Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time

by Freeman Cleaves

William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States, has been sadly neglected. Freeman Cleaves, after years of scholarly study, has cleared away the misconceptions which obscured Harrison's fame, and gives us a warm account of a truly great hero.

Harrison's victory over the Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe, and his battle for the Presidency in 1840, with its campaign slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," are well known, but they are only two episodes in a colorful life.

He was an outstanding military hero, and a man of the people. The frontier folk depended on him for protection against marauding Indians. He had a hand in most of the Indian treaties and land cessions, and although he defeated the tribes in battle he was the first to befriend them in time of peace. Tecumseh alone, of all the Indian chiefs, held out against him to the bitter end.

Few tales of hardship can match the story of Harrison and his men during the War of 1812. The Great Lakes region was sparsely settled, there were few roads, the soldiers ran out of food, their clothing was in rags, and winter was raging. The men grew surly and wanted to go home. Harrison made a short speech and offered to let any man go home who was willing to face his relatives before victory was achieved. Not a man accepted his offer. Instead they cheered him.

Harrison was a blue-blooded Virginian, the son of a Signer, and a descendant of a long line of illustrious patriots, but he chose to cast his lot with the people of the newly opened West. Enlisting as a soldier he soon rose to high command. To maintain his sumptuous table and to provide for a large family he was obliged to engage in many business ventures, most of which failed. An improvident son threw an added burden of debt upon him, but he never lost courage. He accepted an appointment as Minister to Columbia in the hope of easing his debts, but he was ill-suited for a diplomatic joust with Simon Bolivar, and returned sadly to Cincinnati with a bright-plumed macaw and some exotic plants for his wife Anna. When things seemed darkest he was elected President of the United States.

Freeman Cleaves has done a careful, impartial, and worthy biography of a great American soldier and gentleman, of a hero lovingly referred to by his devoted followers as "Old Tippecanoe." Every one interested in the epic story of America will do well to read it.

Genres: Presidents, Biography, History, American History, Nonfiction, Us Presidents, Politics

422 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Educated at Bates College and the University of New Hampshire, Freeman Cleaves worked as a news reporter and financial writer for the weekly publication Financial World.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

For years, I have put off reading this book, having witnessed the despair and disappointment of reviewers, many of whom have sought to read biographies of every U.S. president, who resigned themselves to reading this one on William Henry Harrison, only because it’s just about the only full-scale biography of the man that’s still in print.

I now share in their despair and disappointment.

I see no good reason for this eight-decade-old book to have somehow endured as a “classic” work. It still exists, but longevity alone does not a classic make.

On a superficial level, Cleaves’ painfully dated writing style makes this rather difficult to read, and certainly to enjoy. There’s the florid prose: "Spring lifted the somnolent Wabash into a brimming laden stream." The antiquated language: “The war party had committed itself to the possession of Upper Canada ere snow fell, aye, ere the leaves fell." And the awkwardly-constructed inverted sentences: “An invasion of the frontier at some point, Harrison knew not where, was daily expected."

But those are just surface-level complaints. Given that a good portion of Harrison’s life was spent fighting with, and negotiating with, and fighting with, Indians, a good portion of this book focuses on those subjects. But as you might expect in a book published in 1939, Indians are portrayed as savages and any notion that land-hungry American settlers weren’t exactly fair in all of their land deals with the Natives is barely acknowledged.

I have said in other reviews that some modern books go too far in the other direction, outright condemning 19th-century Americans by viewing them too much from our present-day perspective. All I seek is some kind of objectivity, but Cleaves’ desire to describe in great detail every Indian atrocity while portraying the settlers as nothing but fair dealers is certainly far from objective.

In large part, Cleaves is most interested in Harrison’s military service. The Battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames are described dramatically enough, while the same cannot necessarily be said for everything that happened in between. But Harrison’s long service as Indiana’s territorial governor, and the policies, actions and beliefs he expressed, are somehow only barely described. There are very interesting stories to be told about how Harrison and others tried to introduce slavery into the territory despite its express prohibition in the Northwest Ordinance, how the dispute played a role in the Illinois territory breaking away from the Indiana territory, and the efforts Harrison undertook to attract settlers and achieve statehood for Indiana. Cleaves tells little to nothing about any of this.

He does seem to laud Harrison for personally buying slaves from slave states and gallantly turning them into indentured servants subject to eventual freedom in Indiana, without noting that was no humanitarian gesture but a thinly-disguised workaround to the fact that slavery was prohibited in Indiana. He also waves away criticism of any of Harrison’s actions on the battlefield, attributing any disapproval to his biased political opponents.

Harrison’s political life after retiring from the military is told matter-of-factly, his campaigns for the presidency are described well enough, and his presidency itself is recounted about as well as can be expected, given its brevity. The ending is quite abrupt, though - instead of ending with his death, the book goes on for a few more paragraphs to end in the middle of his funeral.

Ultimately, this is an old-fashioned, “Great Man of History” book about a man who achieved some success on the battlefield, was entirely undistinguished as a politician and was on the wrong side of history when it came to issues like slavery and fair dealings with Native Americans. That’s not to say that Harrison deserves condemnation, but he’s not really deserving of this kind of heroic treatment either. And there’s simply too much that Cleaves leaves out for this to be a well-rounded portrait for any modern reader who’s relying on this to be their “one biography” about Harrison.

This book seems to have endured only because a better one hasn’t come along yet to supplant it. It’s unlikely that one of the great biographers of our time will tackle William Henry Harrison next - but even a decent biographer of our time could do better than this.

[Aaron Million · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on your point of view), there are very few books that have been written about the life of William Henry Harrison. There is a fairly good reason for that: while being the 9th U.S. President, he only held the office for all of one month, March 4 - April 4, 1841. Which is why, whenever I see his name listed amongst the rankings of Presidents I ask myself why is he even listed?

Freeman Cleaves first published this book in 1939, and the writing style certainly shows it. Native Americans are almost always referred to as either "savages" or "red men". And with much of Harrison's life being spent out in the Old Northwest of Ohio and the Indiana territory, he had numerous encounters (both friendly and hostile) with around a dozen tribes. Unfortunately, this was when the U.S was steadily expanding westward, gobbling up land as it went, and with it the territories of the Native Americans whose tribes had laid claim to those areas for who knows how long prior to white men first stepping foot on the continent. Also unfortunately, Cleaves writes with the smug paternalism of white superiority here as it relates to the Indians (that is about the nicest term that Cleeves uses for these peoples). That doesn't mean that the Native Americans were without any fault during Harrison's time. They could be - and often were - just as brutal and bloodthirsty as many of the white settlers and soldiers where. Neither said came out looking good from these skirmishes and wars.

Harrison was born in Virginia right before the Revolution began. A Southerner by birth, he spent almost all of his life in the north (except for one year when he was Minister to Colombia). After many years in the nascent U.S. Army, he became territorial Governor of Indiana territory. Since Harrison was on what was then the western frontier, he was right in the thick of things when the War of 1812 broke out. He then went back into the Army as a Brigadier General. Actually, rank was apparently a big issue for him and he eventually ended up resigning a few years later because he felt repeatedly passed over for promotion.

Following the conclusion of that war, Harrison turned increasingly to politics. He moved back to Ohio (this really became his home after his time in Indiana ended, and it was where he had land outside of Cincinnati prior to the War of 1812), ran for Ohio state Senator and served there until then running for U.S. Congress. He was elected to the House, then later appointed to the Senate (this was back when state legislatures chose the Senators). Only gradually did Harrison gain traction as a candidate for the presidency. He was defeated by Vice President Martin Van Buren in 1836, but won the rematch in 1840.

