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President William Henry Harrison
b.9 Feb 1773 Charles City, Virginia, United States
d.4 Apr 1841 Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. abt. 1748
(edit)
m. 22 Nov 1795
Facts and Events
William Henry Harrison Sr. (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was a United States military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States in 1841. He died of typhoid fever 31 days into his term (the shortest tenure to date), becoming the first U.S. president to die in office. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis regarding succession to the presidency, as the U.S. Constitution was unclear as to whether Vice President John Tyler should assume the office of President or merely execute the duties of the vacant office. Tyler claimed a constitutional mandate to carry out the full powers and duties of the presidency and took the presidential oath of office, setting an important precedent for an orderly transfer of presidential power when a president leaves office intra-term. Harrison was a son of Founding Father Benjamin Harrison V and the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States. He was the last president born as a British royal subject in the Thirteen Colonies before the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775. During his early military career, Harrison participated in the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, an American military victory that effectivelly ended the Northwest Indian War. Later, he led a military force against Tecumseh's Confederacy at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". He was promoted to major general in the regular United States Army in the subsequent War of 1812, and in 1813 led American infantry and cavalry at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada. Harrison's sojourn into national politics began in 1799, when he was elected delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Northwest Territory. Two years later, President John Adams named him governor of the newly established Indiana Territory (a post he held until 1812). After the War of 1812, Harrison moved to Ohio where he was elected in 1816 to represent the state's in the House. In 1824, the state legislature elected him to the United States Senate; his term was truncated by his appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia in May 1828. Afterward, Harrison returned to private life in Ohio until he was nominated as the Whig Party candidate for president in the 1836 election; he was defeated by Democratic vice president Martin Van Buren. Four years later the party nominated him again, with John Tyler as his running mate. Harrison and Tyler, known famously as "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", defeated Van Buren in the 1840 election, becoming the first Whig to win the presidency. At of age at the time of his inauguration, Harrison was the oldest person to have assumed office until Ronald Reagan (aged ) in 1981. Due to his brief tenure, scholars and historians often forgo listing him in historical presidential rankings. However, while Harrison's significance in American presidential history is miniscule, he was, according to historian William W. Freehling, "the most dominant figure in the evolution of the Northwest territories into the Upper Midwest today".
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