William Henry Harrison
2008-02-20 22:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asher553... was the first President to do what in office?
If you answered "die", you win today's prize.
President William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in American history. He followed it up with the shortest presidency in American history.
He died a month later.
White House: William Henry Harrison.
The military adage "There's a fine line between hard and stupid" had not yet been coined.
If you answered "die", you win today's prize.
President William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in American history. He followed it up with the shortest presidency in American history.
He took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, an extremely cold and wet day. Nevertheless, he faced the weather without his overcoat and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. At 8,444 words, it took nearly two hours to read (even after his friend and fellow Whig, Daniel Webster, had edited it for length). He then rode through the streets in the inaugural parade, and later caught a cold, which then developed into pneumonia and pleurisy.
He died a month later.
White House: William Henry Harrison.
"Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it," a Democratic newspaper foolishly gibed, "he will sit ... by the side of a 'sea coal' fire, and study moral philosophy. " The Whigs, seizing on this political misstep, in 1840 presented their candidate William Henry Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren.
The military adage "There's a fine line between hard and stupid" had not yet been coined.