Cleaves skirts the issue of slavery, and specifically Harrison's thoughts on the subject, quite a bit. Either Harrison's position on slavery was muddled, or Cleaves' telling of it is. I think actually it is both. Harrison seemed to try to straddled the fence on the issue, saying that he was ultimately for emancipation yet against abolition. He said he didn't want to see slavery expanded to new states and territories, yet his actions in elected office showed otherwise as he consistently sided with Southern slaveholders when it came to possibly limiting the expansion of the barbaric practice. Did Harrison himself own slaves? Cleaves, of course, never says. I got the sense that he did though, as occasionally there would be a reference to "a negro boy" or "negro servant" doing something for him. Cleaves did say that Harrison sometimes offered to buy enslaved person from Kentucky if they were willing to work as indentured servants for him in Ohio or Indiana for X amount of years, at which point they would be given their freedom. Viewed from today, this doesn't sound very progressive. And obviously it is not right. However, if you put Harrison in the context of the times in which he lived, he probably thought that he was doing these folks a big favor by essentially freeing them from bondage in exchange for several years' worth of service. What was their alternative? To remain enslaved? Viewed that way, if Harrison came calling, I would think he looked pretty good given the alternative.

Cleaves has a decent final chapter about Harrison's Cabinet selection and move to Washington D.C. Harrison gets sick and dies in a total of about one paragraph. Harrison's personal life is only briefly mentioned at intervals. You learn next to nothing about him personally, his personality, his likes and dislikes, his relationships with his wife and children. That just does not exist in this book. Harrison is quite two-dimensional here, with everyone else pretty much being one-dimensional. People come and go with no sense of importance or context. Indeed, context is missing in this book. Someone unfamiliar with post-Revolutionary America and the leading politicians of that day will be mostly lost here. If there were a newer, better book on Harrison I would not have bothered even contemplating reading this one. But since the scholarship on Harrison is so sparse, Cleaves' antiquated effort will have to do. Perhaps if I were reading this in 1940 I might be much more predisposed to like the book. But I'm not in 1940, and I didn't find much to like here.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

On my project to read a biography of every U.S. President in order, I hit the wall a lot of people do with William Henry Harrison: there are very few full-length biographies written about him, and the ones that are available are old and dense.

I could have cheated. I could have read one of those "Our Amazing Presidents" series books for junior high schoolers and filled it in with Wikipedia and the official White House biography. but no, I ordered this book, and read it all the way through.

It was a slog, but a rewarding one. William Henry Harrison was actually an interesting man with an interesting career, and deserved to be more than a footnote in history as the shortest-term President.

The author, Freeman Cleaves, was a journalist who apparently took a shining to the forgotten president and literally followed Harrison's entire life's journey through the U.S. and Canada, digging up ancient newspaper archives, as well as visiting his descendants who showed him old family letters and other documents. The result is a meticulous narrative of Harrison's life, following him almost daily from his youth to his death. At times it's a rather dull travelogue of Harrison's marches through the woods during the Indian wars and the War of 1812, punctuated by much more exciting blow-by-blow accounts of his battles. Later, there is a lot of very detailed electoral counting and discussion of Harrison's cabinet selections and the political calculus behind them, in his final days. Old Tippecanoe is nothing if not informative, and like better and more readable books, it did give me a sense of Harrison's personality and what he was like as a man, and perhaps what he would have been like as president.

Still, this is a book only for very serious bibliography readers. It was published in 1939 and uses the prose of the time, including unapologetic references to Indians as "savages" and "redskins." Cleaves writes in a dry, factual manner though it's clear he adored Harrison and so rarely writes critically about him; Harrison's mistakes are described mostly as well-intentioned errors of judgment, and the biographer unequivocally comes down on Harrison's side in his disputes with other military officers and politicians.

Born in a log cabin (kind of)

During his presidential campaigns, much would be made of Harrison's humble origins as a man born in a log cabin. Well, this was perhaps true in a literal sense, in that the building he was born in on his family's Virginia plantation was made of wood. Born in 1773, Harrison's ancestry was Virginia blue blood all the way through. His father was a Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

However, he left his university when his father died, and instead headed west to become a soldier. This began his long career as an Indian fighter, and while Harrison was never precisely poor (he always lived in a huge house and his lifestyle was very much upper class), he was always in debt and struggling to avoid bankruptcy. For the rest of his life he would be more associated with Ohio and Indiana than his birthplace of Virginia, though he didn't hesitate to claim Virginia as his homeland when it was politically advantageous.

He married Anna Tuthill Symmes while he was still a lieutenant, in 1794, and the two of them had ten children, most of whom survived. Evidently, they managed to get busy frequently on his trips home from his military campaigns. Like several other presidents, he suffered from bad business decisions while trying to support a large family, and later, an alcoholic failson who added to his debts.

Tippecanoe and the War of 1812

Although Harrison made his reputation by fighting Indians, it's not really fair to say he was primarily an Indian fighter. His attitude towards the Indians was much like that of the author of this 1939 book, regarding them with paternalistic affection when they were peaceful, and as naughty children who needed to be spanked when they weren't.

The story of peaceful Indians ruthlessly oppressed by white settlers is only half the story; the Indian tribes were rarely peaceful, and were quite happy to make alliances with the Americans and the British as they fought their own wars. They had entirely different notions of what alliances and territorial claims meant, leading to many bloody misunderstandings. From the perspective of whites, Indians would change sides at the drop of a hat, and kept reneging on peace treaties and suffering seller's remorse after giving up land to the settlers. But the Indians saw white settlers frequently violating treaties as well and settling on land they'd agreed not to settle on, and sometimes murdering Indians and not being punished by white authorities. As well, whites often didn't understand that making a deal with one chief of a tribe did not mean that every branch of that tribe would consider it binding on them.

Thus, the campaigns in the Northwest Territory against Indians who resisted white encroachment. There were Indians who were friendly to the Americans, and Indians who were friendly to the British, and Indians who just wanted white people to GTFO.

Harrison resigned from the Army in 1798 and became the Northwest Territorial Secretary. He eventually ran for Congress, and then was appointed as the Governor of Indiana (then a territory, not a state) by President Adams. For the next twelve years, he would earn a good reputation with the Indians for his mostly even-handed dealings with them.

However, a Shawnee chief named Tecumseh was building a confederation to resist white settlers. Along with his brother, a mystic known as "The Prophet" who told the Shawnee that the Great Spirit would make them invincible if they fought the white men, Tecumseh started threatening to abrogate treaties signed by other chiefs, pointing out (with some justification) that they had made agreements about lands that other tribes lived on. He met with Governor Harrison at one point in a tense stand-off that almost ended in bloodshed and could have ended with Harrison being scalped.

Harrison convinced President Madison to let him take command of Northwest Territory forces, and led an army to defeat the confederation. Reports of the Battle of Tippecanoe were initially confusing; it wasn't clear until later that Harrison had won a decisive victory.

During the War of 1812, Tecumseh sided with the British. The British officer in charge, General Procter, had a tiger by the tail. Tecumseh made it clear he wasn't happy about Procter's decisions to retreat, and Procter knew the Shawnee weren't buddies with the British because they liked them.

