Inaugural Addresses: William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison has the dubious distinction of being the president who gave the longest inaugural address and who served the shortest time as president. At a whopping 8,460 words, his speech was over 3000 words longer than the next most wordy President (William Howard Taft) and twelve times as long as Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural.
The inauguration was held on March 4, 1841, on the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.. The presidential oath of office was administered to Harrison by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Harrison was the first president-elect to arrive in Washington, D.C. by train, and his was the first time that an official inaugural committee of citizens had formed to plan the day's parade and Inaugural ball. At 68 years, 23 days of age time of his inauguration, he was the oldest President-elect to take office until Ronald Reagan in 1981. (Donald Trump will break this record). Harrison's wife, Anna Harrison, was too ill to travel when her husband left Ohio for his inauguration, and she decided not to accompany him to Washington. Harrison asked his daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison, widow of his namesake son, to accompany him and act as hostess until Anna's proposed arrival in two months time.
The day of the inauguration was overcast with cold wind and a noon temperature estimated to be 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Harrison chose to not wear an overcoat, hat, or gloves for the ceremony. He delivered wordy address, a speech he wrote himself. It was edited by soon-to-be Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. Webster later famously said that in the process of editing the text, he had "killed seventeen Roman proconsuls."
Harrison began his lengthy address by reminding his audience that he had been "called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life" . He the quoted his first Roman consul about the contrast between "the conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made in the former." In his next reference to ancient Rome, Harrison said:
"The boasted privilege of a Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power of our sovereignty. It can interfere with no one's faith, prescribe forms of worship for no one's observance, inflict no punishment but after well-ascertained guilt, the result of investigation under rules prescribed by the Constitution itself. These precious privileges, and those scarcely less important of giving expression to his thoughts and opinions, either by writing or speaking, unrestrained but by the liability for injury to others, and that of a full participation in all the advantages which flow from the Government, the acknowledged property of all, the American citizen derives from no charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them because he is himself a man, fashioned by the same Almighty hand as the rest of his species and entitled to a full share of the blessings with which He has endowed them."
The text of the address is really quite wordy, even though Harrison promised to "proceed to state in as summary a manner as I can my opinion of the sources of the evils which have been so extensively complained of and the correctives which may be applied." He said that some of the country's problems arose due to "the defects of the Constitution", others came from "a misconstruction of some of its provisions." He viewed it as a mistake for a person to be able to serve a second term as president, noting that "The sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early saw and lamented this error, and attempts have been made, hitherto without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction." He added
"[R]epublics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust. Nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot. When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim."
Harrison repeated his pledge "that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term." Little did he know that this was something he wouldn't have to worry about.
Harrison next commented on the President's veto power. After expounding on the different abilities of the president and of the courts to strike down legislation he said, "To assist or control Congress, then, in its ordinary legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for conferring the veto power on the President." He said, "I consider it the right and privilege of the people to decide disputed points of the Constitution arising from the general grant of power to Congress to carry into effect the powers expressly given".
After noting that the nation had endured for over half a century, he said "To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring." But he recognized the potential for problems in future, stating "there is still an undercurrent at work by which, if not seasonably checked, the worst apprehensions of our antifederal patriots will be realized, and not only will the State authorities be overshadowed by the great increase of power in the executive department of the General Government, but the character of that Government, if not its designation, be essentially and radically changed." He said that "By making the President the sole distributer of all the patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a formidable instrument to control the free operations of the State governments." He added that "it is not by the extent of its patronage alone that the executive department has become dangerous, but by the use which it appears may be made of the appointing power to bring under its control the whole revenues of the country. The Constitution has declared it to be the duty of the President to see that the laws are executed, and it makes him the Commander in Chief of the Armies and Navy of the United States." He then once again returned to ancient Rome:
"The first Roman Emperor, in his attempt to seize the sacred treasure, silenced the opposition of the officer to whose charge it had been committed by a significant allusion to his sword. By a selection of political instruments for the care of the public money a reference to their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument as that of Caesar to the Roman knight."
Harrison called it "a great error in the framers of the Constitution not to have made the officer at the head of the Treasury Department entirely independent of the Executive. He should at least have been removable only upon the demand of the popular branch of the Legislature. I have determined never to remove a Secretary of the Treasury without communicating all the circumstances attending such removal to both Houses of Congress." He later added, "Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will."
Harrison made some interesting observations about the press. He said:
"There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged."
Harrison next discussed what he called "the impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of Congress." He interpreted the Constitution as making it the duty of the President to communicate information and authorizing him to recommend measures" and said that this "was not intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in particular, that he should never be looked to for schemes of finance." He added that "the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the control of the Executive the more wholesome the arrangement and the more in accordance with republican principle."
The next subject on his list was "the character of the currency." He said that "the idea of making it exclusively metallic, however well intended, appears to me to be fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme having no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised." He saw this as calculated "to produce that state of things so much deprecated by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury."
