America at 250 Series
William Henry Harrison was born in 1773 on a Virginia plantation, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He studied medicine briefly, then traded the lecture hall for a soldier’s coat and went west.
On the banks of the Tippecanoe in 1811, he broke a Shawnee confederacy led by Tecumseh, and the country gave him a nickname he would ride for the rest of his life. He served as a territorial governor, a congressman, and a senator, and then, almost forgotten, he was pulled out of retirement to run for president.
The campaign of 1840 was the loudest the country had ever seen — log cabins, hard cider, and the slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. He won in a landslide.
He gave the longest inaugural address in history, in the cold, without a coat. He was dead in thirty-one days.