General Harrison would make his bones in earnest during the War of 1812, and Cleaves describes all of his battles in great detail. Some of them are the stuff of adventures, like sneaking across a river just to seize one little garrison (and then screwing up by hanging around gawking instead of just destroying the cannons and leaving), a mock battle that Tecumseh staged to try to convince the Americans that their relief force was being ambushed and draw them out of their fort (it didn't work), or the speech Harrison gave that shamed his Kentucky militia into staying when they were on the verge of saying "Fuck it" and going home.

Notable is that the "significant armies" that affected the outcome of the war in the Northwest often consisted of only a few hundred men. The forts and hills they fought over were relatively tiny. And though there is a lot of documentation, because Harrison and other officers wrote meticulous accounts that were reported back to Washington and repeated in newspapers, fog of war still obscured many details.

Tecumseh would eventually be killed in a relatively smaller battle, the Battle of the Thames, in 1813. Echoing many other disputes that would arise after the war, credit for killing Tecumseh would be claimed by many men who were there that day, though it wasn't actually clear that they ever actually identified Tecumseh's body. Harrison's supporters when he ran for President would tout his fame at the Battle of Tippecanoe and call him the man who killed Tecumseh, though Harrison almost certainly did not personally kill him. One of his subordinates, Colonel Richard Johnson, would later become Vice President under Martin Van Buren after claiming that he'd killed Tecumseh.

Fame doesn't pay the bills

Harrison had several disputes with the Secretary of the Army, who for political reasons wanted him removed. Harrison resigned from the Army and tried to capitalize on his fame and seek political office. He served as a Congressman for Ohio, but his debts continued to grow, especially with one particularly burdensome wastrel son.

As an Ohio Congressman, his big issue was increasing benefits for veterans and their widows. He also opposed a large pay increase Congress had just voted themselves, which was understandably extremely unpopular with the public.

Harrison's political philosophy begins to take shape here. As Cleaves describes him, we could say he was essentially a centrist of his time. Slavery was becoming the dominant culture war issue, and following a pattern we've seen with previous slave-owning POTUSes, Harrison expressed the sentiment that slavery was an evil that should eventually be abolished, while owning slaves and siding against abolitionists. It may be hard to understand today how you could hold two opposing thoughts like that in your head, but in the context of the times, there was an entire spectrum of attitudes towards slavery from "radical" abolitionism to wholehearted embrace of slavery as the natural order of things, and many nuanced gradations between on which the South in particular took careful notice. Harrison was an "emancipationist," meaning he thought the federal government should establish a program aimed at eventually purchasing the freedom of slaves. This was not a popular position with Southerners, but it wasn't quite as bad as being an abolitionist, or sympathetic to abolitionists. Harrison himself purchased a few slaves but promised them freedom after a certain number of years, which he regarded as a fair exchange for their labor. This was actually a relatively progressive attitude for the time.

Despite the pay raise (which he had opposed), however, Harrison was still broke. So he sought and received a post as Minister to Columbia.

It was a prestigious and fairly high-paying position, but Harrison was not much of a diplomat. Much of South America was undergoing revolutionary spasms, thanks to Simon Bolivar. Harrison never met Bolivar personally the entire time he was in Columbia, but he got entangled in a number of intrigues, mostly through no fault of his own except his naivete and unfamiliarity with the country. His own fellow Americans were scheming and secretly fingering him as a collaborator with the anti-Bolivar rebels. This wasn't helped by some speeches Harrison made that were misinterpreted. He ended up being recalled by Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, who wanted Harrison replaced with his own man. Harrison returned to America, still in debt, but at least he brought a macaw with him, which would live on his estate for years afterwards.

"Old Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"

Still struggling to get his head above water financially, Harrison reentered politics.

There was growing opposition to the Jackson administration. Harrison was a war hero. One of his friends tried to make the nickname "Old Buckeye" stick (in contrast to Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson). It didn't, but eventually "Old Tippecanoe" did.

Harrison was drawn into the newly-coalescing Whig party, which was a hodgepodge alliance of anti-Jacksonians, abolitionists, supporters of Henry Clay, and anti-Masons. The Anti-Masonic party was actually a significant force in some parts of the country, and Harrison tried to take a typically centrist position when asked about them. He obviously didn't really care about Masons, and didn't think the government should be trying to suppress them just because some people were going wild with conspiracy theories about them, but he couldn't completely blow the anti-Masons off.

At this time he had to respond to a lot of claims and counterclaims about what happened during the war. His opponents accused of him of everything from mismanagement of funds to poor military leadership. Some of his fellow officers were trying to claim shared glory, which Harrison disputed "under ancient military principal." He was particularly annoyed by Colonel Johnson trying to claim that they had been "coleaders."

In the election of 1836, Harrison narrowly lost to Martin Van Buren. The 1840 campaign began almost immediately. This was the start of modern political campaigning; previously, it had been regarded as somewhat unseemly for presidential candidates to go around openly campaigning as if, you know, they actually wanted to be President.

Harrison's supporters rolled logs, carried around miniature replicas of Fort Meigs and other sites of Harrison's military victories, composed campaign ditties, and threw parties wherever Harrison went. "Matty Van," a consummate machine party politician, was depicted as an aristocratic wine-sipping dandy with a taste for European luxuries, while Harrison was a rough-hewn military hero and man of the people who sipped hard cider in his log cabin. All of this was effective, but what was probably more effective was the fact that the Panic of 1837 had caused a major depression, and the economy was shit, which was blamed on Andrew Jackson and his successor Van Buren. (Like most economic crises, the actual cause was a variety of factors, many of which weren't really under the President's control.) His fellow Whigs included the venerable Kentucky Senator Henry Clay (the man who really wanted to be President) and a young Illinois Congressman named Abraham Lincoln.

Harrison won a decisive victory in 1840, swept into office with Vice President Tyler (a Southerner because he couldn't win without a Southerner), and died 32 days later.

The 32-day President

According to popular legend, Harrison gave the longest inauguration speech ever on a rainy day in March, caught a cold, and died of pneumonia a month later.

This is only partially true. He did give the longest inauguration speech in history (one hour and forty minutes, edited by Daniel Webster), and it was a cold, rainy day. He probably did catch a cold that day.

But for the next month, he was pretty busy. He walked around Washington on errands (we had not yet had our first presidential assassination, and the president could still just wander down the street to visit with people), formed his cabinet (with a lot of maneuvering and input from, among others, Henry Clay, who was quite upset to find out he was not going to be calling the shots in Harrison's administration), and had a couple of very congenial meetings with the outgoing president, Van Buren, and some of the Senators he expected to soon be opposing him. He established his intention to limit the power of the Executive Branch, support states rights, and remain hands off on the issue of recreating a national bank. He had already sworn that he would be a one-term president and not seek reelection.

Somewhere along the way, he became seriously ill, and his physicians soon realized he was on his deathbed. There is debate today about whether it was actually pneumonia that killed him; Harrison was 68 years old (the oldest president ever, until Ronald Reagan), and Washington was a disease-ridden place.

Freeman Cleaves's biography ends very abruptly, at the very paragraph where Harrison is buried. Harrison's last hours were spent in a state of delirium. Supposedly his final words were: "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."

My impression of William Henry Harrison is that he was an intelligent if not brilliant man, not a deep political thinker, but capable enough. He was honest and quite meticulous about defending his integrity. He was a moderate who wouldn't have done much to end slavery, but his attitude towards Native Americans was relatively benign. It's impossible to say how effective his foreign policy or economic policies might have been. Friendly and even-tempered, he might have been a good President, or he might have been eaten alive by scandals and political disasters.

