William Henry Harrison

William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth President of the United States, an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. The oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born prior to the United States Declaration of Independence, Harrison died on his 32nd day in office —the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment.

Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought an end to hostilities in his region.

After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to the United States Congress, and in 1824 he became a member of the Senate. There he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia, he lectured Simon Bolívar on the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio, where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before being elected president in 1840.

Family background and childhood
Harrison was born into the prominent Harrison political family on the Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, on February 9, 1773; the youngest of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth Bassett's seven children. He was the last president to be born a British subject prior to American Independence. His father was a Virginia planter and a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) who signed the Declaration of Independence and was governor of Virginia between 1781 and 1784. Harrison's brother, Carter Bassett Harrison, became a representative of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, and Harrison's father-in-law was Congressman John Cleves Symmes. Harrison's stepmother-in-law was the daughter of New Jersey Governor William Livingston.

In 1787, at the age of 14, Harrison entered the Presbyterian Hampden-Sydney College. He attended the school until 1790, becoming well-versed in Latin and basic French. He was removed by his Episcopalian father, possibly because of a religious revival occurring at the school. He then briefly attended an academy in Southampton County before being again moved to Richmond where he began the study of medicine. He allegedly became involved with the anti-slavery Quakers and Methodists at the school, angering his pro-slavery father who again moved him to Philadelphia to board with Robert Morris, probably because of medical training available there. He entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1790 and there he continued to study medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush. As Harrison explained to his biographer, he did not enjoy the subject. Shortly after he had arrived in Philadelphia in 1791, his father died, leaving him without funds for further schooling. He was 18 when his father died, and was left in the guardianship of Morris.

Early military career
Governor Henry Lee of Virginia, a friend of Harrison's father, learned of Harrison's impoverished situation after his father's death and persuaded him to join the army. Within 24 hours of meeting and discussing his future with Lee, Harrison was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Army, 11th U.S. Regt. of Infantry at the age of 18. He was first sent to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory where the army was engaged in the ongoing Northwest Indian War.

General "Mad Anthony" Wayne took command of the western army in 1792 following a disastrous defeat by its previous commander. Harrison was promoted to lieutenant that summer because of his strict attention to discipline, and the following year he was promoted to serve as aide-de-camp. It was from Wayne that Harrison learned how to successfully command an army on the American frontier. Harrison participated in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which brought the Northwest Indian War to a successful close. After the war, Lieutenant Harrison was one of the signatories of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which opened much of present-day Ohio to settlement by Americans.

Harrison's mother died in 1793 and he inherited a portion of the family's estate, including about 3000 acre of land and several slaves. Harrison, who was still in the army at the time, sold his land to his brother. In 1795 Harrison met Anna Symmes, of North Bend, Ohio. She was the daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, a prominent figure in Ohio. When Harrison approached the Judge asking permission to marry Anna, he was refused. Harrison waited until the Judge left on business; he and Anna eloped and were married on November 25, 1795. After the marriage, the Judge was concerned about Harrison's ability to provide for Anna, and sold to the young couple 160 acre of land in North Bend. Together they had 10 children: six sons and four daughters. Nine lived into adulthood and one died in infancy. Although Anna was frequently in poor health during the marriage primarily due to her pregnancies, she outlived William by 23 years, dying at age 88 on February 25, 1864.

Harrison resigned from the army in 1797 and began campaigning among his friends and family for a post in the Northwest Territorial government. With the aid of his close friend, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, he was recommended to replace the outgoing Secretary of the Northwest Territory. He was appointed to the position, during which time he acted as governor during the frequent absences of Governor Arthur St. Clair.

Congressman
Harrison had many friends in the elite eastern social circles, and quickly gained a reputation among them as a frontier leader. Harrison ran a successful horse breeding enterprise that won him acclaim throughout the Northwest Territory. He championed the northwesterners' primary concern at the time: land prices, increasing his popularity. The United States Congress had put in place a land policy in the territory that led to high land costs that was disliked by many of the territory's citizens. When Harrison ran for Congress, he campaigned largely on working to alter the situation to help encourage immigrthe territory. In 1799, at age 26, Harrison defeated the son of Arthur St. Clair and was elected as the first delegate representing the Northwest Territory in the Sixth United States Congress, serving from March 4, 1799, to May 14, 1800. As a delegate from a territory, not a state, he had no authority to vote on bills but was permitted to serve on a committee, submit legislation, and debate.

