PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON had been in office hardly a month when he caught a bad cold, ate and drank to excess in order to combat it, and succumbed to pneumonia. He was the first President to die in office. The day following his death, John Tyler, a staunch states’-righter from Virginia and a former Democrat, succeeded to the presidency and both parties waited anxiously to see whether his policies would take a Whig or Democratic configuration.