Instead, we got John Tyler. The Whig Party would soon collapse and disappear into history, and the Civil War would loom ever closer.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://bestpresidentialbios.com/2013/...

“Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time” by Freeman Cleaves was published in 1939 and remains the “go to” classic on the nation’s ninth president. Born in 1904, Cleaves graduated from the University of New Hampshire and worked as a journalist beginning in 1925. His career included stints at The Boston Herald, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Following publication of his biography of Harrison he focused on his new great passion, the Civil War. Almost a decade later he published a biography of George Thomas and, about a dozen years after that, a biography of George Meade. Cleaves died in 1988.

Despite this biography’s age, it remains quite readable and surprisingly animated. And Harrison, notwithstanding his brief and unremarkable presidency, proves a more interesting character than I had expected. And although they often occupied different ends of the political spectrum, Harrison seems a bit like Indiana’s answer to Andrew Jackson: a frontiersman, local politician and a man drawn to the military who found himself constantly battling Indians.

Most of the first two-thirds of the book focuses on Harrison’s “adventures” with Indians on the northwestern frontier – as an army officer, secretary of the Northwest Territory and Governor of Indiana. Although Cleaves’s description of various Indian encounters (including the famous Battle of Tippecanoe) is captivating, at times it feels as though you are reading the journal of someone following Harrison around the woods: you come away with a good sense of the various confrontations but with little context for what is happening outside Harrison’s “bubble.”

Less enthralling, but more intellectually satisfying, are the chapters describing Harrison’s run for the presidency in 1836 (an election he lost to Martin Van Buren) and his subsequent, successful, run in 1840. It is here that one gets the truest sense for Harrison’s personality and inner-self. Otherwise, the biography presents relatively little of his innermost thoughts or his family life, apart from sporadic updates on the whereabouts of his ten children.

Harrison’s presidency, which lasted barely a month, is hardly described although Cleaves does a nice job describing the political calculus behind Harrison’s cabinet picks. But by now, on my forty-seventh presidential biography, I have grown used to sentimental and poignant presidential deaths. Cleaves provides no such heartrending moment for Harrison who disappears in barely a paragraph. Nor does he provide any suggestion of what a more long-lasting Harrison presidency might have meant for the nation – a particularly stark omission in my view.

Overall, Freeman Cleave’s biography of William Henry Harrison is fine, but not great. It informs and educates but does not fully satisfy (much less thrill) the curious reader. And in the end Harrison remains almost as much an enigma as ever. This biography provides insight into his background and his path to the presidency, but too little about him personally to allow the reader to develop a sense of familiarity with Harrison, to understand his core, or to hypothesize where a longer Harrison presidency might have taken the country. “Old Tippecanoe” is a useful biography of William Henry Harrison, and surprisingly readable for a book twice my age, but left me feeling less satisfied than I had hoped.

Overall rating: 3 stars

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1939 biography of our 9th president and shortest tenured one is still the best out there on William Henry Harrison. His one month in the White House and death changed the course of a lot of
history.

Harrison is far more famous than being the answer to a trivia question on presidents. He was also the
last president born a British subject in 1773 in Virginia. The Harrisons were quite the aristocrats and
Benjamin Harrison, William's dad was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He aspired at
first to be a doctor, but switched career ambitions to the army and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in 1792.

No doubt through some strong family connections Harrison was made an aide to General Anthony
Wayne and saw his first action in 1795 at the Battle Of Fallen Timbers which ended any kind of Indian
occupation of Ohio with the defeat of the Shawnees.

The Harrisons apparently were connected well enough in Virginia so Harrison got appointments as
Territorial Delegate from Indiana territory through John Adams and Thomas Jefferson made him
Governor of Indiana Territory from 1801 to 1812. His main activities was treaty making with the
various tribes and the Shawnees proved the most difficult.

A couple of brothers Tecumseh and his one-eyed brother, a mystic called The Prophet saw themselves as leaders to form a native uprising to at least push the whites back across the Appalachins. Tecumseh's story has the elements of an operatic like tragedy. While he was away
and Harrison not knowing this, he ordered a raid on his village located at Tippecanoe Creek in 1811. It turned into a pitched battle and gained him that nickname that is the title of this biography.

Events on the international scene were overtaking Harrison's activities as we entered into the War
of 1812. Harrison became overall commander of our forces in the Old Northwest Territory and after
retaking Detroit which had fallen to the British pursued them and his old rival Tecumseh. In 1813
in Canada, Harrison led the American invaders at the Battle of the Thames where Tecumseh was
killed.

Back in civilian life Harrison had married Anna Symmes of North Bend, Ohio where he settled and
had 9 children. As we know one of his grandkids was future president Benjamin Harrison. Harrison represented Ohio in the House of Representative 1816-1819 and the Senate from 1825 to
1828. Nothing terribly distinguished in his tenure, but by that time Harrison was a man who first
went to the National Republicans and then the Whigs with the breakup of the Federalist party.

Henry Clay as Secretary of State appointed Harrison in 1828 as Minister to Colombia. But travel
being what it was back then by the time he reached Bogota the new president Andrew Jackson had
appointed his own minister. It was back to his farm in North Bend for the next dozen years.

The anti-Jacksonians who during the 1830s had coalesced into the Whig Party looked at frontier
hero Harrison as maybe their answer Jackson's mystique and popularity as a frontier hero. He was
one of several candidates run in 1836 by the Whigs to hopefully deny Jackson's handpicked successor Martin Van Buren a victory and throw the election into the House of Representatives.
When that didn't happen the Whigs waited and decided to nominate Harrison for president come the election of 1840. Their convention was held in December of 1839 where Harrison defeated
Henry Clay and John Tyler a recent Whig convert from Virginia was made Vice President.

So with the selection came the great slogan of Tippecanoe and Tyler too. On issues Harrison spoke
little as the Whigs ran the first barnstorming ballyhooed type campaign with torchlight parades
and bonfire rallies in every corner of the country. Martin Van Buren had an economic downturn in
his presidency which killed his candidacy for re-election. Ironically a campaign song that played
upon that alliterative slogan of Tippecanoe and Tyler too had a line in it that would come back to
haunt the Whigs which went "we'll vote for Tyler therefore without a why or wherefore".

What I find most ironical is that the Virginia aristocrat Harrison was presented as plain spoken man
of the people whereas Van Buren had developed aristocratic tastes. Van Buren in fact came from a
most humble background his father being an innkeeper. Like Donald Trump being a man of the
people.

So Harrison won a smashing victory and set about putting together his administration. On inauguration day of March 4, 1841 he gave a two hour speech where the old warrior faced the crowd
without any kind of topcoat or outer wear. He developed a cold and refused bed rest until it became too late. The book tells in a couple of pages about Harrison going to the market for the
White House shopping or delivering a commission himself in the damp weather that persisted
in the nation's capital. It's tragic/comic.

So John Tyler became president with his own ideas about policy and a lot of folks cursed the fact
they should have given a why or wherefore. That belongs in his story however.

