It is common knowledge that William Henry Harrison gave a killer speech after being sworn in as the ninth President of the United States – and that has nothing to do with anything he said.
Ignoring the advice of vigilant mothers around the world, “Old Tippecanoe” vowed to forgo his overcoat, hat and gloves while delivering his inaugural address on a freezing, wet winter day. And in a quest to prove his manhood while silencing critics who saw him as a slight intellectual, Harrison, 68, definitely overcompensated by delivering a massive 8,445-word speech that lasted nearly two hours. Many believe that the longest inaugural address in history led directly to the shortest of presidencies, as Harrison died exactly one month later, on April 4, 1841, the official cause being pneumonia.
White House portrait of William Henry Harrison. (Historical Association of the White House)
It is unlikely, however, that the interminable speech caused the death of the president because he only fell ill, complaining of anxiety and fatigue, more than three weeks after his inauguration. Additionally, Harrison’s lung conditions did not appear until the fifth day of his illness and were not as relentless or progressive as the severe abdominal discomfort and constipation he experienced.
After taking a fresh look at the case, Jane McHugh and Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak of the University of Maryland School of Medicine wrote in a 2014 edition of the journal Clinical infectious diseases that Harrison probably died of enteric fever, not a fatal chill contracted at the inauguration.
The couple pointed out that contaminated drinking water was the real cause of Harrison’s disappearance. Before 1850, wastewater from Washington, DC, was dumped into a foul swamp just seven blocks upstream from the White House’s water supply, and researchers speculated bacteria had entered the drinking water and caused the President’s severe gastroenteritis. Harrison’s story of dyspepsia put him at additional risk for contaminated water, which the authors say may have also contributed to the death of another president, Zachary Taylor.
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