As delegate, Harrison successfully promoted the passage of the Harrison Land Act, which made it easier for the average settler to purchase land in the Northwest Territory by allowing land to be sold in small tracts. This sudden availability of inexpensive land was an important factor in the rapid population growth of the Northwest Territory. Harrison also served on the committee that decided how to divide the Northwest Territory. The committee recommended splitting the territory into two segments, creating the Ohio Territory and the Indiana Territory. The bill passed and the two new territories were established in 1800.

Without informing Harrison, President John Adams nominated him to become governor of the new territory due to ties to the west and his seemingly neutral political stances. He was confirmed by the Senate the following day. Harrison was caught unaware and accepted the position only after receiving assurances from the Jeffersonians that he would not be removed from office after they gained power in the upcoming elections. He then resigned from Congress. The Indiana Territory consisted of the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and the eastern portion of Minnesota.

Governor
Harrison moved to Vincennes, the capital of the new territory, on January 10, 1801. While in Vincennes, Harrison built a plantation style home he named Grouseland for its many birds. It was one of the first brick structures in the territory. The home, which has been restored and has become a popular modern tourist attraction, served as the center of social and political life in the territory. He also built a second home near Corydon, the second capital, at Harrison Valley.

As governor, Harrison had wide ranging powers in the new territory, including the authority to appoint all territory officials and the territorial legislature and control over the division of the territory into districts. A primary responsibility was to obtain title to Native American lands to allow for white settlement to expand in the area, which enabled the region to eventually gain statehood. Harrison was also eager to expand the territory for personal reasons, as his own political fortunes were tied to Indiana's rise to statehood. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson granted Harrison authority to negotiate and conclude treaties with the Indians. Harrison oversaw the creation of 13 treaties, purchasing more than 60000000 acre of land, including much of present day southern Indiana, from Native American leaders. The 1804 Treaty of St. Louis with Quashquame led to the surrender of much of western Illinois and parts of Missouri from the Sauk and Meskwaki. This treaty was greatly resented by the Sauk, especially Black Hawk, and was the primary reason many Sauk sided with Great Britain during the War of 1812. The Treaty of Grouseland in 1805 was thought by Harrison to have appeased Native Americans. But tensions remained high on the frontier and became much greater after the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne in which Harrison purchased, by questionable means, more than 2,500,000 acres (10,000 km²) of land inhabited by Shawnee, Kickapoo, Wea, and Piankeshaw from the Miami tribe who claimed ownership of the land. Harrison rushed the process by offering large subsidies to the tribes and their leaders to have the treaty in place before President Jefferson left office.

In 1803 Harrison lobbied Congress to repeal Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance to permit slavery in the Indiana Territory. He claimed it was necessary to make the region more appealing to settlers and that it would ultimately make the territory economically viable. Congress suspended the article for 10 years, and the territories covered by the ordinance were granted the right to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery. That same year Harrison had the appointed territorial legislature authorize indenturing. He then attempted to have slavery legalized outright, in both 1805 and 1807. This caused a significant stir in the territory. In 1809 the legislature was popularly elected for the first time and Harrison found himself at odds with the legislature when the abolitionist party came to power. They immediately blocked his plans for slavery and repealed the indenturing laws he had passed in 1803.

Tecumseh and Tippecanoe
An Indian resistance movement against U.S. expansion had been growing around the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (The Prophet), which became known as Tecumseh's War. Tenskwatawa convinced the native tribes that they would be protected by the Great Spirit and no harm could befall them if they would rise up against the white settlers. He encouraged resistance by telling the tribes to only pay white traders half of what they owed and to give up all the white man's ways, including their clothing, whiskey, and muskets.