So we have here the story of our shortest presidency and the campaign that gave it to America.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant classic from 1939, Freeman Cleaves' biography of William Henry Harrison, frontier politician and general who ended up as a historical footnote as the ninth U.S. president because he was the first president to die in office, (after serving only 31 days). What most Americans don't remember is that he had 68 previous years, including 11 years as governor of Indiana Territory and fought in numerous Indian wars and the War of 1812, including, (naturally, the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811) but also the Battle of the Thames, that culminated in the defeat of the Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh. It is Harrison' dealings with the Native Americans that dominated his time in Indiana in the early eighteenth century. Harrison tried to be decent to the Indians but of course the American settlers made it difficult for everyone. He decried the abuses against Native peoples but was ultimately ordered to carry out government policy which leaned heavily on expansion and getting as much land as possible for future settlement. By 1840, when he was finally elected president, (the oldest president until Reagan) Harrison had been in Congress from Ohio and had been sent to Colombia as minister. He had a huge family and struggled to make money in the liquor business, (which he ultimately abandoned, troubled by the effects of alcohol on Natives and whites alike) and eagerly sought out government service--any service. The Whig party needed a hero and ran a spectacularly successful political campaign in 1840 against President Van Buren, portraying Harrison as a homespun frontier Andrew Jackson character, a war hero of a long-ago battle; it was Harrison's relative obscurity compared to better known Whigs like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that helped his election. Finally in office, he was beset by office seekers and the desires of the Henry Clay to dominate his presidency, something he was able to stifle just before the illnesss that led to his death. Contrary to popular belief, (although he spoke for two hours, coatless on a blustery March day at the inaugural) Harrison did not fall ill until nine days before his death. Like President Taylor nine years later, his doctors contributed more to his death that any potential cure. He slipped into delirium and the official cause of death was "bilious pleurisy." Old Tippecanoe was in office only 31 days.

[Peter Krol · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the weaker biographies I've read, but there are slim pickin's on Harrison for one trying to read a bio of every U.S. president.

That said, this work still had some wonderful moments. I'm most interested in the politics, so those parts were most interesting to me. The extensive detail of Harrison's military campaigns was a bit much, and I found myself skipping entire sections and chapters. As the poet once said, "Can we get back to politics? Please? Yo."

It still makes for an amazing tale that a man like Harrison can run for president, lose, run again against the guy who beat him, win, and then die a month into his term. Sort of like Andrew Jackson, except without the dying part. Most presidential biographies give a preview of the next president and the next election as the subject transitions back to private life, but I'm now left on a cliffhanger. How will things continue into Tyler's presidency?

Next: The President Without a Party ... if I can find it at a library.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Choices are few for biographies of America's shortest-serving president, and this one is quite dated in language and content. Mrs. Harrison is little more than a footnote throughout the text, not receiving any mention even as her husband lay in state in the capital. But it vividly depicts the scenes and the action of Harrison's battles on the western frontier and during the War of 1812. The reader will form feelings for the allies and enemies of the governor, the general, the ambassador, and the candidate. The end of the story, however, is more abrupt and unfulfilling than even Harrison's own end must have been.

[Wyatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get through this. For the first two-thirds of the book it's all about Harrison and his time on the frontier. Engaging at some parts, most of it is boring to me. The last third, which talked about his political life, I enjoyed though. I expected boring parts from an 80 year old book, but it's surprisingly fluid in parts. Harrison himself wasn't ever particularly compelling to me, and I can definitely see why he's mostly forgotten, save his famous nickname "Old Tippecanoe."

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Read Every President's Biography #9

Since he was only President for exactly one month, Harrison might not seem to be fodder for an engaging presidential biography. However, despite the brevity of his tenure (he got to do little more than shake some hands and make some Cabinet appointments) and the severity of his diarrhea whilst in office, Harrison is actually a pretty fascinating guy, more complex than you'd think despite adhering towards some of the more distasteful trends, par for the course in the first half of the 19th century.

The nickname "Old Tippecanoe" had less to do with his old age propensity for hiding in local waterways completely nude and, without warning, capsizing unsuspecting boaters, and more to do with his military "achievements" on the Northwestern frontier. In many ways, this is the real core of Harrison's story, and the biography doubles as a fascinating history of the Indiana-Ohio-Michigan border region. You could even say it "triples" as a history of the native tribes of the region, too, except "triples" sounds overtly euphemistic and most of this history is one of betrayal.
Born in Virginia (not in a log cabin as his later boosters purported) to an old landed family, Harrison joined the army in his youth and spent the next fifty years in Indiana and Ohio as General, Governor, and Congressman. Thus he is really more a child of the Midwest than the Old East ; his entire biography is dominated by that fact.
Cleaves makes Harrison's life far more interesting than you'd think it'd have a right to be, getting into the nitty-gritty of his military campaigns against Native American tribes and the British around the Great Lakes region. Fascinatingly, for a biography written in 1939, Cleaves highlights how accommodating Harrison was (for the time, at least) with the local Indians, treating with them numerous times, outlawing liquor sales, and doing much to try and promote their general well-being. That this was all happening in the context of him buying up their lands and fighting some of them, while allying with others, doesn't demean his sometimes noble intentions, but was merely part and parcel of Indian policy at the time, and cultural viewpoints.
The majority of the bio focuses on Harrison's military career in the Northwest up to the war of 1812 and his efforts in procuring the territory that became parts of Indiana and Illinois. After that, dogged by financial woes, Harrison wove in and out of politics. Cleaves gives this equal time, although it's less interesting. Harrison was a frank anti-abolitionist and somewhat of a states' rights asshole, on the other hand, he was a Whig who saw benefit to "internal improvements" (jargon at the time for federal spending in states) and other more nuanced liberalisms.
Overall, Cleaves gives us the story of a complex guy who might've been a pretty decent Prez if he hadn't died, certainly when compared to his two shitass predecessors...

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thus, in many ways, begins the more difficult section of my journey to read a biography of every president. This is not just because WHH was president for only a month, but because he is the first of a series of presidents who have become lost to popular memory between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Cleaves here has managed something special, since this is by far the oldest biography I have yet read that is still widely considered to be definitive.

'Old Tippecanoe' definitely reads like a book that was first published in 1939. In some ways its age shows - Cleaves occasionally mentions in asides 'modern' things that are obviously somewhat dated. It also reads a little slow, and had some sections especially early in the book describing Harrison's campaigns that would be more readable with less information. That said, this is still a very thorough story of a man who was remarkably forward thinking for being a western Governor in the 1820s. Though he had his political rivals, and was more of a politician than Jackson, he in some ways better represents the 'down home frontier man' than Jackson ever did. He was a capable soldier and an honest man, who as Cleaves describes comes off much more like the founding fathers than either his direct predecessor or Tyler.

I think importantly, when it comes to writing biographies, one must consider whether the character is important and interesting enough to write about. I don't know that Harrison would qualify if he wasn't elected president, but the story until his election is a very interesting tale about life in the west, dealings with indians, and the War of 1812. How this and his campaign (the first truly exhibiting the changes brought on in the elections since 1828) were successful IS important, I think, in understanding America at the time.

Cleaves takes the challenge head on, filling his story with details from records and drawing heavily on Harrison's correspondence. He shies away from being critical, but does certainly cover Harrison's critics while also providing evidence for his defense. There is no true biography about the man that is better - and Cleaves gives us a reasonable argument for why the man deserves more than a footnote in history.

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

William Henry Harrison is most remembered for being the President that died of pneumonia a month after taking office. Given that this is his primary legacy to most, you would think this book would devote a substantial portion to that fact. Instead, his illness is first mentioned on the third to last page of the book, and then suddenly goes to his funeral. There's zero discussion of what a Harrison presidency would have meant for America had he lived.


