HARRISON, WILLIAM HENRY (1773-1841), ninth president of the United States, was born at Berkeley, Charles City county, Va., on Feb. 9, 1773, the third son of Benjamin Har rison (c. 1740-1791). His father was long prominent in Virginia politics and became a member of the Virginia house of burgesses in 1764; he was a member of the Continental Congress in 1774– 77, signing the Declaration of Independence and serving for a time as president of the board of war; speaker of the Virginia house of delegates in 1777-82; and governor of Virginia in 1781 84. William Henry Harrison received a classical education at Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, where he was a student from 1787 to 179o, and began a medical course in Philadelphia at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and in August of 1791, he entered the army as ensign in the 1st Regiment at Fort Washing ton, Cincinnati. In the following year he became a lieutenant, and subsequently acted as aide-de-camp to Gen. Anthony Wayne in the campaign which ended in the battle of Fallen Timbers of Aug. 1o, 1794. He was promoted to a captaincy in 1797 and for a brief period served as commander of Fort Washington, but re signed from the army in June 1798. Soon afterwards he was made secretary of the North-west Territory. In 1799 he was chosen by the Jeffersonian party of this territory as the delegate of the territory in Congress. While serving in this capacity he de vised a plan for disposing of the public lands upon favourable terms to actual settlers, and also assisted in the division of the North-west Territory.
In May 1800, President John Adams appointed him governor of the newly created Indiana Territory, which comprised until 1809 a much larger area than the present State of the same name. He was sworn into office on Jan. Io, 18o1, and was governor until Sept. 1812. Among the legislative measures of his administration may be mentioned the attempted modification of the slavery clause of the ordinance of 1787 by means of an indenture law; more ef fective land laws ; and legislation for the more equitable treatment of the Indians and for preventing the sale of liquor to them. In 1803 Harrison also became a special commissioner to treat with the Indians "on the subject of boundary or lands," and as such negotiated various treaties—at Fort Wayne (1803 and 1809), Vincennes (1804 and 1809) and Grouseland (1805 )—by which the southern part of the present State of Indiana and portions of the present States of Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri were opened to settlement. For a few months after the division in 1804 of the Louisiana Purchase into the Orleans Territory and the Louisiana Territory he also acted as governor of the Louisiana Territory.
The Indian cessions of 1809, along the Wabash river, aroused the hostility of Tecumseh (q.v.) and his brother, familiarly known as "The Prophet," who were attempting to combine the tribes be tween the Ohio and the Great Lakes in opposition to the encroach ment of the whites. Several fruitless conferences between the governor and the Indian chiefs, who were believed to be encour aged by the British, resulted in Harrison's advance with a force of militia and regulars to the Tippecanoe river, where (near the present Lafayette, Ind.) on Nov. 7, 181I, he won over the Indians, a victory which established his military reputation and was largely responsible for his subsequent election to the presidency of the United States. From one point of view the battle of Tippecanoe may be regarded as the opening skirmish of the war of 1812. When in the summer of 1812 open hostilities with Great Britain began, Harrison was appointed major-general in the Kentucky militia. A few weeks later (Aug. 22, 1812) he was made brigadier general in the regular U.S. army, and soon afterwards was put in command of all the troops in the north-west, and on March 2, 1813 he was promoted to the rank of major-general. General James Winchester, whom Harrison had ordered to prepare to cross Lake Erie on the ice and surprise Fort Malden, turned back to rescue the threatened American settlement at Frenchtown (now Monroe), on the Raisin river, and there on Jan. 22, 1813 was forced to surrender to Col. Henry A. Proctor. Harrison accom plished nothing that summer except to hold in check Proctor, who (May 1-5) besieged him at Fort Meigs, the American advanced post after the disaster of the river Raisin. After Lieut. O. H. Perry's naval victory, Sept. to, 1813, Harrison no longer had to remain on the defensive ; he advanced to Detroit, re-occupied the territory surrendered by Gen. William Hull, and on Oct. 5 ad ministered a crushing defeat to. Proctor at the battle of the Thames.
In 1814 Harrison resigned his commission. President Madison then utilized Harrison in negotiating with the north-western Indians a second treaty of Greenville (July 22, 1814), by which they were to become active allies of the United States, should hos tilities with Great Britain continue. This treaty publicly marked an American policy of alliance with these Indians. From 1816 to 1819 Harrison was a representative in Congress, and as such worked in behalf of more liberal pension laws and a better militia organization, including a system of general military education, of improvements in the navigation of the Ohio, and of relief for pur chasers of public lands, and for the strict construction of the power of Congress over the Territories, particularly in regard to slavery. Harrison was a member of the Ohio senate in 1819-21, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the national House of Representa tives in 1822, when his Missouri vote helped to cause his defeat, he was a presidential elector in 1824, supporting Henry Clay, and from 1825 to 1828 was a member of the U.S. Senate. In 1828 Har rison was appointed as the first minister of the United States to Colombia. He became, however, an early sacrifice to Jackson's spoils system, being recalled within less than a year. For some years after his return from Colombia he lived in retirement at North Bend, Ohio.
Early in 1835 Harrison began to be mentioned as a suitable presidential candidate, and later in the year he was nominated for the presidency at large public meetings in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. In the election of the following year he at tracted a large part of the Whig and anti-Masonic vote of the mid dle and western states and led among the candidates opposing Van Buren, but received only 73 electoral votes while Van Buren re ceived 170. His unexpected strength, due largely to his clear, if non-committal, political record, rendered him the most "available" candidate for the Whig party for the campaign of 1840, and he was nominated by the Whig convention at Harrisburg, Pa., in Dec., 1839, his most formidable opponent being Henry Clay. The convention adjourned without adopting any "platform" of prin ciples, the party shrewdly deciding to make its campaign merely on the issue of whether the Van Buren administration should be continued in power and thus to take full advantage of the popu lar discontent with the administration, to which was attributed the responsibility for the panic of 1837 and the subsequent business depression. Largely to attract the votes of democratic malcontents the Whig convention nominated for the vice-presidency John Tyler, who had previously been identified with the Democratic party. The campaign was marked by the extraordinary enthusi asm exhibited by the Whigs. Because of his fame as a frontier hero, of the circumstance that a part of his home at North Bend, Ohio, had formerly been a log cabin and of the story that cider, not wine, was served on his table, Harrison was derisively called by his opponents the "log cabin and hard cider" candidate ; the term was eagerly accepted by the Whigs in whose processions miniature log cabins were carried and at whose meetings hard cider was served, and the campaign itself has become known in history as the "log cabin and hard cider campaign." Harrison's canvass was conspicuous for the immense Whig processions and mass meetings, the numerous "stump" speeches (Harrison himself addressing many meetings), and the use of campaign songs of party insignia, and of campaign cries (such as "Tippecanoe and Tyler too") ; and in the election he won by an overwhelming majority of 234 electoral votes to 6o cast for Van Buren.
President Harrison was inaugurated on March 4, 1841. He chose for his cabinet Daniel Webster as secretary of state, Thomas Ewing as secretary of the treasury, John Bell as secretary of war, George E. Badger as secretary of the navy, Francis Granger as postmaster-general, and John J. Crittenden as attorney-general. He survived his inauguration only one month, dying on April 4, 1841, and being succeeded by the vice-president, John Tyler. The immediate cause of his death was an attack of pneumonia, but the malady was aggravated by the excitement attending his sudden change in circumstances and the incessant demands of office seek ers. After temporary interment at Washington, his body was re moved to the tomb at North Bend, Ohio, where it now lies. A few of Harrison's public addresses survive, the most notable being A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio. It has been said of him : "He was not a great man, but he had lived in a great time, and he had been a leader in great things." He was the first terri torial delegate in the Congress of the United States and was the author of the first step in the development of the country's later homestead policy; the first presidential candidate to be selected upon the ground of "expediency" alone ; and the first president to die in office. In 1795 he married Anna Symmes (1775-1864), daughter of John Cleves Symmes. Their grandson, Benjamin Harrison, was the 23rd president of the United States.