Indiana: President Of The Month with Sharon McMahon
The Preamble
Sharon McMahon
4.9 • 15.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Sharon shares the story of the shortest American presidency in our nation’s history. William Henry Harrison was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States, elected during the 1840 election. Harrison became the first president to die in office just one month after taking the Oath of Office. Harrison was the last U.S. president born under British rule and became a pioneer of the American Whig Party during his presidential campaign. Not only was William Henry Harrison’s untimely death caused a riff controversy in the capital about the role of the vice president upon the death of the president, and the decisions that resulted ultimately set a precedent we still uphold in our democracy today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello friends so glad you're here today delighted to be talking to you about |
| 0:08.5 | the great state of a Deanna and what would Indiana be without William Henry Harrison |
| 0:17.0 | the future US president who served the shortest time in office. |
| 0:24.0 | He's one of those people where it's like, |
| 0:26.0 | what do I know about him? |
| 0:28.0 | I don't know. Shortest time in office, that's what I got. |
| 0:31.0 | Maybe you know that he was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, a later U.S. |
| 0:36.4 | president, but that's it, right? Right. So that's going to change today. |
| 0:41.2 | Let's dive into our story about William Henry Harrison. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome |
| 0:47.8 | to the Sharon Says So podcast. |
| 0:52.3 | So let's start off with the fact that he was born. |
| 0:55.0 | Like every single human on earth. |
| 1:00.0 | He was born in 1773 and he was the last US president to be born a British subject. |
| 1:08.0 | So he was actually born in the state of Virginia. |
| 1:11.0 | His family had been in the United States since the 1630s and his family |
| 1:18.0 | was the owner of a large plantation in Virginia. His father, Benjamin Harrison the fifth, was a delegate to |
| 1:27.9 | the Continental Congress and he was actually a governor of Virginia. |
| 1:32.0 | William Henry Harrison's brother was in the House of |
| 1:35.0 | Representatives. So take note that he actually was born into a family of means, significant means, because it is going to play a role in this conversation later. |
| 1:49.0 | So he gets the best education that a man in the 1700s could get in the United States of America |
| 1:57.7 | and by the time he was 18 years old he was admitted to medical school. |
| 2:03.0 | He was going to go to the University of Pennsylvania |
... |
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