{"id":17905,"date":"2024-06-23T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=17905"},"modified":"2024-09-03T18:00:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T22:00:09","slug":"9-harrison-william-henry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=17905","title":{"rendered":"#9. Harrison, William Henry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Linda Lou Burton posting from Little Rock, Arkansas <\/em>\u2013William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 \u2013 April 4, 1841) was the ninth president of the United States. For a month, in 1841. Thirty-one days into his term he became the first president to die in office and the shortest-serving president in US history. Do you know why? I\u2019m laying it all to Karma. The more I study presidents, and presidential elections, the more I see evidence of \u201creaping what one sows.\u201d William wasn\u2019t a bad sort; he was born into the Virginia gentry with plantation living alongside the James River. His father signed the Declaration of Independence, and was governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Harrison took good care of his son; William was tutored at home until he was 14; then a classic education \u2013 Latin and Greek and logic and debate \u2013 at a college there in Virginia. Off to the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 18 to study medicine. So how did William wind up dead as a doornail just after getting himself elected president of the \"\"<\/a>United States? And how did he wind up being thought of by the voting public as a sharp-shooting cider-sipping Daniel Boone look-a-like, with a lot of dead Indians in his wake? In perhaps one of the tackiest campaign farces ever devised, in that 1840 election that pitted him against \u201cwealthy elitist\u201d Martin Van Buren, William\u2019s party, the Whigs, came up with this little ditty: \u201cOld Tip he wore a homespun coat, he had no ruffled shirt: wirt wirt, But Mart he has the golden plate, and he\u2019s a little squirt.\u201d Wirt wirt.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not something I\u2019d expect you to know, but when you spit tobacco juice it goes \u201cwirt wirt.\u201d And the \u201cTip\u201d referral was William\u2019s nickname after the Battle of Tippecanoe, where he left that trail of dead Indians, to the delight of settlers moving west. Would you invite William to your party? I wouldn\u2019t. Not because I wouldn\u2019t abide tobacco spittin\u2019 in my house (he didn\u2019t actually DO that, his supporters did); but because he never lived in a log cabin and did not partake of alcoholic beverages, even though he allowed himself to be portrayed <\/em>that way because he wanted to be president. He\u2019d probably schmooze me up about my hors d’oeuvres!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Well, okay, I do cut him some slack about what he had to do when his father died; that\u2019s sad. He\u2019d just gotten settled in medical school and wham \u2013 no money for further schooling. So he joined the Army. He was assigned to Fort Washington, Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory where the army was engaged in the ongoing Northwest Indian War. And he did a lot of fighting. When his mother died and he inherited her property at age 20, he sold it to his brother and kept on fighting. He was a Captain when he resigned from the Army in 1798 at 25. And he was married by then. Anna Symmes (1775-1864) was the \"\"<\/a>impetuous girl; her father refused permission for them to marry but they simply eloped. William was 22, she was 20. They made peace with her father; he sold them some land; they started a farm. And proceeded to have ten children. All but one of those children lived to adulthood, and one \u2013 John Scott Harrison – fathered a president! Which makes William the grandfather of the twenty-third president of the United States. And he also wound up with twenty-five GRANDCHILDREN. Besides farming, fighting, and making babies, he had a few government jobs.<\/p>\n

Government Positions<\/strong><\/p>\n