In August 1810 Tecumseh and 400 armed warriors traveled down the Wabash River to meet with Harrison in Vincennes. The warriors were dressed in war paint, and their sudden appearance at first frightened the soldiers at Vincennes. The leaders of the group were escorted to Grouseland where they met Harrison. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegitimate and argued that no one tribe could sell land without the approval of the other tribes; he asked Harrison to nullify it and warned that Americans should not attempt to settle the lands sold in the treaty. Tecumseh informed Harrison that he had threatened to kill the chiefs who signed the treaty if they carried out its terms, and that his confederation of tribes was growing rapidly. Harrison responded by saying that the Miami were the owners of the land and could sell it if they so chose. He rejected Tecumseh's claim that all the Indians formed one nation, and told him that each tribe could have separate relations with the United States if they chose to. Harrison argued that the Great Spirit would have made all the tribes speak one language if they were to be one nation.

Tecumseh launched an "impassioned rebuttal", but Harrison was unable to understand his language. A Shawnee who was friendly to Harrison cocked his pistol from the side lines to alert Harrison that Tecumseh's speech was leading to trouble; Tecumseh was encouraging the warriors to kill Harrison. Many of the warriors began to pull their weapons and Harrison pulled his sword. The entire town's population was only 1,000 and Tecumseh's men could have easily massacred the town, but once the few officers pulled their guns to defend Harrison the warriors backed down. Chief Winnemac, who was friendly to Harrison, countered Tecumseh's arguments to the warriors and instructed them that because they had come in peace, they should return home in peace. Before leaving, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless the treaty was nullified, he would seek an alliance with the British. After the meeting, Tecumseh journeyed to meet with many of the tribes in the region, hoping to create a confederation with which to battle the Americans.

In 1811, while Tecumseh was still away, Harrison was authorized by Secretary of War William Eustis to march against the nascent confederation as a show of force. Harrison moved north with an army of over 1,000 in an attempt to intimidate the Shawnee into making peace. The ploy failed, and the tribes launched a surprise attack on Harrison's army early on the morning of November 6 in what became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison ultimately won his famous victory at what is now Prophetstown, Indiana, next to the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers. Harrison was hailed as a national hero, despite the fact that his troops had greatly outnumbered the attackers and had suffered many more casualties.

In his initial report to Secretary Eustis, Harrison informed him of a battle having occurred near the Tippecanoe River, giving the battle its name, and that he feared an imminent reprisal attack. The first dispatch did not make clear which side had won the conflict, and the secretary at first interpreted it as a defeat. The follow-up dispatch made the American victory clear and the defeat of the Indians was more certain when no second attack materialized. Eustis replied with a lengthy note demanding to know why Harrison had not taken adequate precautions in fortifying his camp. Harrison responded that he considered the position strong enough not to require fortification. The dispute was the catalyst of a disagreement between Harrison and the Department of War that continued into the War of 1812.

At first the newspapers did not carry any information about the battle to the public, instead covering the highlights of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars. One Ohio newspaper even printed a copy of the original dispatch and called the battle an American defeat. By December, most of the major American papers began to carry stories on the battle. Public outrage quickly grew and many Americans blamed the British for inciting the tribes to violence and supplying them with firearms. Acting on popular sentiment, Congress passed resolutions condemning the British for interfering in American domestic affairs. Tippecanoe fueled the worsening tension with Britain, culminating in a declaration of war only a few months later.

War of 1812


The outbreak of war with the British in 1812 led to continued conflict with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, and Harrison remained in command of the army in Indiana. After the loss of Detroit, General James Winchester became the commander of the Army of the Northwest and Harrison was offered the rank of brigadier general, which he refused, desiring the sole command of the army. President James Madison removed Winchester and made Harrison the commander on September 17, 1812. Harrison inherited an army of fresh recruits, which he endeavored to drill. Initially he was greatly outnumbered and assumed a defensive posture. After receiving reinforcements in 1813, he took the offensive, advancing the army farther north to battle the Indians and their new British allies. He won victories in Indiana and Ohio and recaptured Detroit, before invading Canada. He defeated the British at the Battle of the Thames, in which Tecumseh was killed.

After the Battle of the Thames, Secretary of War John Armstrong divided the command of Harrison's army and assigned him to a backwater post and gave control of the front to one of Harrison's subordinates. Harrison had been having disagreements with Armstrong over the lack of coordination and effectiveness in the invasion of Canada. When Harrison was reassigned, he promptly resigned from the army to prevent what he called an act that was "subversive [to] military order and discipline". His resignation was accepted in the summer of 1814.

After the war ended, Congress investigated the circumstances of Harrison's resignation and decided that he had been mistreated by the Secretary of War during his campaign and that his resignation was justified. They awarded Harrison a gold medal for his services to the nation during the War of 1812. The Battle of the Thames was one of the great American victories in the war, second only to the Battle of New Orleans.

Public office
After the war, Harrison was appointed by President James Madison to serve as a commissioner to negotiate two treaties with the Indians tribes in the northwest. Both treaties were advantageous to the United States and a large tract of land in the west was opened for settlement.

Harrison was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to finish the term of John McLean of Ohio, serving from October 8, 1816 to March 4, 1819. He was then elected to and served in the Ohio State Senate from 1819 to 1821, having lost the election for Ohio governor in 1820. In 1822 he ran for the U.S. House but lost by only 500 votes to James W. Gazlay. In 1824 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until May 20, 1828. Harrison was referred to by fellow westerners in Congress as a Buckeye, a term of endearment derived from the Ohio Buckeye tree.

He resigned from the Senate in 1828 on appointment as minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia, serving until March 8, 1829. He arrived in Bogota on December 22, 1828. He found the condition of Colombia saddening and reported to the Secretary of State that the country was on the edge of anarchy and that he thought Simón Bolívar was about to become a despotic military dictator. While minister in Colombia, Harrison wrote a lengthy letter of rebuke to Bolívar, stating "... the strongest of all governments is that which is most free." He called on Bolívar to refrain from terrorizing his enemies and to encourage the development of a democracy. To this, Bolívar penned his famous phrase "The United States ... seem destined by Providence to plague America with torments in the name of freedom." Harrison was recalled from his position when the new administration of President Andrew Jackson took office in March 1829, and he returned to the United States in June.

Private citizen
After Harrison returned to the United States in 1829, he settled on his farm in North Bend, Ohio, his adopted home state. There, he lived in relative retirement after nearly 40 years of continuous government service. Having accumulated no substantial wealth during his lifetime, he subsisted on his savings, a small pension, and the income produced by his farm. He also earned money from his contributions to a biography written by James Hall, entitled A Memoir of the Public Services of William Henry Harrison, published in 1836. By 1840, the time of his second run for president, there were over 12 books on the life of Harrison, in which he was hailed a national hero.

On his farm, Harrison cultivated large quantities of corn and established a distillery to produce whiskey. After a brief time in the liquor business, he became disturbed by the effects of his product on its consumers, and accordingly closed the distillery. He later addressed the Hamilton County Agricultural Board in 1831, claiming that he had sinned in making whiskey, and hoped that others would learn from his mistake by stopping the production of liquors. His private life lasted only a few years, before returning to public life and the national stage in 1836, when he made an unsuccessful run for the presidency as a Whig candidate.

1836 presidential campaign
Harrison was the Northern Whig candidate for president in 1836, the only time in American history when a major political party intentionally ran more than one presidential candidate. Vice President Martin Van Buren, the Democratic Candidate, was popular and deemed likely to win the election against an individual Whig candidate. The goal was to elect popular Whigs regionally, deny Van Buren the 148 electoral votes needed for elections, and force the House of Representatives—which the Whigs controlled—to decide the election.

Harrison was nominated to lead the Whig ticket in most of the states. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Hugh L. White were put as the Whig candidate in Kentucky, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Maryland. The plan narrowly failed as Van Buren won the election with 170 electoral votes. A swing of just over 4000 votes in Pennsylvania would have given that state's 30 electoral votes to Harrison, and the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives.

1840 presidential campaign
Harrison was the Whig candidate again (and again faced Van Buren, now the incumbent president) in the 1840 election. The Whig party unified behind a single candidate, and Harrison was chosen over more controversial members of the party, such as Clay and Webster. Harrison based his campaign heavily on his heroic military record and on the weak U.S. economy, brought about by the Panic of 1837. In a ploy to blame Van Buren for the depressed economy, they nicknamed him "Van Ruin".

