Grade William Henry Harrison's presidency

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

F for giving the longest inaugural speech in really bad whether. Dude, get some perception.

Plus he tried to introduce slavery in my state.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

F for giving the longest inaugural speech in really bad whether. Dude, get some perception.

Plus he tried to introduce slavery in my state.

Really? You have a source or link? I'd love to read about that!

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Indiana#Early_existence

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

How is William Henry Harrison 'conservative', and Martin Van Buren 'liberal'?  Do you have some sort of definition for these terms for antebellum America?  

I think he meant it in terms of policies that favor the working class (mostly small farmers and urban immigrants at that time) vs policies that favor the elite (industrialists, merchants, large farmers, etc).

tl;dr, but it sounds like someone is just making things up so that they can make the seemingly anti-slavery man a liberal even though he was Jackson's right-hand guy economically. Jackson was a classical liberal, but they don't want credit for him because of the Trail of Tears. (Edit: Did read now - I didn't realize Mechaman was making the post. This isn't the reason, but it still seems like a weird comparison as the beliefs don't line up.)

Meanwhile the Whigs were founded to implement big government. American System, anybody? Tariffs, Centralized government (Except state's rights on slavery for WHH - and from what I have read on here from HST, it seems like he tried to expand it?), and massive improvements and taxes. Subsidizing businesses doesn't make WHH not to the left of Van Buren. Obviously, he's not a leftist in the forum sense, but isn't that in line with what most centrist/centre-left Democrats would do today.

Obviously Van Buren wasn't completely opposed to slavery either, just opposing the spread of it, but being the nominee of the Free Soil Party legacy has helped his legacy a ton, especially on here.

To be honest, I'd be very hesitant to use adjectives like "liberal" and "conservative" to describe anyone prior to 1930. The definition of "liberal" in 1836 was very different from what we think of as liberal today (see Classical Liberalism), and the whole "small" government=conservative, "big" government=liberal thing really doesn't work until the 60s. Does anyone want to argue that Alexander Hamilton was a liberal because he supported "big" government? I didn't think so.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

His biggest disaster was his choice of Vice President.

Harrison didn't choose Tyler; the Whig National Convention did.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

His biggest disaster was his choice of Vice President.

Harrison didn't choose Tyler; the Whig National Convention did.

Agreed -didn't Harrison originally approach Henry Clay with the offer, who promptly rejected it in favor of remaining House Speaker? 

Clay was a Senator by that point, but yeah. Probably one of the most momentous decisions in American History, considering Clay probably wouldn't have brought up the Texas issue, thus delaying the Civil War.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

His biggest disaster was his choice of Vice President.

Harrison didn't choose Tyler; the Whig National Convention did.

Agreed -didn't Harrison originally approach Henry Clay with the offer, who promptly rejected it in favor of remaining House Speaker? 

Clay was a Senator by that point, but yeah. Probably one of the most momentous decisions in American History, considering Clay probably wouldn't have brought up the Texas issue, thus delaying the Civil War.

Ummm.... not annexing that massive chunk of the west and, arguably, not recreating the Second Bank of the United States were of equal importance.

At the time, yes. But in the long term, Texas had a much bigger impact on American history than the B.U.S., since annexation prompted the Mexican War, which prompted the Civil War, the reverberations of which are still felt today.