The American Presidents Series Releases A New Bio
Earlier this week another new book in the American Presidents Series was released. It's a biography of the president who served the shortest term in office, just a single month. But as the author states, his "victorious election campaign rewrote the rules for candidates seeking America's highest office."
Author Gail Collins has written this new biography of William Henry Harrison, the 9th President of the United States. The book was released this past Tuesday (January 17th). The publishers summarize it as follows:
"William Henry Harrison died just thirty-one days after taking the oath of office in 1841. Today he is a curiosity in American history, but as Gail Collins shows in this entertaining and revelatory biography, he and his career are worth a closer look. The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Harrison was a celebrated general whose exploits at the Battle of Tippecanoe and in the War of 1812 propelled him into politics, and in time he became a leader of the new Whig Party, alongside Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. But it was his presidential campaign of 1840 that made an indelible mark on American political history.
"Collins takes us back to that pivotal year, when Harrison's "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign transformed the way candidates pursued the presidency. It was the first campaign that featured mass rallies, personal appearances by the candidate, and catchy campaign slogans like "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too." Harrison's victory marked the coming-of-age of a new political system, and its impact is still felt in American politics today. It may have been only a one-month administration, but we're still feeling the effects."
Here's an excerpt from the book:
"Besides catching pneumonia during his inauguration, Harrison is famous for things he didn't actually do. He didn't win a big military victory at Tippecanoe—it was a minor fight against an outnumbered village of Indians, and because Harrison screwed up the defense of his camp the white Americans suffered most of the casualties. He did better during the War of 1812. But his real impact on history arguably came from the work he did in the Grouseland years—acquiring several states' worth of territory from the Indians in deals that cost the federal government only pennies per acre. This is not a part of our history that we celebrate, and even back in 1840 the voters preferred the stories of battlefield heroics.
"Politically, Harrison's greatest achievement was to star in what is still celebrated as one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns in history. But even then, other men came up with the story line about Harrison the humble soldier and pushed it into the national memory forever with months of singing from The Log Cabin Songbook and dancing 'The Log Cabin Two-Step.'
"William Henry's own contribution was to become the first presidential candidate to personally campaign for the job, and he willingly plowed into crowds to shake endless hands and at least pretend to remember all the veterans who wanted to reminisce about serving under him.
"Then he won and then he died. I am going to take a big historic leap and guess that if he had lived—if Anna Harrison had accompanied her husband to Washington and demanded that he carry an umbrella at all times—William Henry would still not have been the sort of chief executive who gets his head carved on the side of a mountain. He was living in a bad time for presidents, that long gray period between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln when the great cloud of slavery and approaching civil war would make everybody—even an effective president like James Polk—seem like a historic asterisk.
"There was nothing in Harrison's history that suggests transformational leader. If he had lived, the country would still have made its long march toward the Civil War. Perhaps the Whig Party would have made a bigger, longer impact if he had spent four years in the White House instead of John Tyler. But it is my experience that there are not many Americans, or even many American historians, who are particularly interested in speculating on what it would have meant if things had worked out better for the Whigs."
I've ordered this book from Amazon and I plan to read it and review it after I finish reading another book I'm currently reading about the election of 1812. If you're interested in ordering the book, here is a link to it on Amazon.
Author Gail Collins has written this new biography of William Henry Harrison, the 9th President of the United States. The book was released this past Tuesday (January 17th). The publishers summarize it as follows:
"William Henry Harrison died just thirty-one days after taking the oath of office in 1841. Today he is a curiosity in American history, but as Gail Collins shows in this entertaining and revelatory biography, he and his career are worth a closer look. The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Harrison was a celebrated general whose exploits at the Battle of Tippecanoe and in the War of 1812 propelled him into politics, and in time he became a leader of the new Whig Party, alongside Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. But it was his presidential campaign of 1840 that made an indelible mark on American political history.
"Collins takes us back to that pivotal year, when Harrison's "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign transformed the way candidates pursued the presidency. It was the first campaign that featured mass rallies, personal appearances by the candidate, and catchy campaign slogans like "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too." Harrison's victory marked the coming-of-age of a new political system, and its impact is still felt in American politics today. It may have been only a one-month administration, but we're still feeling the effects."
Here's an excerpt from the book:
"Besides catching pneumonia during his inauguration, Harrison is famous for things he didn't actually do. He didn't win a big military victory at Tippecanoe—it was a minor fight against an outnumbered village of Indians, and because Harrison screwed up the defense of his camp the white Americans suffered most of the casualties. He did better during the War of 1812. But his real impact on history arguably came from the work he did in the Grouseland years—acquiring several states' worth of territory from the Indians in deals that cost the federal government only pennies per acre. This is not a part of our history that we celebrate, and even back in 1840 the voters preferred the stories of battlefield heroics.
"Politically, Harrison's greatest achievement was to star in what is still celebrated as one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns in history. But even then, other men came up with the story line about Harrison the humble soldier and pushed it into the national memory forever with months of singing from The Log Cabin Songbook and dancing 'The Log Cabin Two-Step.'
"William Henry's own contribution was to become the first presidential candidate to personally campaign for the job, and he willingly plowed into crowds to shake endless hands and at least pretend to remember all the veterans who wanted to reminisce about serving under him.
"Then he won and then he died. I am going to take a big historic leap and guess that if he had lived—if Anna Harrison had accompanied her husband to Washington and demanded that he carry an umbrella at all times—William Henry would still not have been the sort of chief executive who gets his head carved on the side of a mountain. He was living in a bad time for presidents, that long gray period between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln when the great cloud of slavery and approaching civil war would make everybody—even an effective president like James Polk—seem like a historic asterisk.
"There was nothing in Harrison's history that suggests transformational leader. If he had lived, the country would still have made its long march toward the Civil War. Perhaps the Whig Party would have made a bigger, longer impact if he had spent four years in the White House instead of John Tyler. But it is my experience that there are not many Americans, or even many American historians, who are particularly interested in speculating on what it would have meant if things had worked out better for the Whigs."
I've ordered this book from Amazon and I plan to read it and review it after I finish reading another book I'm currently reading about the election of 1812. If you're interested in ordering the book, here is a link to it on Amazon.