The Democrats attempted to ridicule Harrison by calling him "Granny Harrison, the petticoat general", because he resigned from the army before the War of 1812 ended. When asking voters whether Harrison should be elected, they asked them what his name backwards was, which happens to be "No Sirrah". Democrats also cast Harrison as a provincial, out-of-touch old man who would rather "sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider" than attend to the administration of the country. This strategy backfired, however, when Harrison and his vice presidential running-mate, John Tyler, immediately adopted the log cabin and hard cider symbols, using the images in banners, posters, and creating bottles of hard cider that were shaped like log cabins.

Their campaign was from then on marked by exaggeration of Harrison's connections to the common man. Harrison came from an aristocratic Virginia family, but his supporters promoted him as a humble frontiersman in the style of the popular Andrew Jackson. A memorable example of these efforts was the Gold Spoon Oration, delivered by a Whig congressman. Van Buren, by contrast, was presented as a wealthy elitist who spent taxpayers' money on champagne and on crystal goblets from which to sip it.

An old Whig chant from the time of the election exhibited the difference between candidates: Old Tip he wore a home-spun coat, he had no ruffled shirt-wirt-wirt,

But Matt he has the golden plate, and he's a little squirt-wirt-wirt!

People singing the chant would spit tobacco juice while singing "wirt-wirt".

The Whigs also boasted of Harrison's military record and reputation as the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. Their campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too", became among the most famous in American politics. On election day, Harrison won a landslide electoral college victory, though the popular vote was much closer, at 53% to 47%.

Shortest presidency
When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe. He took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day. Nevertheless, he faced the weather with neither his overcoat nor hat, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. At 8,444 words, it took nearly two hours to read, even after his friend and fellow Whig Daniel Webster had edited it for length. He then rode through the streets in the inaugural parade.

The inaugural address was a detailed statement of the Whig agenda, essentially a repudiation of Jackson and Van Buren's policies. Harrison promised to re-establish the Bank of the United States and extend its capacity for credit by issuing paper currency (Henry Clay's American System); to defer to the judgment of Congress on legislative matters, with sparing use of his veto power; and to reverse Jackson's spoils system of executive patronage, which meant using the power of patronage to create a qualified staff, not to enhance his own standing in government.

Clay, as leader of the Whigs and a powerful legislator (as well as a frustrated Presidential candidate in his own right), thus expected to have substantial influence in the Harrison administration, and subsequently ignored his own platform plank of overturning the Spoils system. Clay was a persistent interloper in Harrison's actions before and during his brief presidency, especially in putting forth his own preferences for Cabinet offices and other presidential appointments; Harrison rebuffed his aggression, saying "Mr. Clay, you forget that I am the President." The dispute intensified when Harrison named Daniel Webster, Clay's arch-rival for control of the Whig Party, his Secretary of State, and appeared to give Webster's supporters some highly coveted patronage positions; his sole concession to Clay was to name his protege, John J. Crittenden, to the post of Attorney General. When an unhappy Clay pressed Harrison on the appointments, tensions arose to such a point that Harrison ordered Clay not to visit the White House again, but to address the President only in writing. Despite this, the dispute continued until the president's death.

Clay was not the only one who hoped to benefit from Harrison's election. Hordes of office applicants came to the White House, which was then open to all comers who wanted a meeting with the President. Most of his business during Harrison's month-long presidency involved heavy social obligations—an inevitable part of his high position and arrival in Washington—and receiving these visitors, who awaited him at all hours and filled the Executive Mansion. As he had with Clay, Harrison resisted pressure from other Whigs over patronage; when a group arrived in his office on March 16 to demand the removal of all Democrats from any appointed office, Harrison proclaimed, "So help me God, I will resign my office before I can be guilty of such an iniquity."

Harrison's only official act of consequence was to call Congress into a special session. He and Henry Clay had disagreed over the necessity of such a session, and when in March 11 Harrison's cabinet proved evenly divided, the president vetoed the idea. A few days later, however, Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing reported to Harrison that federal funds were in such dire straits that the government could not continue to operate until Congress' regularly scheduled session in December; Harrison thus relented, and on March 17 proclaimed the special session in the interests of "the condition of the revenue and finance of the country". The session was scheduled to begin on May 31.

