series of discords between Harrison and the War Department that continued until the War of 1812.

The press did not initially report the battle, and one Ohio newspaper interpreted Harrison's dispatch to Eustin as an announcement of defeat. In December, as most major newspapers reported the battle, public opinion outraged by the Shawnee attack demanded answers. At a time of great tension with Britain, many Americans accused the United Kingdom of inciting the Native Americans to revolt and of supplying them with weapons. In response, Congress passed resolutions condemning the British for their intrusion into American internal affairs. A few months later, the United States declared war on Britain.

War of 1812

The outbreak of war with the United Kingdom in 1812 led to further clashes with Native Americans in the Northwest, and Harrison continued to command the army in Indiana. After the fall of Detroit, General James Winchester became commander of the Army of the Northwest. He gave Harrison the rank of brigadier general, which he refused because he wanted full command of the army; President James Madison replaced Winchester with Harrison on September 17, 1812. Harrison inherited an army of conscripts, which he set out to train. He was initially outnumbered by the British and their Native American allies. In the winter of 1812-13, Harrison built a defensive position near the Maumee Rapids in northwest Ohio. He named it Fort Meigs in honor of Ohio's governor, Return J. Meigs, Jr.

After reinforcements arrived in 1813, Harrison resumed the offensive. He led the army north to confront the Shawnees and the British. He won several victories in Indiana and Ohio before retaking Detroit and entering Canada. The Americans were victorious at the Battle of the Thames River in which Tecumseh was killed. The Native American coalition disintegrated and the battle marked the end of fighting in the region.

Soon after, Secretary of War John Armstrong reorganized the army and assigned Harrison to a rear post while giving control of the troops at the front to one of his subordinates. Armstrong and Harrison disagreed on the merits of an invasion of Canada. When Harrison was reassigned, he quickly resigned from the army and was accepted in the summer of 1814.

After the war, Congress investigated Harrison's resignation. It ruled that he had been abused by the Secretary of War during his campaign and that his resignation was justified; it also awarded him a gold medal for his actions during the war. The Battle of the Thames River is considered the greatest American victory of the war after New Orleans.

Official functions

After the war, Harrison was appointed by President James Madison to serve on a commission to negotiate two treaties with the Native American tribes of the Northwest. Both treaties were to the advantage of the United States as the tribes ceded a large swath of land to the west to provide more territory for American settlers.

Harrison was elected to the House of Representatives to complete John McLean's term from Ohio from October 8, 1816 to March 4, 1819. He was then elected to the Ohio Senate for a term from 1819 to 1821 and lost the election for governor of Ohio in 1820. In 1822 he ran for the House of Representatives but was defeated by 500 votes by James W. Gazlay. In 1824 he was re-elected to the Senate, where he served until May 20, 1828. His western colleagues called him "Buckeye," a friendly term derived from the Ohio Buckeye tree. As a Great Elector of Ohio, he voted for James Monroe in 1820.

Appointed minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia, Harrison resigned from Congress and held that role until May 8, 1829. He arrived in Bogota on December 22, 1828. He was disappointed with the situation in the country and reported to the secretary of state that Colombia was on the verge of anarchy and that Simón Bolívar was about to establish a military dictatorship. While in Colombia, Harrison wrote to Bolívar that "the strongest government is the freest" and asked him to encourage the development of democracy. In response, Bolívar replied that "the United States... seems appointed by Providence to afflict America with all torments in the name of freedom," an idea that became famous in Latin America. When the new president Andrew Jackson took office in March 1829, Harrison was replaced and returned to the United States in June

Private citizen

After returning to the United States in 1829, Harrison returned to his farm in North Bend, Ohio. There he lived in relative isolation after nearly 40 years of service to his country. Not having accumulated considerable wealth during his lifetime, he lived on his savings, a small pension and the income from his farm. Harrison grew corn and established a distillery to produce whiskey. After a brief period in the liquor business, he became dismayed by the effect of alcohol on his customers and closed his distillery. In a speech to the Hamilton County Agricultural Committee in 1831, Harrison said he had sinned in making whiskey and hoped that others would learn from his mistakes and stop producing spirits.

Harrison also earned some money by contributing to a biography written by James Hall entitled A Memoir of the Public Services of William Henry Harrison published in 1836. In the same year, he tried unsuccessfully to be chosen as a presidential candidate by the Whig party. Between 1836 and 1840, Harrison was clerk of Hamilton County and this was his occupation when he was elected president in 1840. By the time Harrison ran for president in 1840, more than 12 books had been published about his life, most of them presenting him as a national hero.

