William Henry Harrison
Recommended Listening: Who Are You? – The Who
Warning: Gross medical stuff.
Very few people know much about our tragic 9th president, William Henry Harrison. That’s not surprising. He only served for a month, then died from pneumonia because he gave a 2-hour inauguration speech in the rain without a coat. Or so the brief legend goes.
Born February 9, 1773, William Henry Harrison was the 7th child in a family of four girls and three boys. He was born into a grand family legacy that started in 1633 with the arrival of Benjamin Harrison I, William’s great-great-great grandfather, at the colony of Jamestown. After him, every successive generation of his family had a “Benjamin”- the firstborn son who grew up to be the patriarch and usually did something interesting with his life. Benjamin III was the Attorney General, Speaker of the House, and Treasurer for the Colony of Virginia all before the age of 37, when he died from a heart attack (so ends the life of a workaholic). His son, Benjamin IV became a respectable lawyer and sheriff. One day during a lightning storm he was running upstairs to close a window when he was tragically struck by a lightning bolt through exact said open window.
Not the greatest accomplishment, but it did leave the most famous Benjamin, Benjamin V “The Signer” Harrison, in charge of the Harrison clan at the age of 19 years old. This Benjamin was William Henry Harrison’s father. Now, as far as nicknames go, unless you’re an ASL interpreter “The Signer” is a pretty lame one. But his name is on the Declaration of Independence, hence the nickname, and this man was said to be a 6’4” bull. He once picked up a startled John Hancock and plopped him down in a contested seat in order to win an argument. I imagine he did (win).
Here we come to William Henry, who as the 7th child did not get bestowed the great Title of Benji, and by the time it came to his education money was tight for The Signer and his wife. William was educated at home until 14 years old, at which time he was sent away to train in medicine, an apparently inexpensive education at the time (Cocaine was a popular treatment for a lot of things, especially ghosts in your blood). He bounced around to a few different Med Schools, apparently because of his parent’s strict religious beliefs. In 1791 he had just arrived at the Medical School of Pennsylvania when he learned of his father’s death. On the spot he dropped out of medical school and never looked back.
William then needed a job, so he went to an old friend of his father’s, some old guy named George Washington, who had signed the Declaration of Independence with him. Old George said he knew some people and could help William find a job. Cool! He entered the military, got promoted a couple times, then in 1795 he met the lovely Miss Anna Symmes, who he could not live without. He asked her father for her hand, but her father said no. William really wanted to be on good terms with his future Father-In-Law, so her ran off with Anna and married her anyway.
Father-in-Law must have forgiven him, because he sold William 160 acres of land in Ohio, where he built his 2-story log cabin overlooking the river. The next year his wife gave birth to a daughter Elizabeth, the first of 10 children (those two were really in love, or else really bored). William stayed in the military for another 2 years, then bounced around to small clerical posts here and there, just trying to make money for his family.
Then in 1799 William was elected as a delegate to Congress. He and his wife were invited to the White House, where President Adams (the first one) said that he was so much like his father, except with better table manners (?!?). These dinners caused him to be put forth and approved by Congress as the first Governor of the Ohio Territory. There he was able to build his family a four-chimney brick mansion with imported glass and a spiral staircase, all the necessities. He would serve as governor for over a decade, until 1812 when the British decided they hadn’t had a good enough ass whoopin’ the first time around and started talking crap again. William decided to rejoin the army, but still draw his Governor’s pay without doing any real governing. He went to Cincinnati to visit his family and saw “no immediate necessity” to return to his official post. By the time he finally got a command that suited him, he fucked it up so bad that the angry shout “Remember the Raisin!” would haunt him until his final days.
William Henry took his massive family back to the old 2-story log cabin, which had now grown to a massive 16 room mansion sitting on a 3,000-acre estate. The family called it The Big House. There he sunk deeper in debt, and his friends would nominate him for whatever office came up. He spent a short time as a congressman, was in and out of the Senate, but then when John Quincy Adams ran for president in 1828, William asked for the Vice President spot.
Unfortunately, they had already picked out a guy named Richard Rush, and with a name like that, c’mon, they had to. So, William started asking John Q for anything and everything he could think of. “How about Ambassador to Mexico? Columbia? How about Army Major General? I know the song and I have the umbrella.”
