The 30 Day Presidency
The election of 1840 was the first campaign with slogans, songs and modern campaign paraphernalia. The slogan that became best known was “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Tippecanoe was the battle that William Henry Harrison won against the Indians in 1811. The Whigs remade Harrison, who had been an uninspired military leader, into a great war hero.
William Henry Harrison won 80 percent of the Electoral College votes making him the first candidate to earn more than one million votes. Though economics, enslavement, and employment were all major issues, the election was typified by cider. In the words of one newspaper: “We have had almost eleven years experiment of a rum-and- whiskey administration. It is time for a change. Let us try the hard cider.”
CHANGE WAS SHORT-LIVED. Harrison caught a cold, which quickly developed into pneumonia and 30 days into his first term, on April 4, 1841, he died–the first President to die in office–and with him died the Whig program.
He was also the oldest elected US President at the time. It took 140 years for an older one to come along with the election of Ronald Reagan.
William Henry Harrison was also grandfather to President Benjamin Harrison.