My own speculation is that it would not have meant much. Although the Tippecanoe and Tyler Too campaign gets taught in a lot of history classes today, it also helped Harrison in getting elected that there was confusion over his actual platform. Given that he was the Governor of Indiana and well liked by John Quincy Adams, I assumed that Harrison was against slavery. In reality, he was sort of against it in the North, but definitely supportive of keeping it anywhere it already existed, and also wanted to bring it to Indiana at one point. During his one month in office he had talked about only wanting one term, and how executive power should be limited, so it seems unlikely to me that he was ever going to be a first rate President. Like many of this era, he seemed intent on trying to prevent the country from blowing up in Civil War on his watch, even though the writing was increasingly on the wall.


Harrison's life is probably more defined by his time fighting Native Americans on the frontier than his politics.  He is portrayed in this book as a much more compassionate version of Andrew Jackson, who several Native Americans had the chance to kill but didn't because of their reverence for him. I didn't feel like I got the full story on the Native American battles from this book, as the portrayal of Harrison is almost positive past the point of believability.


I would have liked to learn a little more about his inner thoughts as well. The author is very focused on his military accomplishments and rarely refers to any inner turmoil beyond some financial issues.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to give this book 3 stars. I want it to be 3 and 1/2! Please keep in mind that 3 means I liked it. I did like it! It was more than OK! I even recommend it. I learned a great deal about WHH. (I've noticed I rather like referring to my prez boys by their 3 initials. As with my new BFF JQA.) We all hear the story of how he died a month after being inaugurated and it's kind of told as if his life was a waste, but it surely wasn't. He spent the first half of his life - and thus we spend the first half of this book with him - being a totally successful, admired general on the "frontier" (Ohio/Indiana). Then he's in government (he eventually works in all 3 branches), and an ambassador to Colombia. Totally exciting stuff. The presidency was basically an afterthought when he was already in his sixties, cooked up by his buddies who disliked Jackson & Van Buren. All in all, we should know more about William Henry Harrison, and thanks to Freeman Cleaves' ridiculously meticulously researched book, now I do. And I am glad.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really read like something written in the 1930s, a lot of the laguage used, specifically about Native Americans, was.. antiquated.

That aside, it read fine, something I find with a lot of these older bios is I hardly got a sense really of William Henry Harrison as a man, the book mostly focuses on his military career (admittedly a large part of his life) specifically in regards to the War of 1812. I don't find military bios to be very interesting, so unfortuantely a good half of the book was lost on me for the most part. However, what there is in terms of the political views and moves of Harrison were interesting enough to keep my attention. I feel as if there is an interesting story to be told with WM Harrison somewhere, and I would be interested in reading THAT story more.

P.S. Would have been nice if the author had included more about how the nation/world reacted to thew president dying so shortly into his time in office, or really... anything about the ramifications of his death, as it stands, the book kind of just ends abruptly, like Harrison's life.

[Jocelyn Nielson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an okay read. Did I learn more about the man who would be the shortest-serving U.S. president? Yes, I did. Did I learn a lot? Not really. The text itself was relatively easy to read, but with what I would call a shallow look at Harrison. Because he didn't serve long as president, much of the book covered the battles and confrontations against Native Americans. And though much time and an incredible amount of detail were spent on those sections of the book, not much was given for what was happening elsewhere. So I was left feeling as if the author needed to include such detailed sections because there just wasn't much to go off of. In fact, personality-wise, I got a clearer picture of Harrison from a paragraph and brief mentions in John Tyler's biography than in the entirety of this book. Overall, it felt like a book that I had to read out of necessity rather than desire. I wasn't captivated by the subject matter and tried to read faster so I could be done and move on.

[Daniel Mala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I picked this up and read a bit, but kept getting distracted with other books. I’ve looked at the presidential biography reading challenge as a longe term project. But I’ll have to get through these books a bit quicker. So President Harrison, most known for dying 3 months into his presidency had a story that told a different part of American history then his predecessors. As a general in the War of 1812 as well as the Indian Wars his story was more akin to early westward expansion of the US. Though there was some compelling parts to this story, it was often a dreary slog. And as for the man, he was one of his times and a defender of states rights on the slavery question that dominated the political discussion for decades leading up to the Civil War. As for the challenge, this biography was the more detailed and legitimate book though I’m sure there are shortcuts available in that regard. Cheers!

[Dr. Z · Rating 1 out of 5]

This may well, from a qualitative standpoint, the worst biography I have read, and I have read many. Admittedly the subject is not the most interesting. But there are biographers that can work with such material. Cleaves is not one of them. The result is a profoundly boring narration of some of the events of Harrison's life that does not even attempt to get inside the mind of the man, contains no analysis of his thought, and does not try to explain the context of his actions. Even as a bare-bones historical chronology it fails, as key events are omitted and the way the narrative gets from one event to the other is borderline incoherent. To paraphrase the guy from Billy Madison, at no point in this rambling, incoherent volume did we come even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. I am now dumber for having read it.

[Jdb · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75 stars: Perhaps the worst bio I’ve read to date. Maybe partly due to WHH’s 1 month Presidency (before sudden death) but the author bears most responsibility. WHH comes across as a ghost with no insight or substance to him personally. No discussion of relationship with wife despite nine children and little info about those children. Long gaps in the narrative as parts of his life whiz by. Despite these flaws, WHH’s resume speaks to his competence: beloved military general (with controversial reputation over successes), territorial governor, U.S. congressman, US Senator, clerk of the circuit court, ambassador, and finally President.
For readers seeking a bio of WHH, my recommendation is : find another one.

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps because he only served one month as President, there aren't many biographies of W.H. Harrison. I searched the catalogs of three different library systems where I have borrowing privileges, then searched new and used books for sale online and found nothing. I finally found this book available at a local college that grants borrowing privileges to county residents. So I didn't have a choice of several different biographies to choose from.

This biography, written in 1939, is dated and a somewhat stodgy read, but based on what I've read in other presidential biographies, it seems to present a reasonably accurate history of the life and times of W.H. Harrison.

[Brandon Creel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa! This book was published in 1939. I was hesitant to dive into this biography due to its age, but my research indicated that this remains the definitive biography of William Henry Harrison, so away I went. Thankfully, the prose does not seem as dated (perhaps because the author, a journalist by trade, was also fairly young at the time, so maybe kinda sorta contemporary by my standards – in that he was at least alive for a time after I was born), but alas, some of the language and characterizations of the native peoples are perhaps just a wee bit antiquated in comparison to modern convention. That said, the book is very captivating and held my interest. If nothing else, Harrison’s story gives us a great account of the development of the Northwest Territory, especially as his activities transcended modern day Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. In his position, he was the guy at the forefront of all negotiations with the native tribes of the time, and thus we are able to learn much about the development of those relationships, the story of Tecumseh and the Prophet, and the western theater battles of the War of 1812.

All in all, Harrison appears to be an affable man and, apart from the usual political enemies and opportunists one encounters over a lifetime, he seems universally well-liked by nearly everyone he dealt with. This includes his soldiers, his voting constituencies, the countless travelers he continually entertained in his home, and notably, the many native tribes with whom he negotiated. Outside of the War of 1812, he was one of the few American figures whom I have read that seems to be have been consistently trustworthy in his dealings, and the reciprocal feelings of the native tribes up to the time of his death seem to reflect that. Even in battle, he was careful to make the effort to restrain his troops from committing atrocities in retribution that were unfortunately characteristic of the time.

