September 4

A decent and manly examination of the acts of government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged.

William Henry Harrison, 9th President, 1841 First and only Inaugural Address, Thursday, March 4, 1841 "Old Tippecanoe's" speech lasted one hour and forty five minutes and was delivered in a snowstorm. Harrison has the distinction of giving the longest inaugural speech and serving the shortest term as President. Shortly after his address, the sixty-eight year old President subsequently caught pneumonia and died one month later. This paragraph deals with "The Fourth Estate"- the Press. "There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged."