post after the disaster of the river Raisin. After Lieutenant O. H. Perry’s naval victory on the 10th of September 1813, Harrison no longer had to remain on the defensive; he advanced to Detroit, re-occupied the territory surrendered by General William Hull, and on the 5th of October administered a crushing defeat to Proctor at the battle of the Thames.
In 1814 Harrison received no active assignments to service, and on this account and because the secretary of war (John Armstrong) issued an order to one of Harrison’s subordinates without consulting him, he resigned his commission. Armstrong accepted the resignation without consulting President Madison, but the president later utilized Harrison in negotiating with the north-western Indians, the greater part of whom agreed (22nd July 1814) to a second treaty of Greenville, by which they were to become active allies of the United States, should hostilities with Great Britain continue. This treaty publicly marked an American policy of alliance with these Indians and caused the British peace negotiators at Ghent to abandon them. In the following year Harrison held another conference at Detroit with these tribes in order to settle their future territorial relations with the United States.
From 1816 to 1819 Harrison was a representative in Congress, and as such worked in behalf of more liberal pension laws and a better militia organization, including a system of general military education, of improvements in the navigation of the Ohio, and of relief for purchasers of public lands, and for the strict construction of the power of Congress over the Territories, particularly in regard to slavery. In accordance with this view in 1819 he voted against Tallmadge’s amendment (restricting the extension of slavery) to the enabling act for the admission of Missouri. He also delivered forcible speeches upon the death of Kosciusko and upon General Andrew Jackson’s course in the Floridas, favouring a partial censure of the latter.
Harrison was a member of the Ohio senate in 1819–1821, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the National House of Representatives in 1822, when his Missouri vote helped to cause his defeat; he was a presidential elector in 1824, supporting Henry Clay, and from 1825 to 1828 was a member of the United States Senate. In 1828 after unsuccessful efforts to secure for him the command of the army, upon the death of Major-General Jacob Brown, and the nomination for the vice-president, on the ticket with John Quincy Adams, his friends succeeded in getting Harrison appointed as the first minister of the United States to Colombia. He became, however, an early sacrifice to Jackson’s spoils system, being recalled within less than a year, but not until he had involved himself in some awkward diplomatic complications with Bolivar’s autocratic government.
For some years after his return from Colombia he lived in retirement at North Bend, Ohio. He was occasionally “mentioned” for governor, senator or representative, by the anti-Jackson forces, and delivered a few addresses on agricultural or political topics. Later he became clerk of the court of common pleas of Hamilton county—a lucrative position that was then most acceptable to him. Early in 1835 Harrison began to be mentioned as a suitable presidential candidate, and later in the year he was nominated for the presidency at large public meetings in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. In the election of the following year he attracted a large part of the Whig and Anti-Masonic vote of the Middle and Western states and led among the candidates opposing Van Buren, but received only 73 electoral votes while Van Buren received 170. His unexpected strength, due largely to his clear, if non-committal, political record, rendered him the most “available” candidate for the Whig party for the campaign of 1840, and he was nominated by the Whig convention at Harrisburg, Pa., in December 1839, his most formidable opponent being Henry Clay, who, though generally regarded as the real leader of his party, was less “available” because as a mason he would alienate former members of the old Anti-Masonic party, and as an advocate of a protective tariff would repel many Southern voters. The convention adjourned without adopting any “platform” of principles, the party shrewdly deciding to make its campaign merely on the issue of whether the Van Buren administration should be continued in power and thus to take full advantage of the popular discontent with the administration, to which was attributed the responsibility for the panic of 1837 and the subsequent business depression. Largely to attract the votes of Democratic malcontents the Whig convention nominated for the vice-presidency John Tyler, who had previously been identified with the Democratic party. The campaign was marked by the extraordinary enthusiasm exhibited by the Whigs, and by their skill in attacking Van Buren without binding themselves to any definite policy. Because of his fame as a frontier hero, of the circumstance that a part of his home at North Bend, Ohio, had formerly been a log cabin, and of the story that cider, not wine, was served on his table, Harrison was derisively called by his opponents the “log cabin and hard cider” candidate; the term was eagerly accepted by the Whigs, in whose processions miniature log cabins were carried and at whose meetings hard cider was served, and the campaign itself has become known in history as the “log cabin and hard cider campaign.” Harrison’s canvass was conspicuous for the immense Whig processions and mass meetings, the numerous “stump” speeches (Harrison himself addressing meetings at Dayton, Chillicothe, Columbus and other places), and the use of campaign songs, of party insignia, and of campaign cries (such as “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”); and in the election he won by an overwhelming majority of 234 electoral votes to 60 cast for Van Buren.
President Harrison was inaugurated on the 4th of March 1841. He chose for his cabinet Daniel Webster as secretary of state, Thomas Ewing as secretary of the treasury, John Bell as secretary of war, George E. Badger as secretary of the navy, Francis Granger as postmaster-general, and John J. Crittenden as attorney-general. He survived his inauguration only one month, dying on the 4th of April 1841, and being succeeded by the vice-president, John Tyler. The immediate cause of his death was an attack of pneumonia, but the disease was aggravated by the excitement attending his sudden change in circumstances and the incessant demands of office seekers. After temporary interment at Washington, his body was removed to the tomb at North Bend, Ohio, where it now lies. A few of Harrison’s public addresses survive, the most notable being A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio. It has been said of him: “He was not a great man, but he had lived in a great time, and he had been a leader in great things.” He was the first territorial delegate in the Congress of the United States and was the author of the first step in the development of the country’s later homestead policy; the first presidential candidate to be selected upon the ground of “expediency” alone; and the first president to die in office. In 1795 he married Anna Symmes (1775–1864), daughter of John Cleves Symmes. Their grandson, Benjamin Harrison, was the twenty-third president of the United States.
Authorities.—In 1824 Moses Dawson published at Cincinnati the Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military Services of Major-General William H. Harrison. This is a combined defence and political pamphlet, but it is the source of all the subsequent “lives” that have appeared. There are several “campaign” biographies, including one by Richard Hildreth (1839) and one by Caleb Cushing (1840); and there is a good sketch in Presidents of the United States (New York, 1894), edited by J. G. Wilson. An excellent study of Harrison’s career in Indiana appears in vol. 4 of the Indiana Historical Society Publications. Selections from his scanty correspondence appear in vols. ii. and iii. of the Quarterly Publications of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio.
HARRISON, a town of Hudson county, New Jersey, U.S.A.,
on the Passaic river, opposite Newark (with which it is connected
by bridges and electric railways), and 7 m. W. of Jersey City.
Pop. (1890) 8338; (1900) 10,596, of whom 3633 were foreign-born;
(1910 census) 14,498. It is served by the Pennsylvania,
the Erie, and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railways.
Harrison was chosen as the eastern terminal of the Pennsylvania
railroad for steam locomotive service, transportation thence
to New York being by electric power through the railway’s
Hudson river tunnels. The town has an extensive river-front,
along which are many of its manufactories; among their
products are steam-pumps, steel, iron, machinery, roller bearings,