Also interesting was the notion that Harrison seemingly became a presidential candidate almost by accident. Harrison was well into his retirement years and out of the public eye for several years before his candidacy in 1836 arose. And that was pretty much only because opportunistic politicians like Richard Mentor Johnson (eventual Vice President to Martin Van Buren) were offering revisionist accounts from seminal events of the War of 1812, claiming credit for victories where he was not even remotely involved. By Harrison speaking up only with the motive of correcting the record of what really happened (and by this time most of the participants were no longer alive to do so), his accolades were renewed as a national hero. Although his candidacy in 1836 failed to succeed, it was renewed in 1840 and was successful largely because of the lack of a national candidate for the new Whig Party and dissatisfaction with the Jacksonian Van Buren administration.

Unfortunately, Harrison served only 31 days as president before he was consumed by pneumonia. I can’t help but to recollect a philosopher I once read (whose name I cannot recall) who opined that in order to achieve the epitome of mortal happiness, the ideal time to die is just as you ascend to your dream, not after. This was Harrison, who never had the opportunity to endure the hardships of the presidency. By all accounts it was a pretty joyous time for Harrison as he assumed the office. I might go so far as to say that it was probably the most untroubled presidential administration in American history as a result.

What kind of president would Harrison have been? Unfortunately, the book doesn’t attempt to address that question, abruptly ending at Harrison’s death. Harrison’s views were decidedly anti-Jacksonian and he expressed a restrained role for the presidency. He endorsed the old view that the veto power would only be exercised in cases of clear unconstitutionality. He also pledged to serve only one term, which in my opinion, might well have ended up with him failing to distinguish himself from the succession of one-term presidents that would follow.

Would he have changed the trajectory of the nation with regard to the issue of slavery? Again in my opinion, probably not. He descended from a Virginia planation and owned slaves at one point, though when he moved to Ohio he converted them to indentured servitude to be eventually freed. He did join an abolitionist movement at age 17, but he was thereafter very careful to distance himself in order to take a middle-of-the-road position. He claimed to be against the institution, but believed that the people of their respective states should determine the issue but also worried about the government interfering with property rights, and further believed in colonizing former slaves in Africa.

My only other observation is that we got to know the facts of Harrison very well, I still somehow escaped without not getting to know the man and his personal feelings as well as I would have liked. Overall, I did learn a lot more than I expected with regard to the president holding the shortest tenure in our history.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it interesting how many people struggled with this biography. I found it quite interesting. Like may others, I'm working my way through the presidents in chronological order. Like others, I had preconceptions of the presidents between Jackson and Lincoln that made me dread this particular group. I've already seen enough to recognize my thinking on Polk was wrong and now, half way through Cleaves work, I realize I had fallen victim to the same superficial understanding on the "one-month man."

Turns out W.H. Harrison was more complex and deserving more attention and respect. As a youth he joined the abolitionist society much to the strong disappointment of his father, yet young Harrison embraced making Indiana a slave state, contrary to the agreement establishing the NW Territory. He even had his own "young Negro boy servant" or some similar phrase a decade or more later and took a states' rights argument to slavery as he aged.

Harrison seems to lack the political savvy or expediency that his predecessor embraced, a man who had no backbone or principles other than self gain through political manipulation (the one term yawn of the worm, Van Buren). Van Buren has much to pay for, as we watch political parties help destroy democracy in our current era, but that's another matter. Back to the subject: Cleaves leaves that a question for the reader to ponder. As are many others questions that the book raises.

For instance, Cleaves also leaves one wondering if Harrison's turn from being consistently fair in his dealings with the Native American until The Prophet and eventually Tecumseh fail to fall in line with the other tribes agreeing to the treaty terms in exchange for 3.5 million acres of Indiana land could have been avoided if Tecumseh had convinced his brother of a different path. After the war. Harrison is again reported as being fair.

The soldiers under his lead during the war are presented as being very loyal, and Harrison is shown to have earned that respect through his empathy and commitment to fairness and transparency. That seems respectable and placing him in a small group of post-founding presidents with any integrity. Yet he is repeatedly required through his career to endure and refute calls for is inadequacy in his service (as a military leader, as a Congressman, as a business man, as an ambassador). He is repeatedly passed over for appointments and found "ambitious" in asking for appointments.
Why so much smoke, if not some fire? Was it because of the strong regional/territorial interests Northeast versus South versus Northwest Territories? Add to that the evolving political parties and changing alliances depending on the issues. Yet there must have been shortcomings in the man for him to be slighted so often.

Cleaves is definitely a sympathetic historian, so complaints can be laid. Yet I like that the book piques these kind of questions for the engaged reader. Being led or manipulated? Perhaps the latter, but I at least was open to it for a president whose term was so short and so little outside this writing seems known.

And I feel like the book is fair in citing Harrison's failings as a military leader and governor. I still need to read about life after the War.

In close, so far, the prose whether of 1939 or I felt an earlier period seemed appropriate and I find myself wondering if I would have gotten more from other bios of early presidents if the writing had more reflected the phrases and vernacular of the period. It might have made it a more difficult read for the lazy 21st century reader, but it would have added a layer of authenticity in how language presented "the facts" in the time period. Language matters.

So many historical/political biographies are written as if the author has everything all figured out. That is BS. I found this refreshingly different. If Cleaves has an agenda, he has failed to present it coherently to a novice like me halfway through the book. If that's because I accept it and fail to see it, then the agenda must be to present Harrison as a complex man showing a fairly consistent integrity, if flawed, not unlike all of us.

In close, I recommend this book. Not because it's one of the few bios in print about the man, but because it so far has me thinking about his regional grounding and the importance of place, in this case the western US, during this early period in a manner that I believe more traditional bios on presidents do.

[Jeremy Anderberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

William Henry Harrison has very little ink dedicated to his life since he was president for all of 31 days before succumbing to some sort of disease that was likely brought on by bad water at the White House. He was the first president to die in office and held the title for the shortest amount of time, making him a handy trivia answer and not much else. In presidential rankings, he’s often an “NA.” Womp womp.

I read Freeman Cleave’s 1939 biography Old Tippecanoe. It was terribly boring, and I cannot recommend it unless you’re also reading a biography of every president. Even then, maybe find something else. So, instead of talking about the book, let me give just a paragraph or two about the man.

WHH is sort of a lesson in both the power of mythos and the undeniable role of fate. He was born in Virginia, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The family was well-off, but he moved to Indiana (the frontier, at the time) and spent his life as a military man, mostly fighting Native Americans. In the election of 1840, he was pitched as the everyman, “for the people” candidate going up against the aristocratic Martin Van Buren. Even though the narrative wasn’t very accurate, the marketing worked. (See a resemblance to 2016, anyone?)

And how could anyone deny to power of fate — destiny, the will of God — in the man’s life? He could have been an Andrew Jackson-type figure . . . another two-term military general turned president. Our greatest presidents, for the most part, are those that led the nation through crises. Had Lincoln entered office in a period of relative calm, it’s not likely he’d be numero uno of the bunch. The same idea is also sometimes true for those who weren’t great presidents. In a few cases, the stars just didn’t align for their leadership qualities to shine through. I’m not saying that WHH was that type of guy (Garfield — POTUS #20 — probably was), but it goes to show nonetheless that circumstances do play a role in who gets deemed a great leader vs. not.

