Collection

HARRISON

William Henry Harrison as President was a distinctive character. In personality he probably never had, and it is doubtful if he ever will have, an imitator or an equal. The country looked upon him at the time not alone as a great pioneer and warrior, but as a great and good man, who came very close to the people. The people selected him for the highest office within their gift, not only on account of that which he had accomplished in blazing the way to civilization and taming the savages in the Central West, or because he had assisted in repelling British intrusion, but because they regarded him as the personification of honor and as possessing the material for a great statesman. It has often been recorded in history and it is a common expression today that "William Henry Harrison was killed by office-seekers." A man who would place himself so near the people as to permit office-seekers to send him to an untimely grave must have had in a very marked degree the milk of human kindness, and a fountain of gratitude and personal affection, which should win admiration.

It was the elevation of such a man to the Presidential chair, after a campaign so characteristic as to leave its imprint upon time, that made the administration of William Henry Harrison notable.

Probably no man has ever occupied the Executive Mansion whose name was so universally perpetuated by namesakes, with the possible exception of George Washington. The children who were named after William Henry Harrison, if they could be lined up today, would make an army almost sufficient to have conducted successfully the war against Spain, or to fill all of the Federal offices of the country today.

I find that the state papers of President William Henry Harrison are confined to his inaugural address and a proclamation convening Congress to meet in extraordinary session on May 31, 1841. On the fourth of the following April he died. In his inaugural address he manifests an intense desire to conscientiously fulfill the duties of his high office. He proceeds to declare his intention of fulfilling all the pledges he had made and concludes his address with this somewhat pathetic sentence: "Fellow citizens, being fully vested with that high office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate leave of you."

The above utterance seemed to be prophetic, in that it was his leavetaking, for he never again appeared in public.

As a warrior among Indians, William Henry Harrison has been placed upon the scroll of fame with Daniel Boone and Kenton. As an army officer, a trained soldier and tactician upon the field, history places him with Washington, whose unlimited confidence he possessed.

1857-C

As a patriot, William Henry Harrison will always be remembered. No one who has achieved the high office he held will probably ever have a greater degree of confidence or affection of the people. It is lamentable that the expectations of the country were so rudely dashed by his untimely death, as much was expected of, and no doubt much would have been realized by his administration.

At the time of the Harrison-Van Buren campaign political cartoons were just coming into general use in this country. Gen. William Henry Harrison, who had some time before retired to private life, was then living upon his farm at North Bend, Ohio, between Cincinnati and the Indiana line. In one of these campaign hand bills are pictures of various scenes upon the farm including the Log Cabin and the famous Cider Press, while the General himself is represented in his shirt sleeves, ploughing. He was called "The Cincinnatus of the West," and this epithet proved of advantage in the campaign.

He was living in the famous cabin at North Bend, and devoting himself to agriculture with the same energy and enthusiasm which he had displayed in the affairs of War and of State. Here he remained until called upon by his friends to become a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. He had married a daughter of John Cleves Symmes, the founder of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was in sympathy wholly with the Western pioneers, among whom he had lived so long.

His term as President lasted but thirty days, and his death was felt as a severe blow by his party, which had formed high expectations of his capacity in executive matters. Notwithstanding his notable career as a General and statesman, William Henry Harrison is likely to be remembered as the highest type of the pioneers, who succeeded the frontiersmen Kenton and Boone. His service to the great empire, which has since been divided into the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, will cause him to be affectionately remembered by thousands who barely know the names of other Presidents.