Thomas Herman, age 15, of White Plains, N.Y., for his question:
WHICH U.S. PRESIDENT SERVED THE SHORTEST TERM?
William Henry Harrison, the ninth President of the United States, served the shortest term of any president in American history when he became the first to die in office. He caught cold on the day he was inaugurated and died 30 days later after the cold turned to pneumonia.
President Harrison had the nickname "Tippecanoe" which he picked up after defeating the Shawnes Indians in 1811 at the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Whig party first ran him for president against Democrat Martin Van Buren in 1836, but he lost. They ran him again in 1840 against President Van Buren, and this time he won.
There was an indication that as president, Harrison would have been efficient at running the government. Unfortunately, he didn't have a chance to prove his worth.
When Harrison died on April 4, 1841, in the White House, Vice President John Tyler became the nation's chief executive.
One of the most famous of all political campaign slogans had been "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
Forty eight years after President William Henry Harrison died, his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became the 23rd president of the United States. This is the only case in American history where both a grandfather and a grandson served in the nation's highest office.
William Henry Harrison had been appointed governor of the Indiana Territory in 1800. He served in the War of 1812 as a brigadier general in command of the Army of the Northwest and later became a major general.
In 1814 Harrison resigned from the Army and in 1816 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In 1819 he became a state senator in Ohio and was later elected by his state legislature to serve in the United States Senate.
Harrison resigned his Senate seat in 1828 to accept an appointment from President John Quincy Adams as the first United States minister to the South American country of Colombia.
William Henry Harrison was the youngest of seven children. His father had served in both Continental Congresses and had also signed the Declaration of Independence. George Washington had been a close friend of the senior Harrison.
When Harrison ran against Martin Van Buren for president in 1836, Van Buren captured 170 electoral votes while Harrison had only 73. Four years later, when the two were matched again in the presidential race, Harrison won by a vote of 234 to 60. His popular vote, however, was only 147,000 votes above Van Buren.
In the campaign that saw him elected, party leaders told Harrison not to say one single word about his principles or creed. The Whig, Party emphasized antics rather than issues.
The campaign made it a point to present Harrison as the "log cabin, hard cider" candidate and said that the aristocratic van Buren wore "corsets and silk stockings."