Believing him to be of a “shallow mind”, but outnumbered by Harrison supporters, John Quincy Adams had to give William a job somewhere. Maybe because it was far away, or maybe to avoid the high kicks, he made Harrison ambassador to Columbia. William was happy with the position, because it paid $9,000/year, (multiply by 33 for inflation in 2023), which is about how long it took him to get there. He hadn’t been in Columbia long when his old war buddy, Andrew Jackson, won the Presidential Election of 1828. One of the first things Old A.J. did (literally, day 4) was replace Harrison. William had voted against him once long ago on something that didn’t even matter anymore, but Andrew Jackson could really hold a grudge. While he waited in South America for his replacement to arrive, William occupied himself by getting on the wrong side of the Columbian leader, Simón Bolívar, whose Democratic revolution was starting to look a little more like a dictatorship. William Henry was pretty vocal about how he felt about it and the Columbian government was thinking William might look good in a prison suit if he didn’t shut his damn mouth. He got out of there just in time to avoid arrest. He returned to American 19 months after departing with a little bit of español and a red macaw, but otherwise still broke and having that giant family needing financial support. He was working as a small-time county clerk when fate intervened.
There was a great financial panic in 1837 that turned President Martin Van Buren into “Martin Van Ruin”. Banks refused to open, lest people withdraw their own money. The whole American economy just got trashed. Martin was of the Jacksonian Democrats, and the Whig party knew if they played it right, they had this election in the bag. So, they looked really carefully at who their nominee would be.
There was this poor guy named Henry Clay who tried his whole life to be president but never made it to the White House. He was really well liked, but his opinions were so fixed and well known so he just wasn’t very mailable, and that’s what his party was looking for. Harrison on the other hand refused to have any opinions at all. Every question they asked him, he was like, “Oh, gosh, that’s up to Congress.” So, yeah, he was nominated, and his Vice President was an incredibly lucky man named John Tyler. They tried to give the VP spot to the Secretary of State, Daniel Webster and he said, “I do not purpose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin”. He had a point; until then Vice President had been an empty and meaningless office. Until then. John Adams best summed the role of Vice President best when he stated in 1789 “I am nothing, but I may be everything.” Daniel Webster would later be asked again to serve as Vice President for Zachery Taylor, which his pride would also force him to refuse. President Taylor would go on to die from illness a little over a year in office, leaving his VP Millard Filmore to fill the role. Oh, Danny boy…
The Election of 1840 was the very first of its kind. In years previous, campaigning had been all about wining and dining the rich, big donations, and “I will give you my daughter if you make me president.” That kind of shit. The 1840 presidential election became a campaign geared towards the common people. The Van Buren camp initially ragged on Harrison, and a columnist attempted to insult Harrison by saying he was such a simple man that he would “be content to sit the rest of his days in a long cabin, with a barrel of hard cider, studying moral philosophy.” Harrison’s campaign took that idea and ran with it. William Henry Harrison: a simple, log cabin and hard cider war hero, here to humbly serve the people. Not like that fancy pants Van Buren, who had the White House lawn landscaped to look like Amazon bosoms, and lives in luxury eating fine foods and wearing fancy clothes. Uh-oh. That did not go how they thought it would.
William’s campaign made promotional products with his name and face on them. You could shave with Harrison shaving soap and smoke Harrison tobacco while wearing a Harrison necktie. His campaign would host dances and serve their own brand of Harrison Hard Cider. William courted the people as The Average Man and would answer their letters personally.
Women got involved in the political process. This was seen as pretty sinful, partly because they were wearing ribbons across their chests, attracting attention to their boobage. Things got pretty heated between the two political parties. Violence in the street included shoving, hair pulling, “vigorous finger-biting”, so many canings, it got wild, people! They also discovered they could say anything, and it didn’t even have to be true! William gave one speech in the North and a completely different speech in the South. He was even said to do pretty good impressions. People were having a blast, with their drunken parades, drunken parties, and drunken dances.
Van Buren’s elitism is ultimately what took him down. Times were a’changing and Martin just wasn’t getting with the program. On April 14, 1840, an incredibly educated former Democrat named Charles Ogle, who had become disillusioned with the party and now sided with the Whigs, gave a speech known to history as the “Golden Spoon Oration”. This man literally had the receipts.
