Quote of the Day (William Henry Harrison, on States With “Financial Concerns”)

“In consequence of the embarrassed state of business and the currency, some of the States may meet with difficulty in their financial concerns. However deeply we may regret anything imprudent or excessive in the engagements into which States have entered for purposes of their own, it does not become us to disparage the States governments, nor to discourage them from making proper efforts for their own relief. On the contrary, it is our duty to encourage them to the extent of our constitutional authority to apply their best means and cheerfully to make all necessary sacrifices and submit to all necessary burdens to fulfill their engagements and maintain their credit, for the character and credit of the several States form a part of the character and credit of the whole country. The resources of the country are abundant, the enterprise and activity of our people proverbial, and we may well hope that wise legislation and prudent administration by the respective governments, each acting within its own sphere, will restore former prosperity.”—William Henry Harrison, Presidential Inaugural Address, March 4, 1841

Here I was, ready to hold up to scorn the ninth President, William Henry Harrison, for insisting on delivering his entire inaugural address—the longest ever, more than 8,000 words, taking one hour and 45 minutes to read—in the midst of a snowstorm. (For his sins, Harrison died one month later of pneumonia he’d contracted as a result.)

I was about to contrast, in the nastiest possible way, Harrison’s long-winded lack of eloquence with other, far more memorable addresses given by our country’s chief executives on the same late-winter day: Thomas Jefferson’s first (“We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans”), delivered after the first peaceful transfer of power in the nation's history, and Abraham Lincoln’s first, given as America stood on the brink of civil war (“The mystic chords of memory,

stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”)

But search hard enough and you’re bound to find something of surprising import, and that’s the case even with Harrison, who’s fascinating to aficionados of American history (the shortest-serving President in the republic) but the bane of high-school students of the subject (how do you recall someone who never did anything remotely interesting—at least as presented in textbooks?).

Here, the new President discusses something we all recognize far too readily today: the hard-pressed condition of state governors as they figure out what to do with their budgets after a massive financial upheaval. Today’s governors are dealing with the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession (and the current anemic recovery), while those of Harrison’s era grappled with the consequences of the Panic of 1837 (a financial setback so severe that it won the Presidency for Harrison in his second contest against Martin Van Buren).

How else did the two situations resemble each other? How did they differ? It’s not a bad way for high-school teachers to show how a subject filled with mounds of dates that kids dread also has continuing relevance to their current circumstances.