other historians have accepted this vision of our eighth President: Martin Van Buren, the “Little Magician,” the sly “Red Fox of Kinderhook.” He is widely seen as the father of the political party machine, the organizing process of attaining and retaining power which has held national sway right up to the present day. This, historians have tended to agree, was his great legacy to his country. Yet this legacy may also be largely responsible for the negative light so often thrown on his achievements as a leader and as a President.
Why? Because it is an enigmatic truth that although Americans find politics a source of almost endless fascination and debate, they also tend to distrust and dislike politicians. Unless, of course, they win. Then, all is forgiven.
Martin Van Buren, as Silbey suggests, had played an essential role in creating the modern political party machine. He had ridden its influence all the way to the White House. But when he had lost his bid for a second term, the very machine he had been so instrumental in founding had cast him off for other more potentially attractive candidates. He would live long enough to find even at his beloved Lindenwald that his heirs and successors would amend and alter the estate to suit their own needs and tastes. He had lost the power to dictate the direction of his world.
The home here in Kinderhook, New York, then, stands as a somewhat curious combination of attained prominence and accepted defeat. As his country plunged into Civil War, the aging Martin Van Buren would persistently question both his family members and any visitors to Lindenwald about news from the front. Would the Union be saved? Were the Northern armies achieving victories? Had Southern forces threatened Washington? His family and friends repeatedly attempted to reassure the ex-President that the nation would withstand any adversity.
For Martin Van Buren, however, only absolute certainty could relieve him of his anxieties, and, during the first two years of the war, any such certainty was impossible to provide. He died here at his beautiful New York estate in July of 1862. Ironically it was a moment of history when nobody, not even one of the most astute politicians of his age, could be sure of just which side it was that was winning.
William Henry Harrison: No "LOG CABIN"... No "HARD CIDER"
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