I never thought I’d say this, but I wish I could have been there for this two-hour monologue. This man absolutely shredded Martin Van Buren. The issue at hand was a request from Van Buren for $3,666 (~ $133,500 in 2023) for repairs, furniture, trees, and shrubs (the current ones looked like titties, remember) for the Presidential Residence. Charles talked about the “vile hypocrisy” in the Presidential Palace and pulled out the invoices for the silk tassels, cushioned footstools, and satin medallions that Van Buren had bought to indulge himself in “girlish finery”. He quoted prices, and please feel free to do his outraged voice in your head:
o $350 for silver and gold wallpaper in the East Room?!?
o $100 for artificial flowers at the dinner table?!?
o $22 for green finger cups to wash his dainty fingers after eating omelet soufflé?!?
Martin loved his French items as well. His lamps, plates, silver tea service, carpets, silks, bedspreads, and mantle timepieces were all imported, at taxpayer cost, from France. And the mirrors! So many mirrors for his vanity, the biggest of which was 9’ x 4.5’ so he could peacock himself in full splendor.
Charles Ogle did this for 2 hours and yes, if this was on YouTube I would pop popcorn and howl over every eloquent minute. BRING THE TRUTH CHARLIE!!!!!
Now, to be fair, (and I must be, for I personally appreciate and respect the truth) Martin Van Buren had spent less on the White House than any who had come before him, and even some members of the Whig party thought that this speech was slant. However, that did nothing to stop the Harrison campaign from taking it and publishing tens of thousands of pamphlets, in addition to printing it in every major newspaper they controlled.
Voter turnout for the 1840 election was 80.2%, compared to about 58% in 1836 election. George- I mean William- Harrison truly changed how United States election campaigns are run. No longer were they geared towards the elite and making handshake deals behind closed doors. They were now focused on winning over the hearts and minds of the people and the people were showing up for it. The old elitists hated it and each side warned that if the other side won it would be Armageddon, civil war, tyranny, etc. The same shit we hear every 4 years.
Harrison won a huge victory. Had he lived, his presidency would have most likely been chaos, as he had promised many jobs to more than one person in order to secure it. He may not have been so eager to start, and perhaps that is why to this day he still holds the record for the longest inauguration speech in US history. . But you know what they say: the longer the speech, the shorter the term (that’s a dick joke people).The speech was so long in fact, it was said to be the speech itself that killed him. I’m sure the audience felt like they were dying. American legend has it that William Henry Harrison refused to wear a hat, coat, or gloves on that cold, wet day, resulting in the pneumonia that killed him a month later.
While it is true that William refused to don the outerwear that might have made him less susceptible to illness, pneumonia itself is caused by an infection, and not cold weather. William didn’t even start feeling sick until the 26th of March; 22 days after his thrilling 2-hour monologue. The average incubation period of pneumococcal pneumonia is 1-3 days. His illness didn’t progress much like pneumonia either. There was, however, a stagnant marsh located 7 blocks N/NE from the White House that comprised of the city’s “night soil” (human waste), which was elevated 20 feet higher than, and flowed into, the freshwater spring where the White House got its water supply.
At 68 years old, President Harrison was the oldest US President to be elected to the office, a record that wouldn’t be broken until Regan in 1980. On the 26th of March, over 3 weeks after his inauguration, Harrison reported to his personal physician, Dr. Thomas Miller, that he was feeling tired and anxious. Harrison told his doctor that he had a history of neuralgia and indigestion, but he treated these conditions by eating “animal food”. Dr. Miller told him to go take a nap, which William did, and he reported that he felt better afterwards. The next afternoon Harrison said he had a severe chill, so Dr. Miller advised him to put mustard on his stomach, as one does. I can see why med school was so cheap at the time.
The president got a bad headache after midnight and a pain in his right side, assumed to be caused by the fact that he hadn’t pooped in a really long time. So, he was given laxatives, enemas, and of course more mustard. At about 10 am on the 28th of March he was pooping only “offensive” liquid and was in a great amount of pain. Tired of it all and smelling like a hot dog, at 11am he refused to be touched any more. At noon they given him a drug called laudanum; ye olde pain killer which at its base was opium dissolved in proof alcohol, but could contain whatever the doctor felt made it his own special name-brand formula; such as pearls, cayenne, hallucinogenic ergot, etc. It was the afternoon of the 28th at 2:30 pm that Dr. Miller was able to examine the president again and found him to have a fever and that “the lower lobe of the right lung was the seat of pneumonia”. This is when we first hear of pneumonia mentioned in the president’s medical records.
Harrison started having dark, liquid stools and his stomach was distended. Finally, on March 30th he had several “voluminous and debilitating” bowel movements. Dr. Miller ordered more opium. On the last day of March, President Harrison started coughing up blood, and the next morning his doctor stopped all medications and covered Harrison’s abdomen in Mars Hyrdrarg, which appears to be a form of mercury (now known to cause almost every side effect, including insanity and death). This assumption seems to be bolstered by the fact that the president spent the afternoon muttering incoherently and picking at his bedclothes.
April 2nd he began coughing up brown mucus with the blood, so the good doctor upped his game, giving Harrison mercury pills every 2 hours and enemas made of serpentaria, a plant that wild mammals refuse to eat and causes severe irritation to human skin. But Dr. Miller was putting it up the president’s butt to try to cure him. I guess you just run it up the flagpole and see who salutes at this point?
William slept for a while and when he woke up the doctor threw everything he could at the president. Stimulants, mustard, starch, laudanum and kino. Miller even gave him a turpentine sponge bath and a hot brandy toddy (mixed with camphor and ammonia) Despite the brilliant efforts of Dr. Thomas Miller, Harrison was sinking fast. His extremities turned blue and cold, and his pulse sank. The evening of April 3, 1841, he spoke the words:
“Sir, I wish you to understand the principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.”
which no one really understood, because a sitting president had never died before. Around 12:30 am on April 4, 1841, the man that was William Henry Harrison simply stopped breathing.
A different man named Fletcher Webster immediately set out on horseback to Williamsburg, PA to let Vice President John Tyler know what had transpired. Harrison was the first president to ever die in office, which caused a Constitutional crisis. John Tyler was the Vice President, but did that mean he now became President? Or just interim President? What does it all mean?!?
John Tyler was not going to sit at home and wait to find out. He travelled 230 miles in 53 hours to show up in Washington DC and take charge.
In the Constitution of The United States, the 12th Amendment, Article II, Section I, Clause 6 states:
“in the case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President”
Everyone was hung up on the words “the same”. Did “the same” mean the office of the President or just the duties of the President? They asked Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney what he thought, and he said:
“No, no no-no-no. Nope. Nope, not me. Not gonna touch that. No thank you.”
Okay, Chief Supreme Court Justice of The United States of America. It’s not like it’s your job to decide things or anything. Not that it mattered anyway. Tyler came in and started swinging his dick around so hard that it knocked down anyone or anything that tried to get in his way. He moved right into the White House and let “his” cabinet know that when he needed it, he would be “pleased to avail myself of your counsel and advice (sic).” He took the oath of office and claimed the president’s salary, so that was that, really. His opponents called him “His Ascendency” but he did not give a flying fuck. My kind of man.
About 50 years later, William Henry Harrison’s grandson Benjamin Harrison became president # 23. He looked like Santa’s little brother and was a bit of a nerd.
References
Collins, G. (2012). William Henry Harrison. New York, NY: Times Books.
Ellis, R. J. (2020). “The presidential contest absorbs everything else.” In Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation (pp. 212–236). University Press of Kansas. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17kw9bf.13
McHugh, J., & Mackowiak, P. A. (2014). Death in the White House: President William Henry Harrison’s Atypical Pneumonia. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 59(7), 990–995. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24032403
Shogan, C. (2021). “The Vice-Presidency: evolution of home and office.” Retrieved from https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-vice-presidency
Shribman, D. M. (2016). William Henry Harrison. In K. Gormley (Ed.), The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History (pp. 126–135). NYU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1803zfw.12
Weinstein, A. (2017). William Henry Harrison. In Presidents: Every question answered, everything you could possibly want to know about the nation’s chief executives. essay, Thunder Bay Press.