I

CHAPTER X.

ANCESTRY.

N the opening life of William Henry Harrison, we are carried back to Virginia, mother of presidents, nursery of freedom and the revolution, home of great men and great deeds; we mingle again with the Washingtons, the Randolphs, the Lees, the Masons, Marshalls, Henrys, Wythes, Jeffersons, Madisons and Monroes, and their great compatriots; we see again that rich and picturesque land, rivered with the Potomac, the James, the Shenandoah and the Rapidan, washed by Atlantic tides and overlooked by the peaks of the Blue Ridge-land of sunshine and fruitfulness, which will ever hold a great place in American history because of its production of so many great men.

The father of William Henry was Benjamin rrison, of Virginia, associate of the great patriots of the revolution. was in comparatively opulent circumstances; was an intimate friend of Washington; was among the first in Virginia to resist the oppressions of England; was a member of the Continental Congress, and was three times governor of Virginia. When in Congress he was chosen to preside over that body, but in deference to Massachusetts and John Hancock, from that state, he declined; and seeing that Mr. Hancock, who was a small man, while Harrison was very large, strong, and full of fun, modestly

hesitated, he caught him in his arms, carried him to the speaker's chair and placed him in it, amid roars of laughter from the members; then turning round, his honest, ruddy face beaming with merriment, he said: "Gentlemen, we will show Mother Britain how little we care for her by making a Massachusetts man our president, whom she has excluded from pardon by a public proclamation."

Mr. Harrison always saw the ludicrous side of things, and often had his joke over serious matters. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was solemn work, in the face of British power, for the colonists to put their names to their own death-warrant, if they failed to maintain their independence. They realized it all, and opened that solemn work with prayer. While the signing was going on, Mr. Harrison turned to Elbridge Gerry, who was a small, fragile man, and said: "Gerry, when the hanging comes I shall have the advantage. You'll kick in the air half an hour after it is all over with me." This was the father of the ninth president, a brave, hearty, magnificent man, loyal, loving, and overflowing with goodhumor.

BIRTH AND YOUTH.

William Henry was the third and youngest son of this brave Virginia patriot. He was born at Berkeley, on the banks of the James river, February 9, 1773. His early education was got in the schools of Virginia, but no small part of it came to him unconsciously from his family associations-from the men of the revolution whom he knew and heard talk of the times and men that gave being to the nation. The air of Virginia was alive with patriotism. He was born three years before the Declaration of Independence. He was ten years old when Cornwallis surrendered to Washington near his home, and remembered well the rejoicings when peace was declared. He was fourteen when the convention met to form the constitution; was sixteen when Washington was inaugurated president, and twenty when he entered upon his second term. He was the child of that great era. His mind fed on its great deeds, and

his soul drank in its spirit. He was educated on patriotism, liberty and martial valor. The speeches, messages, constitutions and laws of his time were his youthful studies. His youth was the constitution era of the young country. The principles of civil liberty and law were the talk of the men and youth about him. It was the organizing era of nationality. To live then was to be in a great school. It was especially so to active and aspiring minds like young Harrison's. They were taken out of themselves and made public-spirited. Selfishness was made subservient to the great interests of society. To live for the general good was the great and manly ambition. Boys that otherwise would grovel, were made aspiring. It was a magnificent age to live in, and blessed were the youth who were born to an education in those principle-discussing and state-making times. Mean and sordid living was not in fashion. Effeminacy had no place. Courage, stalwartness, generosity, large-mindedness, were the qualities of manly virtue. A son of the times. was William Henry Harrison.

His father died in 1791, when he was eighteen. He was left under the guardianship of Robert Morris, the distinguished financier. He entered and graduated from Hampden Sidney college. So, to the educating and enlarging influences of the times, he added a course of liberal study. He did not cheat his mind to serve his pocket; did not give to youthful frivolity the time that manly culture demands. The youthful years were ripened in the college classes. His good endowments were quickened by the added strength of the athletic discipline of academic study. He carried no boy's mind into a man's place; but with furnished powers, ripened and energized by the training of the schools, he entered upon a man's course a man indeed, with a man's breadth of mind and strength of action.

OPENING MANHOOD.

During his course of study young Harrison had concluded to study medicine and make its practice his profession. He went to Philadelphia to study with Doctor Rush, who was a friend of

his father and a signer with him of the Declaration of Independence. It does not appear how long he remained with Doctor Rush, but it could not have been long, for before he was twentyone he was westward bound, as a soldier to defend the frontier against the murderous Indians. His guardian and his friends generally tried to dissuade him from it. He consulted with Washington, who approved it, who secured for him a commission of ensign. Washington was greatly interested in the settlement of the west and knew how needful it was to have an army to defend the settlements against the savages; and also what opportunities were open to the youth of the country in that great field of enterprise. With Washington's approval he turned his young face, not yet twenty-one, toward the setting sun.

Many considerations doubtless entered into his resolution to go as a soldier into the new west.

When he was eighteen years old he became a member of an abolition society at Richmond, Virginia, the object of which was to ameliorate the condition of the slaves and secure their freedom by all legal means. In speaking of this later in life, he said: "From my earliest youth and to the present moment, I have been an ardent friend of human liberty. The obligations which I then came under I have faithfully performed. I have been the means of liberating many slaves, but never placed one in bondage. I was the first person to introduce into Congress the proposition that all the country above Missouri should never have slavery admitted into it." He could see that slavery was entrenched in Virginia, and it might be long before it would be abolished. It troubled his conscience and his heart. It would be better to go away from it at once into a free territory and there help build up a free community.

Again his young blood was patriotic; he lived in stirring times; he was ambitious to serve a country the birth of which he had seen; why settle down to the humdrum practice of medicine when the great west was calling for soldiers and settlers? Washington began as a soldier, why should not he? There was great suffering in the west, there was need of soldiers to defend the settlements. So he went went a soldier boy.

At this time he was tall, slender, fragile. His friends feared he would not be equal to the hardships of campaign life in an Indian war. Some had anxiety lest he would not be able to get there. It was autumn; but nothing daunted, he started and crossed the country and mountains on foot to what is now Pittsburgh, and thence down the Ohio river to Fort Washington, located where Cincinnati is now situated.

General St. Clair had a considerable military force at Fort Washington, and had charge of the army on the frontier.

A little while before Harrison started on his mission into the wilderness, General St. Clair had made a western movement with fourteen hundred men to rout the Indians from along the Wabash river. Near the headwaters of that river, he was attacked by a large body of Indians, who gave a desperate battle and utterly routed him, killing five hundred and thirty and wounding three hundred and sixty of his men. Almost two thirds of his men were killed or wounded.

Very soon after reaching the fort, Harrison was assigned to the duty of leading a pack-horse train of supplies to Fort Hamilton, twenty-five or thirty miles north, on the Miami river. It was a perilous undertaking, for the skulking foe was nearly omnipresent, and if met, the pack-horses would be at his mercy, as well as the few men with them. The young officer performed so well his duty as to get the special approval of General St. Clair.

The delicate and boy-like face and appearance of the new soldier who had come from Virginia with a commission from Washington, attracted attention from all who met him. After his return from Fort Hamilton, an old frontiersman said of him: "I would as soon have thought of putting my wife into the service as this boy; but I have been out with him, and find those smooth cheeks are on a wise head and that slight frame is almost as tough as my own weather-beaten carcass."

It was not long before the young ensign was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Very soon after he joined the army of General Wayne, who had been sent to prosecute more vigorously this war with the Indians. General Wayne had a brilliant revo