Norwich bulletin., 1920-04-15

QOSl dl 41OSOAd-
 Rigidly barred from federal office thenceforth throughout the long Jacksonian era: honorably poor and without profession; unable to make a living merely by farming his estate at North Bend, on the Ohio, little way below Cincinnati, Harrison tried for while to seke out an income by running whiskey distillery on his place. But ile reformed and became clerk of the Hamilton county court. From that modest post to the presi- dency is long stretch, but he took it at a single step. It is the longest stride forward in the. records of poli- | ties.
 Jackson had blazed a new trail to 1 the White House, and Harrison was f the second to tread it. In the first 40 years men became president only after I serving a regular apprenticeship. \ Jackson rudely broke that order of succession, and we since have had only l three presidents-Van Buren, Buchan- an and Taft-who had any experience ! in high executive or diplomatic posts under the federal government. The rest have been picked out of the crowd At Harrison's inauguration the tpresidency entered an eclipse and was held for 20 years by secondary char acters, who reigned but did not rule. With men of the eminence of Clay and Webster, Calhoun and Benton, lat terly. Cass and Houston. Douglas and Davis, Chase and Wade, Seward and
 Sumner in the senate, distinction and !. leadership passed from the White
 House to the capitol. It was an
 ignoble period in our politics when both parties were lodging the ire lpressible issue of slavery, and the smaller the candidate for president the
 better chance he had to dodge the Iquestion.
 Thus Harrison, the county court clerk, outran Henry Clay in the Whie . lconvention- and outran Webster at the I, polls in 1886 when he himself was ar
 unsuccessful against Van Buren Again, in 1S40. the Whigs preferred him to Clay and made him the gro. tesque figurehead in a hippodrornint
 campaign such as the country nevel . had seen before and happily neve 7 since has seen. As proof of the i'm ? partiality of the Whig convention. nominated John Tyler. a democrat, fo
 Twice president, on the ticket witt
 Harrison, and adopted no platform o
 lparty principles. Nevertheless, i. Manic went, hell bent, for Governor Kent
 f in the September election. Thence , forth, till November, log cabin O l. wheels, with its coonskins and it e barrel of hard cider, rolled noisily o $ to an easy but empty victory in tn d nation
 : For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.
 Elected without a party policy fc l. his guidance, the president was eS = jpected by Clay and Webster to acceI them as his. guides. He invited bot ts of these towering giants into his cal II inet, but only Webster accepted, taL le ing the secretaryship of state. I
 him was submitted the inaugural a6 1t Idress for revision. After wadin d. through its fiowery rhetoric with h pruning knife, the great man was e, e. hausted by his editorial labors and h "a anxious landlady was moved to il
 iquire why he should look so wearied. lg Madam" was the reply, within D. hours I have killed F Roman procol nt suls-dead as smelts, every one
 1 them."
 D. That was the first inaugural, by u m by, to be borne to the country by ne swifter messenger than the horse. IT
 railroad sped it So fast that Philade
 lphia papers astonished their reade
 by publishing it on the very day of
 delivery.
 NI In the teeth of a piercing northwe HIwind, the old farmer president-eleC \ bareheaded and disdaining the prote , \ ton of an overcoat, rode horseback the capitol. After addressing a gre crowd that shivered in it's shawls ar i, furs, he insisted, though half froze on remounting his horse and leadfl =, the inaugural parade to the Whi n House.
 No sooner was the first Whig pres
 dent in the chair than the claims
 faction and the clamor for patrona
 lassailed him. Clay had declined ca
 ,,inet honors-and- labers-iE the con
 ldent expectation of playing the easi
 behind the throne. The inaperio
 manners of the Great Common
 wounding the presidential pride,
 was requested to make his calls at {
 White House as infreauent and inco on spicuous as he conveniently eou ny Thereupon his total absence becai
 embarrassingly conspicuous.
 in The one clear mandate of the a ao, surd election of 1S40 was to turn C Ne the democrats and give the jobs es, the Wings. Straightaway a hung y- horde fell upon Harrison and litera an devoured him. In a month to a q an he was dead of pneumonia, the ii
 a president to die in office throughC nd l the more than 50 years of its existen he This briefest of administrations i.
 pathetic little story of simple lol the ly old, man, lured from his farm to sn- the sport of politics. filling in be in and married in mind, he was with' lio the care and companionship of the good wife, Anna Symmes Harris in slaughter of a New Jersey colonel ,hn the Revolution, who became one i'm the pioneer soldiers of Ohio Brol ow by the hard toll of frontier hou of- hold and sorrowing for the. loss ted eight of her ten children, this wife in one president and grandmother ion another, still was making ready ote take up her duties as mistress of