Читать книгу Calling on the Presidents: Tales Their Houses Tell - Clark Beim-Esche - Страница 10

President William Henry Harrison is more often cited as the answer to humorous trivia questions than for his considerable accomplishments prior to being elected our ninth Chief Executive. "What President gave the longest inauguration speech?" "What President served for the shortest time?" "What President's campaign slogan was, '...settle upon him a pension of $2,000 a year, and... he will be content to live in a LOG CABIN and drink HARD CIDER the remainder of his life.'" Yet, both his home in Vincennes, Indiana, and his birthplace, Berkeley Plantation, in the Virginia tidewater, reveal a very different and more substantial William Henry Harrison than do these often repeated quips. Each location speaks volumes to visitors interested in learning more about the man behind the trivia.

My first geographic encounter with the historical William Henry Harrison occurred at neither of the two above mentioned homes, but rather in a leaf-covered narrow plot of fenced-in ground in central Indiana. Our son had recently matriculated to Purdue University in West Lafayette, and, after a happy parental visit, Carol and I found our way to the nearby site of Tippecanoe.

As battlefields go, Tippecanoe is quite small: a long, narrow strip of forested land butting up to the steep bank of a meandering stream. But this seemingly inconsequential site would launch William Henry Harrison all the way to the Presidency. Here, in November of 1811, the most serious threat to American expansion into the so-called Northwest Territory had ended in a furious predawn battle that would rout the American Indian forces gathered at their capital, Prophetstown. Although Indians would continue to aid British forces in the upcoming War of 1812, no battle in the northwest would be fought this far south again. General Harrison and his army would go on the offensive, pursuing the British and their Indian allies into Canada before achieving final victory in Ontario.

By the time he fought at Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison had served as Governor of the Indiana territory for twelve years. He had parleyed with, as well as campaigned against, various native tribes and leaders, and he had recognized the influence and power exercised over these peoples by charismatic chiefs like Tecumseh. The Governor's mansion that Harrison commissioned in the territorial capital of Vincennes stood as a powerful symbol of the ideals he was dedicated to bringing to the region under his charge. He named his new home Grouseland in acknowledgment of the abundant game fowl indigenous to the region.

Built in the first years of his governorship of the Indiana Territory (1803-04), Grouseland, or as it was also called, “The Great House," must have seemed like an architectural miracle to the people of the frontier. It is important to remember that at this period western Indiana was regarded as the far west territory of the fledgling United States of America. Yet here in Vincennes arose a two-story brick Greek revival home with a projecting porch of Doric and Ionic columns, crowned with a classic pediment. The left side of the home bowed out toward the river, creating a wall with a semi-circular arch, and the front hall featured an elegant staircase that seemed to float in air as it made a twisting curve up to the second story of the home.

There are also evidences that this astonishing structure was created, fully mindful of the hostile wilderness which lay close by. The walls are over a foot thick and contain slit holes to accommodate rifle barrels. The long windows were fitted with heavy shutters that could be pulled over the glass in case of attack, and there was a powder magazine located in the basement area of the mansion. The resulting structure, then, is a curious mixture of elegance and fortification, both qualities Harrison wished to incorporate into the plan of his Grouseland.

On the day of Carol's and my visit to this beautiful home in Vincennes, I tried to imagine the scene in 1810, when Tecumseh, along with several hundred of his Indian allies, had arrived here to conference with the future President. Before these very walls, the two adversaries had wheeled and parried around each other's aims and intents. Yet even then, on some level, Tecumseh must have felt that his people's day was fading. Despite the adamancy of this great Indian leader of the confederation of tribes under his command, Tecumseh must have sensed that his people would be no match for the technological superiority of the new settlers who had created such an architectural phenomenon in the heart of Indiana. Grouseland remains today a metaphor and a reminder of what William Henry Harrison knew all along: that the future belonged to the people of the United States and that the native Indian populations would someday and in some way have to accede to that fact.

Of course, none of this really explains how Harrison became, in later years, the “LOG CABIN" and “HARD CIDER" candidate of the Whig party in 1840. Certainly such a roughhewn image, aside perhaps from his pedigree as a frontier Indian fighter, was totally absent from the mansion he had established here in the territorial capital.

And visiting his birthplace in the Virginia tidewater offers no help in fathoming the Whig slogan either, for Berkeley Plantation is one of the truly grand Virginia homes, dating back fifty years before the Revolution.

Berkeley Plantation, about fifteen minutes west of Colonial Williamsburg, is a storied location. Here, in December 1619, on the banks of the James River, a year before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Thanksgiving was first celebrated in the new world. Here, over two hundred years later, a young Union soldier, billeted on the grounds with thousands of other men, would compose “Taps." And here, in February of 1773, William Henry Harrison was born.

Berkeley Plantation, like Grouseland, is a brick structure, replete with Greco-Roman echoes and elements. Graceful pediments jut out over the front and back doors of the home. Expansive grounds spread out from this plantation centerpiece in all directions and to the south include manicured gardens that lead one down a gradual slope to a dock on the James River. In total, Berkeley stands as a prime example of settled, affluent, civilized power.

And, walking the grounds, Carol and I noted it was also clearly the inspiration for the Grouseland mansion Harrison would construct a thousand miles to the west.

So what explains the “LOG CABIN" and “HARD CIDER" moniker? Pure, undiluted politics. And even, with a terrible irony, these two homes suggest an explanation of the other hackneyed pieces of Harrison trivia: his extravagantly long inaugural speech and his short-lived Presidency.

In 1840, the Whig party was desperate for a viable presidential candidate. And, what is more, they were sure that, with the right man, they could win. For the Whigs, the Presidency of Andrew Jackson had been an extended nightmare. In fact the Whig party itself, rather than being any sort of a defined political organization, was a hodgepodge of various factions which could agree only on the need to oust the dominant Democratic control of the Presidency, personified first in Jackson and, more recently, in his chosen successor, Martin Van Buren.

Now, in the upcoming 1840 election, the Whigs saw their chance. The financial panic of 1837, caused largely as a reaction to Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States, had left his successor in a tight financial bind. Yet even this economic downturn, Whigs feared, might not be enough to woo American voters to abandon their beloved “General Jackson" and his minions. What the Whigs needed was another western, tough-as-nails, Indian fighting General. And William Henry Harrison appeared to fit the bill perfectly. But Harrison was also a gentleman from Virginia, the civilized builder of Grouseland, who hailed from one of the most prestigious patrician families of the Virginia tidewater.

“Forget all that," his political handlers counseled. “Let's make him out to be the Whig Andy Jackson: a down-to-earth western fighter, a man of the people." And so, with an early and brilliant example of political spin, William Henry Harrison was presented and touted as a relatively unlettered and unsophisticated man, upon whom a pension, a “LOG CABIN," and a barrel of “HARD CIDER" would suffice to render him content for life.

The result was a landslide electoral win for the Whigs, but a discontented victor. One gets the distinct impression that Harrison, though obviously gratified to have been raised to the highest position in the land, wanted, perhaps even needed, to let the American people know that, however hardened his life on the frontier might have made him, they had elected no bumpkin to the Presidency. After the election he returned to his ancestral home, Berkeley Plantation, and there crafted his inauguration speech, brimming with prolonged classical allusions and erudite phraseology.

What he hadn't counted on was the weather. On inauguration day in early March, a bitterly cold wind swept through the capital city. Regardless of the chill, Harrison spoke at length, even refusing to wear an overcoat or hat. He was, after all, old Tippecanoe, and thirty days later, he was dead of pneumonia.

It is hard not to feel an irony implicit in the two homes which are associated with this great man. If they could have spoken to him, one wonders whether or not they might have counseled the old soldier and territorial governor to insist on staying closer to his genuine lineage. William Henry Harrison was no unlettered backwoods figure, emerging out of obscurity and armed only with a smattering of common sense, coupled with militaristic gusto. He was the son of privilege (his openly aristocratic Vice President, John Tyler, resided only one or two plantations up from Berkeley on the same Virginia tidewater section of the James River). Harrison was a soldier of great cunning and courage. And, as the architecture of both his birthplace and the home he built in the western wilderness territory clearly attest, he also was a man of refinement and taste. There was nothing trivial about him except the political world which he, unwisely it turned out, had allowed to define his legacy.