Harrison had once been Governor of the Northwest Territory, and he discussed the President's duty to supervise "the government of the Territories of the United States." He lamented how American citizens in these territories were "deprived of many important political privileges without any inspiring hope as to the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of such deprivation is that of the devoted exterior guards of a camp—that their sufferings secure tranquillity and safety within." He asked, "Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles upon which all our constitutions are founded?"
Harrison was alive to the looming dangers posed by slavery. He cautioned, "Our citizens must be content with the exercise of the powers with which the Constitution clothes them. The attempt of those of one State to control the domestic institutions of another can only result in feelings of distrust and jealousy, the certain harbingers of disunion, violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction of our free institutions"
Harrison alluded to ancient Rome yet again. He said:
"Caesar became the master of the Roman people and the senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims of the former against the aristocracy of the latter; Cromwell, in the character of protector of the liberties of the people, became the dictator of England, and Bolivar possessed himself of unlimited power with the title of his country's liberator. There is, on the contrary, no instance on record of an extensive and well-established republic being changed into an aristocracy. The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty there is the spirit of faction—a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have entrusted power."
Harrison had already spoken for a long time before deciding that it was time for him to "give some indications to my fellow-citizens of my proposed course of conduct in the management of our foreign relations." He said that he planned to "use every means in my power to preserve the friendly intercourse which now so happily subsists with every foreign nation". He also pledged that "In our intercourse with our aboriginal neighbors the same liberality and justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed."
He next discussed the presence of political parties, which he said were "in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty". But he cautioned that "Beyond that they become destructive of public virtue, the parent of a spirit antagonist to that of liberty, and eventually its inevitable conqueror." He returned to ancient Rome yet again, stating that "in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had none. Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and our forums."
Harrison finally concluded, probably to the relief of his audience, with these words:
"I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in all future time. Fellow-citizens, being fully invested with that high office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate leave of you. You will bear with you to your homes the remembrance of the pledge I have this day given to discharge all the high duties of my exalted station according to the best of my ability, and I shall enter upon their performance with entire confidence in the support of a just and generous people."
That evening Harrison attended three inaugural balls, including one at Carusi's Saloon entitled the "Tippecanoe" ball, which at a price of US$10 per person attracted 1000 guests.
On March 26, Harrison developed a cold. According to popular misconception, it was believed that his illness was directly caused by the bad weather at his inauguration. Harrison's illness did not arise until more than three weeks after the inauguration. Despite doctors' attempts at treating him, Harrison died on April 4, making him the first president to die in office. His 31 day presidency was, and remains the shortest in American history.
The inauguration was held on March 4, 1841, on the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.. The presidential oath of office was administered to Harrison by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Harrison was the first president-elect to arrive in Washington, D.C. by train, and his was the first time that an official inaugural committee of citizens had formed to plan the day's parade and Inaugural ball. At 68 years, 23 days of age time of his inauguration, he was the oldest President-elect to take office until Ronald Reagan in 1981. (Donald Trump will break this record). Harrison's wife, Anna Harrison, was too ill to travel when her husband left Ohio for his inauguration, and she decided not to accompany him to Washington. Harrison asked his daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison, widow of his namesake son, to accompany him and act as hostess until Anna's proposed arrival in two months time.
The day of the inauguration was overcast with cold wind and a noon temperature estimated to be 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Harrison chose to not wear an overcoat, hat, or gloves for the ceremony. He delivered wordy address, a speech he wrote himself. It was edited by soon-to-be Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. Webster later famously said that in the process of editing the text, he had "killed seventeen Roman proconsuls."
Harrison began his lengthy address by reminding his audience that he had been "called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life" . He the quoted his first Roman consul about the contrast between "the conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges and promises made in the former." In his next reference to ancient Rome, Harrison said:
"The boasted privilege of a Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power of our sovereignty. It can interfere with no one's faith, prescribe forms of worship for no one's observance, inflict no punishment but after well-ascertained guilt, the result of investigation under rules prescribed by the Constitution itself. These precious privileges, and those scarcely less important of giving expression to his thoughts and opinions, either by writing or speaking, unrestrained but by the liability for injury to others, and that of a full participation in all the advantages which flow from the Government, the acknowledged property of all, the American citizen derives from no charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them because he is himself a man, fashioned by the same Almighty hand as the rest of his species and entitled to a full share of the blessings with which He has endowed them."
The text of the address is really quite wordy, even though Harrison promised to "proceed to state in as summary a manner as I can my opinion of the sources of the evils which have been so extensively complained of and the correctives which may be applied." He said that some of the country's problems arose due to "the defects of the Constitution", others came from "a misconstruction of some of its provisions." He viewed it as a mistake for a person to be able to serve a second term as president, noting that "The sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early saw and lamented this error, and attempts have been made, hitherto without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction." He added
"[R]epublics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust. Nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot. When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim."
Harrison repeated his pledge "that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term." Little did he know that this was something he wouldn't have to worry about.
Harrison next commented on the President's veto power. After expounding on the different abilities of the president and of the courts to strike down legislation he said, "To assist or control Congress, then, in its ordinary legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for conferring the veto power on the President." He said, "I consider it the right and privilege of the people to decide disputed points of the Constitution arising from the general grant of power to Congress to carry into effect the powers expressly given".
After noting that the nation had endured for over half a century, he said "To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring." But he recognized the potential for problems in future, stating "there is still an undercurrent at work by which, if not seasonably checked, the worst apprehensions of our antifederal patriots will be realized, and not only will the State authorities be overshadowed by the great increase of power in the executive department of the General Government, but the character of that Government, if not its designation, be essentially and radically changed." He said that "By making the President the sole distributer of all the patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a formidable instrument to control the free operations of the State governments." He added that "it is not by the extent of its patronage alone that the executive department has become dangerous, but by the use which it appears may be made of the appointing power to bring under its control the whole revenues of the country. The Constitution has declared it to be the duty of the President to see that the laws are executed, and it makes him the Commander in Chief of the Armies and Navy of the United States." He then once again returned to ancient Rome:
"The first Roman Emperor, in his attempt to seize the sacred treasure, silenced the opposition of the officer to whose charge it had been committed by a significant allusion to his sword. By a selection of political instruments for the care of the public money a reference to their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument as that of Caesar to the Roman knight."
Harrison called it "a great error in the framers of the Constitution not to have made the officer at the head of the Treasury Department entirely independent of the Executive. He should at least have been removable only upon the demand of the popular branch of the Legislature. I have determined never to remove a Secretary of the Treasury without communicating all the circumstances attending such removal to both Houses of Congress." He later added, "Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will."
Harrison made some interesting observations about the press. He said:
"There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged."
Harrison next discussed what he called "the impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of Congress." He interpreted the Constitution as making it the duty of the President to communicate information and authorizing him to recommend measures" and said that this "was not intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in particular, that he should never be looked to for schemes of finance." He added that "the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the control of the Executive the more wholesome the arrangement and the more in accordance with republican principle."
The next subject on his list was "the character of the currency." He said that "the idea of making it exclusively metallic, however well intended, appears to me to be fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme having no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised." He saw this as calculated "to produce that state of things so much deprecated by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury."
Harrison had once been Governor of the Northwest Territory, and he discussed the President's duty to supervise "the government of the Territories of the United States." He lamented how American citizens in these territories were "deprived of many important political privileges without any inspiring hope as to the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of such deprivation is that of the devoted exterior guards of a camp—that their sufferings secure tranquillity and safety within." He asked, "Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles upon which all our constitutions are founded?"
Harrison was alive to the looming dangers posed by slavery. He cautioned, "Our citizens must be content with the exercise of the powers with which the Constitution clothes them. The attempt of those of one State to control the domestic institutions of another can only result in feelings of distrust and jealousy, the certain harbingers of disunion, violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction of our free institutions"
Harrison alluded to ancient Rome yet again. He said:
"Caesar became the master of the Roman people and the senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims of the former against the aristocracy of the latter; Cromwell, in the character of protector of the liberties of the people, became the dictator of England, and Bolivar possessed himself of unlimited power with the title of his country's liberator. There is, on the contrary, no instance on record of an extensive and well-established republic being changed into an aristocracy. The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty there is the spirit of faction—a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have entrusted power."
Harrison had already spoken for a long time before deciding that it was time for him to "give some indications to my fellow-citizens of my proposed course of conduct in the management of our foreign relations." He said that he planned to "use every means in my power to preserve the friendly intercourse which now so happily subsists with every foreign nation". He also pledged that "In our intercourse with our aboriginal neighbors the same liberality and justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed."
He next discussed the presence of political parties, which he said were "in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty". But he cautioned that "Beyond that they become destructive of public virtue, the parent of a spirit antagonist to that of liberty, and eventually its inevitable conqueror." He returned to ancient Rome yet again, stating that "in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had none. Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils and to shout for one or the other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the lesser Asia would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and our forums."
Harrison finally concluded, probably to the relief of his audience, with these words:
"I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in all future time. Fellow-citizens, being fully invested with that high office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an affectionate leave of you. You will bear with you to your homes the remembrance of the pledge I have this day given to discharge all the high duties of my exalted station according to the best of my ability, and I shall enter upon their performance with entire confidence in the support of a just and generous people."
That evening Harrison attended three inaugural balls, including one at Carusi's Saloon entitled the "Tippecanoe" ball, which at a price of US$10 per person attracted 1000 guests.
On March 26, Harrison developed a cold. According to popular misconception, it was believed that his illness was directly caused by the bad weather at his inauguration. Harrison's illness did not arise until more than three weeks after the inauguration. Despite doctors' attempts at treating him, Harrison died on April 4, making him the first president to die in office. His 31 day presidency was, and remains the shortest in American history.