Death
On March 26, Harrison became ill with a cold. According to the prevailing medical misconception of that time, microorganisms being then unknown, it was believed that his illness was directly caused by the bad weather. However, it was more than three weeks after the inauguration before Harrison showed the first signs of ill health and modern studies have shown that exposure to adverse weather conditions does not cause respiratory illnesses. It is likely he was a victim of the common cold virus, exacerbated by the drastic pressures of his changed circumstances.

The cold worsened, rapidly turning to pneumonia and pleurisy. He sought to rest in the White House, but could not find a quiet room because of the steady crowd of office seekers; in addition, his extremely busy social schedule made any rest time scarce.

Harrison's doctors tried cures, applying opium, castor oil, and Virginia snakeweed. However, the treatments only made Harrison worse, and he became delirious. He died nine days after becoming ill, at 12:30 a.m. on April 4, 1841, of right lower lobe pneumonia, jaundice, and overwhelming septicemia; he became the first American president to die in office. His last words were to his doctor, but assumed to be directed at John Tyler, "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more." Harrison served the shortest term of any American president: March 4 – April 4, 1841, 31 days and twelve hours.

Harrison's funeral took place in the Wesley Chapel in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841. He was a founding member of Christ Church, Cincinnati. His original interrment was in the public vault of the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.. He was later buried in North Bend, Ohio, at what is now the William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial.

Impact of death
The untimely death of Harrison was a disappointment to Whigs, who hoped to pass a revenue tariff and enact measures to support Henry Clay's American System. John Tyler, Harrison's successor and a former Democrat, abandoned the Whig agenda, effectively leaving himself without a party.

The death of Harrison caused three presidents to serve in a single calendar year (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler). This has happened on only one other occasion, in 1881, when Rutherford B. Hayes was succeeded by James A. Garfield, who was assassinated later in that year. With the death of Garfield, Chester A. Arthur stepped into the presidency.

Harrison's death revealed the flaws in the constitution's clauses on presidential succession. Article II of the Constitution states that "In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, ... and [the Vice President] shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected". Scholars at the time disagreed as to whether the vice president would become President or merely Acting President. Further, the Constitution did not stipulate whether the vice president could serve the remainder of the president's term, until the next election, or if emergency elections should be held. Harrison's cabinet insisted that Tyler was "Vice President acting as President". After the cabinet consulted with the Chief Justice Roger Taney they decided that if Tyler took the presidential Oath of Office he would assume the office of President. Tyler obliged and was sworn in on April 6. In May, Congress convened, and after a short period of debate in both houses a resolution was passed that confirmed Tyler in the presidency for the remainder of Harrison's term. Once established, this precedent of presidential succession remained in effect until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967. The Twenty-fifth Amendment dealt with the finer points of succession by clearly defining in what situations the vice president was acting president and in what situation they could become president.

As the shortest-serving president, Harrison was the only one not to appoint a single federal judge at any level. No states were admitted to the union during his term.

Legacy
Harrison was the first sitting president to have his photograph taken. The original daguerreotype, made in Washington on his Inauguration Day, has been lost—although at least one copy exists in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His chief presidential legacy lies in his campaigning methods, which laid the foundation for the modern presidential campaign tactics. Harrison died nearly penniless. Congress voted to give his wife a Presidential widow's pension, a payment of $25,000, one year of Harrison's salary. This is equivalent to over $500,000 in 2009 dollars. She also received the right to mail letters free of charge.

Harrison was the first of only four presidents, who did not have an opportunity to nominate a judge to serve on the Supreme Court.

Harrison's son John Scott Harrison served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio between 1853 and 1857. Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison of Ohio, was the 23rd president, from 1889 to 1893, making them the only grandparent–grandchild pair of presidents.

Harrison County, Indiana; Harrison County, Mississippi; Harrison County, Iowa; Harrison County, Ohio; and three schools named William Henry Harrison High School (in Evansville and Battle Ground, Indiana and Harrison, Ohio) are named in honor of Harrison. He was the first U.S. president to have no military vessel named after him. However, during the American Civil War, the Union Army named a post near Cincinnati Camp Harrison. William Henry Harrison also had a military fort in Montana named after him. There is a statue of Harrison on Monument Circle in Indianapolis.