If you ask 100 average Americans
who William Henry Harrison was, it is likely that 98 or 99 will have no
idea. Even among historically-minded
Americans, most remember Harrison primarily (if not exclusively) as the only president whose inaugural address was
almost as long as his entire presidency.
In William Henry Harrison, historian Gail Collins gives a brief yet
solid overview of the life of our ninth president. Collins’ biography of Harrison is part of the
“American Presidents” series, a collection of very brief overviews of the lives
of each of our chief executives.
Given that the book only
encompasses 125 pages, Collins obviously has had to pick and choose which parts
of Harrison’s 68-year life to highlight.
She focuses on three main themes: Harrison’s dealing with the Indians,
the ironies in Harrison’s life and career, and the theatrical, dramatic
extravaganza that was the 1840 presidential campaign. Rather than being distinct, these three themes
constantly intersect with each other.
In a key passage on Harrison’s
interactions with Indians, Collins points out that
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 the camp the white Americans
suffered most of the casualties…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 (4).
Collins is perhaps a bit too
critical in her assessment of Harrison’s dealing with the Indians. By the standards of the time, Harrison was
actually relatively kind to Indians—much more so that many other
nineteenth-century military leaders.
In addition to her account of
Harrison’s military career, Collins presents a relatively lengthy and
entertaining account of the “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign of 1840, a
masterpiece of political “spin” that would make modern-day campaign managers
like James Carville and Karl Rove proud.
Despite Harrison’s being the scion of Virginia gentry, complete with a
father who signed the Declaration of Independence and served as Governor of
Virginia, his publicists transformed him into a rustic “man of the people” who
lived in a log cabin in the woods and preferred hard cider over the effeminate beverages
of his opponent Martin Van Buren. The
campaign was one of the first in American history to have a circus-like
atmosphere, with songs, rallies, copious amounts of hard cider, and the rolling
of giant paper mache balls from town to town.
It was a masterpiece of political theatre, and it worked.
Collins’ work has only one major
downside: her extremely casual writing style. She often resorts to slang terms (such as
“screwed up”) that are not proper for a formal historical work. I especially found her constant use of
contractions to be annoying. If she had
submitted this work to me as an assignment in one of my classes, she would have
lost points for this. Despite this,
Collins has done an excellent job (in a very small number of pages) of
presenting an overview of the life of “Old Tippecanoe.” Readers who want a good
introduction to Harrison will be satisfied.
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