WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON: 1841 ~ 9th U.S. President

Stop me if this sounds familiar:

A man who was Senator, who had a storied military career, but who was old by current standards, spends most of his campaign running around trying to convince everyone he isn’t too old to be President of the United States, that his health was good and modern medicine had come a long way.

Nope, not John McCain, the current Republican candidate, but William Henry Harrison. Mr. Harrison took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia, and on April 4, just 31 days later, he died. He was 68 years old, four years younger than McCain is today.

Harrison barely filled most of his cabinet, and there is nothing in his administration on which to judge him.

One can hope that McCain picks a nice, young, healthy running mate.

Harrison’s term is so short and inconsequential that he holds no rank in any historical Presidential poll. You are best finding a biography of him in a used book store sometime. It will be a thin text. He was not photographed in office.

INTERESTING BITS

• He delivered the longest innaugural address.
• He served the shortest time in office.
• He was the first U.S. President to die in office.

There are so many fears, in fact, that it is pointless to deal with them individually. One must deal with fear itself. One must gain a perspective which raises one above fear. Otherwise one will use all of his energy and time dealing with fears one at a time.

All fears may be included in several general fears. There is fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of death and fear of diminishment and indignity.

If one can look at those fears from a high enough perspective–one which includes courage, aspiration, decisiveness and self-denial–one will become fearless. As soon as one strives into the unknown bereft of the burden of an ephemeral self, fear is replaced by joy.

Of course, fear has two ugly sisters: doubt and self-pity. Women seem more prone to doubt, and men to self-pity, but both are suggestibly seduced by the siren of fear.

It is wiser to deal with your response-attitude than it is to deal with an outer provocation. One must be responsive, but not excitable. Responsive, but not reactive. Responsive, but not negatively emotional. Trust in the beneficence of the universe also helps.

– Raphael O’Suna, Haiku

MARTIN  VAN BUREN: 1837-1841 ~ 8th U.S. President

A man of prodigious accomplishments, Van Buren was the country’s first self-made man to become president. Born of poor tenant farmers, Van Buren used his tenuous links with propertied rich friends (the New York Van Nesses) to gain entrance into law school where he eventually repudiated them. He was off, and before he was finished he would become known as “the little magician.”

Contemporaries of his, those with well-known names and fat wallets, people like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, coveted the presidency, but only Van Buren won it. He had worked his way up from law school, to a lucrative practice in New York, then as a New York Senator and Governor. Under Jackson, he was Minister to Great Britian, and Jackson’s vice-president during the second term. Jackson adored Van Buren, and respected his amazing ability to work bureaucracies to accomplish tasks, which is why Jackson held onto him, and even endorsed him as his successor, when Van Buren often didn’t like Jackson’s practices.

THE BAD

• He believed in the spoils system, and many historians consider Van Buren to be the inventor of the modern political party. He saw victory as a blessing, for the winners to bring “like-minded” people along into positions of power. He did not, however, practice as nasty as Jackson did. He did redefine republican government as “party government.”
• Van Buren carried Jefferson’s and Jackson’s disdain for paper currency, and a Central Federal Bank into his office, to his, and the country’s, detriment. Just a few months into his term, hyperinflation exploded. A financial panic radiated from New York to the western farmlands, and thousands of American’s suffered. Van Buren, having already demanded coin (silver and gold) for public payments, could not help anyone, for the bullion needed to prop up currency (which common folk used) was missing from Banks because his policies had stripped the banks bare of coin. A second recession, aided by British tariffs, gave the country a terrible blow in 1840 and Van Buren could not win another term, though his loss was razor thin.

THE GOOD

• Continuously rejected Texas’s plea to become a state. It was Mexican land, as far as Van Buren was concerned, and he wasn’t about to go to war with Mexico for it. And he didn’t.
• In the second recession in 1840, cotton prices plunged, and Van Buren actively prevented any help for the industry. Many think he was using this as a back door to destroy the Southern way of life - which meant slavery. All it did was make certain he didn’t win a vote down there come election.
• Realized his grave error with the National Bank and rammed home legislation that formed the modern independent national bank - the precursor to what is today the “Fed.”

INTERESTING BITS

• His young wife died and he never remarried, but raised his four sons himself, and was spoken of as a kind and generous father.
• Spent the last 22 years of his life, outside the White House, tracking what he called, “the rise of the storm,” the Civil War, which he hoped wouldn’t happen but felt it was inevitable. Many of Abraham Lincoln’s ideas about saving the Union at all costs, and how to abolish slavery while preserving the union, first found expression in Van Buren’s writings.

Murray-Blessing rank: #20

My Score: 50%

Interesting Reading: American Presidents: Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer.