Mr. Jefferson's Hammer

William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy

By: Robert M. Owens

Narrated by: Doug McDonald

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison’s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.

Owens traces Harrison’s political career as secretary of the Northwest Territory, territorial delegate to Congress, and governor of Indiana Territory, as well as his military leadership and involvement with Indian relations. Thomas Jefferson, who was president during the first decade of the nineteenth century, found in Harrison the ideal agent to carry out his administration’s ruthless campaign to extinguish Indian land titles.

More than a study of the man, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer is a cultural biography of his fellow settlers, telling how this first generation of post-Revolutionary Americans realized their vision of progress and expansionism. It surveys the military, political, and social world of the early Ohio Valley and shows that Harrison’s attitudes and behavior reflected his Virginia background and its 18th-century notions as much as his frontier milieu.

Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer offers a much needed reappraisal of Harrison’s impact on the nation’s development and key lessons for understanding American sentiments in the early republic.

The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"A cogent and compeling addition to the scholarship....” (Journal of America’s Military Past)

©2007 University of Oklahoma Press (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Good story, but some fluff filler.

Overall I think the book did a good job of explaining Harrison in a fair and realistic light. Especially for someone who wasn’t in office more than a couple of months. But the story would randomly have side stories about citizens duels or divorce or something else that though spoke to the times, added in my opinion little to the story of Harrison.

Good examination of frontier politics in early America

Part Harrison biography, part political history of the Old Northwest, and part history of early Indiana, Mr Jefferson’s Hammer utilizes all these lenses to examine the life of William Henry Harrison. In the story of Tecumseh, Harrison is always painted as the villain, and while this book succeeds in it’s goal of deconstructing Harrison as a product of his era, I still came away with a bad taste in my mouth about him. I understand how we are supposed to look at historical figures in the context of the era they lived, but there’s no denying Harrison was deceitful and manipulative in his early political career and in his dealings with the tribes of the Old Northwest.

Interesting

This is an interesting analysis of the U.S.'s Native American policy on the frontier through the lens of Harrison's actions.

Solid for a relatively unknown American figure

Outside of the slogan "Tippy Canoe and Tyler Too," I can't imagine there's all that many people that know much about William Henry Harrison. I mean, he was only president for like 30 days. However, what I found most interesting about his story was what led him to even be considered for president. Considering the time and place of Harrison's life, I also thought the author did a pretty good job of limiting his bias, which gets quite irritating anytime we crack open a history book. Sure, America hasn't always done great things throughout our history, but I would argue we still have a lot to be proud of, doing far more good in the world and people’s freedom, in general, than we have ever done bad. If America hadn’t done at least some of the things it did in relation to the Native Americans back when the country was expanding, another people group and country would've come in and done far worse ... and the western world would not have looked anywhere near what it does now as a result. This biography of Harrison does an excellent job of painting the canvas of the country and the dynamics of expansion of his younger years, when he was a governor, just don't expect to find yourself super informed about much else as it relates to anything about Harrison himself, or who he was on a very personal level.

Title = Truth in Advertising

I picked this book in part because there are so few on presidents from roughly Harrison through Pierce. It is read very very well, and the author has a dry sense of humor that comes from time to time. It's clearly an academic work of a professor (or perhaps deriving from a PhD dissertation), but the text is well written and with as good as narrative as one can imagine for the topic. The strength and weakness is how well the book adheres to the the subtitle.

Anyone really interested in Indian policy in the early 19th century will love the detail here. As one with more casual interest in that topic in particular, I was pleased to learn the big picture particularly well, but I got a little bogged down here and there with all the names, etc. A more general interest study of Harrison would have spent some more time on the latter part of his life, for example.

In any case, I can strongly recommend this book to anyone who finds the title intriguing ... others looking for a more general biography of Harrison should just be aware of what they are getting into.