Presidential election of 1836

For the presidential election of 1836, Harrison was nominated by the Whig party as the northern candidate. Uniquely in American history, one of the major political parties intentionally fielded more than one presidential candidate. Vice President Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate, was popular and certain to win against a single Whig candidate. The Whig strategy was therefore to elect popular Whigs locally to prevent Van Buren from achieving a 148-vote majority in the Electoral College and force the House of Representatives to decide the outcome of the election. They hoped that the Whigs would control the House after the general election because otherwise the Democratic House would have chosen Van Buren.

Harrison campaigned in all the abolitionist states except Massachusetts and in the slave states of Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Hugh L. White campaigned in the other slave states except South Carolina. Daniel Webster ran in Massachusetts and Willie P. Mangum in South Carolina. The plan narrowly failed as Van Buren managed to secure 170 electors. Van Buren's lead in Pennsylvania was only 4,000 votes and he was able to take all 30 electoral votes from Harrison.

Presidential election of 1840

In 1840, Harrison was again the Whig candidate and faced incumbent Van Buren in the presidential election. The Whig party had learned the lesson of previous election failures and realized that the personality of the candidate was more important to the public than his or her platform. Harrison was chosen over more controversial party members such as Clay and Webster. As the sole candidate of his party, he campaigned on his distinguished military career, his reputation as a hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, and the weakness of the American economy caused by the Panic of 1837. Their campaign slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler too became one of the most famous in American political history. In order to blame Van Buren for the economic depression, the Whigs nicknamed him "Van Ruin.

The Democrats attacked Harrison as Granny Harrison, the petticoat general, because he had resigned from the army before the end of the War of 1812. They portrayed him as a provincial and out-of-touch old man who would do better to "sit in his log cabin and drink raw cider" instead of running for president. This ploy failed when Harrison and his running mate John Tyler chose the log cabin and raw cider as campaign symbols to defend the candidate's "man of the people" image. They were the first to campaign using modern-day devices (slogans, advertising, rallies, handouts). Although Harrison came from a wealthy Virginia slaveholding family, he was portrayed as a humble frontiersman in the style of the popular Andrew Jackson, while Van Buren was portrayed as a wealthy member of the elite. On election day, Harrison won a landslide victory in the Electoral College, although the popular vote was closer.

When he arrived in Washington, Harrison wanted to show that he was still the tenacious hero of Tippecanoe and that he was more than the backward caricature described during the campaign. He was sworn in on March 4, 1841, in cold, wet weather. He wore neither coat nor hat, arrived at the ceremony on horseback rather than in the enclosed carriage he had been offered, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. It took him nearly two hours to read it, even though his friend and fellow Whig Daniel Webster had shortened it. He then attended the inaugural ball in the evening with nearly a thousand people.

The inaugural address was a detailed summary of the Whig agenda, much of which was based on the rejection of the policies of Jackson and Van Buren. Harrison promised to re-establish the Bank of the United States and expand its powers by authorizing it to print paper money, to defer to congressional decisions on legislative matters by reducing the use of the veto, and to challenge the spoils system created by Jackson on executive appointments. He promised to use his appointment power to create an administration based on merit regardless of party affiliation.

As a Whig leader and an influential politician (as well as a frustrated presidential candidate), Clay expected to gain a prominent position in the Harrison administration. He attempted to influence Harrison's actions before and during his brief presidency by proposing candidates of his choice for cabinet positions. Harrison replied, "Mr. Clay, you forget that I am the president. The dispute intensified when Harrison appointed Daniel Webster, Clay's rival for control of the Whig party, as Secretary of State and appeared to offer influential positions to Webster's supporters. His only concession was to give the office of attorney general to one of his supporters, John J. Crittenden. Despite this, the antagonism between the two men continued until the president's death.

Clay was not the only one who expected to gain advantages from Harrison's election. Many candidates ran for the White House, which was open to anyone who asked for an appointment with the president, to obtain a position as a public servant. Much of the business during Harrison's short presidency concerned the many social obligations of his high office, particularly the reception of visitors to the White House. Harrison wrote in a letter dated March 10, "I am harassed by the multitude who solicit me, and I cannot possibly attend to my own affairs.

Harrison took his promise to reform appointments very seriously; he visited every department in his administration to oversee operations and announced that electioneering by employees could result in their dismissal. As he did with Clay, Harrison resisted pressure from other Whigs for administrative positions. When a group of Whigs arrived at his office on March 16 to demand the dismissal of all Democrats, Harrison replied, "God forbid, I should resign my office before I was guilty of such iniquity. Harrison's own Cabinet attempted to counter his nomination of John Chambers for governor of Iowa in favor of Webster's friend General James Wilson; when Webster tried to force the decision at a March 25 Cabinet meeting, Harrison asked him to read aloud a handwritten note (which simply read "William Henry Harrison, President of the United States") before declaring that "William Henry Harrison, President of the United States, informs you gentlemen that, by God, John Chambers will be Governor of Iowa!"

