Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the by Robert M. Owens

Often remembered because the president who died presently after taking workplace, William Henry Harrison continues to be misunderstood via such a lot americans. earlier than turning into the 9th president of the us in 1841, Harrison was once instrumental in shaping the early years of westward growth. Robert M. Owens now explores that period during the lens of Harrison’s occupation, offering a brand new synthesis of his position within the political improvement of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian coverage within the outdated Northwest.

Owens strains Harrison’s political profession as secretary of the Northwest Territory, territorial delegate to Congress, and governor of Indiana Territory, in addition to his army management and involvement with Indian kin. Thomas Jefferson, who was once president throughout the first decade of the 19th century, present in Harrison the precise agent to hold out his administration’s ruthless crusade to extinguish Indian land titles.

More than a examine of the guy, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer is a cultural biography of his fellow settlers, telling how this primary iteration of post-Revolutionary american citizens learned their imaginative and prescient of development and expansionism. It surveys the army, political, and social international of the early Ohio Valley and exhibits that Harrison’s attitudes and behaviour mirrored his Virginia heritage and its eighteenth-century notions up to his frontier milieu.

To this present day, we are living with the echoes of Harrison’s proclamations, the bounds set by way of his treaties, and the ramifications of his activities. Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer bargains a far wanted reappraisal of Harrison’s influence at the nation’s improvement and key classes for realizing American sentiments within the early republic.