About the book: I'd advise avoiding it, unless you're reading a bio of every president.

[Judy Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prior to my reading Cleaves' Old Tippecanoe, all I knew of William Henry Harrison was that he was the first president to die in office from an illness and the campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", though to be quite honest I had no idea what Tippecanoe was. It was interesting to read about this man who spent his formative years in the Northwest Territory. How different was his "log cabin" upbringing from the more aristocratic influence of the Adamses, Jeffereson, Madison, and Monroe. He actually was a good leader, having been made governor of the Indiana Territory while only in his 20s. He played a signifant role in Indian affairs of the time, both in military action (hence the Tippecanoe) and in establishing treaties. The man had to continually defend his war record as soldiers who served with him entered the political arena and kept trying to rewrite history. He was elected president, as I anticipate the next 5 were, as a dark horse because he seemed to be vague enough on his position on slavery and states rights to be acceptable to the majority during the growing antebellum polarization of the country. It seems as though the Whig party "out Van Buren-ed" Van Buren himself, with the grassroots politicking and electioneering.
Cleaves's gave a vivid description of the man himself: humble, simple, and earnest, a man who earned the respect of his soldiers. I did find some of the word usage and phraseology a little dated, though that is to be expected with a book written 80 years ago. I found the book very easy to read, which was fortunate since it concerned a man who was president for only 32 days! On to John Tyler, the first president by default.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great detailed book even for it's time. It does struggle with word usage that the author uses to describe the Native Americans such as "savages". There are very few books that have been published about this short term president but I wouldn't see anyone topping this one any time soon.

It does a great job of explaining the first modern campaign in our history. With slogans as "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" and the pictures of a log cabin.

The book ends abruptly as WHH presidency. The author just sort jumps right into the death and a few paragraphs later the book ends. Nothing is stated about the ramifications of what happens when a president dies and nothing is said about his wife who never made it to the white house.

To me, he would of been a great president with regards to Native American relations as was needed considering the previous two presidents. He wanted to depower the office of the presidency and while I think he was anti-slavery he wasn't bold enough to come out against the practice. One can tell this from his abolitionist group he joins and the way he bought slaves but switched them to indentured servants with 5-10 years of work before being free. JQA mentions having a conversation with him during the early days of his presidency and he is hopeful of WHH.

I don't think he would of made any progress with regards to the bank issue. A national bank was sorely needed and this problem wouldn't be fixed until Polk's administration.

Again, there is just not enough to say how his administration would of played out.

Final Ranking: Not Available - the only president that will have this ranking for me.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read through the presidents so far everyone has died in the end. When I get to Lincoln I hope it has a better ending. Even though the book was published almost 100 years ago it still reads well. I had already read a couple books on the war of 1812, but most dealt with the east coast or marine battles. This book filled in a lot of information on the battles in the Lake Erie area. It also did a great job of developing the people involved and Harrison's burden with self-serving nincompoops. The author writes an interesting, Chronological history which follows Harrison through several battles and provides a wide enough context to understand the battle and the other people involved.
The Whig party was built on sand. It was composed of people who were against something, Masons, Tariffs, Banks, slavery, or favored them. The cement that held these diverse notions together was a mutual dislike for the Democrat Clay. The struggle Harrison endured to clear his name and become the Whig president took more pages than his presidency, which covered his long speech in bad weather, his illness, and (spoiler alert) death just a month after taking office.

[Larkin Tackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

President William Henry Harrison is the president most known for serving only 32 days as president after catching a bad cold. This 85 year-0ld biography of Old Tippecanoe is pretty readable, although more like an old wikipedia entry, and paints a positive portrait of the president. Harrison is one of the only children of Virginia's and the US's founders generation (his dad, Benjamin Harrison V, signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) to go on to great things. The ninth is most known for his service as Governor of the Indiana Territory, General of the War of 1812 who won the Battle of Tippecanoe, negotiator of some of the least oppressive Indian treaties (if that's even possible), and the grandfather of President Benjamin Harrison. He is less know for begin a decent person for the time period. Like many of his predecessors, Harrison supported slavery, but also indentured servitude for slaves. Old Tippecanoe served a short stint as a diplomat in Colombia and loved to garden. Of all the presidential biographies I've read so far, this one had the most abrupt ending. He died on p. 342 and the book ended on p. 343.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm mixed on giving this a 3 or a 4 stars. There were times this book did make me laugh:

"I received... the new Commission... and I beg you to receive my warmest thanks for this additional proof of your confidence and friendship The emoluments of my office afford me a decent support and will I hope... enable me to lay up a small fund for the education of my children - I have hiterto found however that my nursery grows faster than my strongbox."

Harrison was only President for a month, and he did have an interesting background. He was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was a military man that worked his way into the role of General, and his son married the daughter of Zebulion Pike. He did not speak up enough about his successes as later in life others tried to take credit for them. Harrison was an interesting person, but this book dove too much into the details and was a struggle to finish.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid overview of William Henry Harrison and his times. Probably the best (of the few) around but it often felt too focused on minutiae that did little to add to the reader's overall picture of the biographical subject. Though very detailed and well-written, it occasionally fails to humanize Old Tippecanoe. We get a solid idea of his achievements and the trajectory of his career but I often wished I was reading more of his relations at home with family, friends, and loved ones. There was also a lot to be desired in the description of his final political campaign. The book ends with Harrison's death - perhaps it could've done with a "look-into-the-future" aftermath of the events it just described. A decent read - perhaps the best about William Henry Harrison - but it still misses the mark on a few fronts.

[Russ Grossman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the 17th book in my Presidential biography challenge. There aren't many choices for William Henry Harrison, and this seemed the most complete. It's pretty readable given it's age, but that wasn't really the issue for me. While the book itself was thoroughly researched and written, large portions of it were just plain boring. It felt like so much of the book was about military battles, which were not the most interesting to me. Harrison had an interesting relationship with Native Americans and seemed to have a bond with Tecumseh. At the end, Cleaves suggests that had Native Americans been able to vote, they would have unanimously picked Harrison for President. There was a bit at the beginning of his family history and a few chapters at the end about the Presidential elections of 1836 and 1840 along with his extremely short presidency. For me, those were the most interesting. In fact, the election of 1840 definitely started the modern trend of campaigning and merchandising. Harrison was promoted as living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider. He was also the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe where Van Buren was a failed politician with designs on being a dictator (which isn't true, but hey, it's a campaign). Harrison seemed like a really decent guy with good policies, but unfortunately, we didn't get to see many. Furthermore, Cleaves abruptly ends the book upon Harrison's death. There's nothing about his legacy, what happened right after, or conjecture on what a full Harrison term could have been like. Since it was so short, it would have been nice to at least have some thoughts on what he could have accomplished. There aren't many choices, so if you want the complete Harrison, this is the one. But, if someone decides to take him on again in the future, there is definitely room for improvement.

[Douglas Trent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adequate, is the best word for this book. Like other reviewers I am trying to read a biography on all US Presidents and this was the only in depth book I could find.

The book was thoroughly researched and seemed to be balanced. It’s pretty sad that more books haven’t been written about Harrison because he actually lead an incredible life.

This book is an in-depth biography of Harrison. It is well researched and seems to be extremely thorough. However the writing style is very slow and is not a fun read. Going into this book you just realize this it is more of an academic effort and not stylish. The book was published in 1939 and it shows in the writing style.

But if you’re going to read a book about President Harrison this is probably the best you’re going to get.