The only official act of significance of Harrison's presidency was to call Congress into a special session. He and Henry Clay disagreed on the need for such a session, and when on March 11 Harrison's cabinet found itself in the same division, the president vetoed the special session. When Clay pressed Harrison on the issue, the president rejected the idea, asked him to stop coming to the White House and to address him only by mail. However, a few days later, Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing reported that the finances were in such bad shape that the government would not be able to continue to operate until Congress resumed normal sessions in December. Harrison relented, and on March 17 he called for a session of Congress on "the economic condition of the country. The session was scheduled for May 31.

On March 26, Harrison's health was affected by a cold. The misconception at the time was that the illness was caused by bad weather on Inauguration Day, even though it started three weeks after the event. The cold worsened and soon developed into pneumonia and pleurisy. He sought rest at the White House, but could not find a quiet room because of the crowds of job seekers. His extremely busy schedule did not allow him much time to rest.

According to the theory of Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak published in an article in the New York Times, Harrison's disease was of gastrointestinal origin. The cause of this disease would be the absence of a sewage system in Washington at the time, which meant that fecal matter was dumped in the open air and polluted surface waters.

Harrison's doctors tried to treat him with opium, castor oil, leeches and Virginia rauvolfia serpentina. But these treatments only worsened Harrison's condition and he began to become delirious. He died nine days after falling ill on April 4, 1841 at 12:30 a.m. from pneumonia, jaundice and septicemia. His last words were addressed to his physician but were more likely intended for John Tyler, "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I want them applied. I ask nothing more. He was the first American president to die during his term of office, which was the shortest in history, lasting only 30 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes.

Harrison's funeral was held at Wesley Chapel in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 7. He was first buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. while his grave was being prepared. He was then buried in North Bend in the William Henry Harrison State Memorial.

Impact

Harrison's sudden death was a disappointment to the Whig party, which had hoped to initiate tax reforms and implement measures to support the economic system proposed by Henry Clay. John Tyler, Harrison's successor and a former Democrat, abandoned the Whig program and left the party.

Because of Harrison's death, three presidents served in a single calendar year (Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler). This happened only one other time, in 1881, when James A. Garfield succeeded Rutherford B. Hayes before being assassinated. Garfield succeeded Rutherford B. Hayes before being assassinated later that year. After Garfield's death, Chester A. Arthur became the new president.

Harrison's death revealed the loopholes in the constitution regarding succession to the presidency. Article II provided that "in case of the removal, death, or resignation of the President, or of his inability to exercise the powers and discharge the duties of his office, the same shall vest in the Vice President. shall hold the said office until the cessation of such inability or the election of a President. The debate was whether the vice president became the president or acted as president. In addition, the constitution did not specify whether the vice president was to remain in office until the end of his predecessor's term or whether early elections were to be held.

Harrison's firm insisted that Tyler be the "vice president acting as president." After consultation with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, they decided that if Tyler took the oath of office, he would assume the position. Tyler complied and was sworn in on April 6. In May, Congress met and passed a resolution confirming Tyler as president until the end of Harrison's term. Once established, this precedent would remain the rule until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967. Passed after the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the ascension of Lyndon B. Johnson to the presidency, the amendment refined the rules of the game. Johnson, the amendment refined the organization of the succession and defined when the vice president could act as president and when he could become president.

Because of the brevity of his presidency, Harrison was the only president not to appoint a federal judge to any level of court and was one of only four presidents not to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court. Similarly, no states were admitted to the Union during his presidency.

Legacy

Harrison was the first sitting president to be photographed. Photographs of John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin van Buren exist, but they were all taken after they left office. The original daguerreotype, taken in Washington on Inauguration Day, has been lost but at least one copy exists in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The introductory image of this article is a digitized version of that document.

Harrison's main legacy is his 1840 campaign, which laid the foundation for modern presidential campaign tactics. Harrison died almost penniless, and Congress voted a pension of $25,000, the equivalent of one year's salary for Harrison, to his wife. She was also given the right not to pay for her mail.

Harrison's son, John Scott Harrison (en) was a representative from Ohio from 1853 to 1857 and his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became the 23rd president from 1889 to 1893.

Harrison's towns in New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and counties of the same name in Indiana, Mississippi, Iowa and Ohio were named in his honor. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis incorporates a statue of Harrison.

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