- Curse of Tippecanoe
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The term Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's Curse, the Presidential Curse, Zero-Year Curse, the Twenty-Year Curse, or the Twenty-Year Presidential Jinx) refers to the pattern where from 1840 to 1960 each American president who won an election in a year ending in zero died in office. The pattern ended with Ronald Reagan, who won the presidential election in 1980, but did not subsequently die in office.
Contents
The curse
The curse, first widely noted in a Ripley's Believe It or Not book published in 1931,[1] began with the death of William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841 after having been elected in 1840. For the next 120 years, presidents elected during years ending in a zero (occurring every 20 years) ultimately died while serving in office, from Harrison to John F. Kennedy (elected 1960, died 1963).
The name "Curse of Tippecanoe" derives from the 1811 battle. As governor of the Indiana Territory, William Harrison used questionable tactics in the negotiation of the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne with Native Americans, in which they ceded large tracts of land to the U.S. government.[2] The treaty further angered the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, and brought government soldiers and Native Americans to the brink of war in a period known as Tecumseh's War. Tecumseh and his brother organized a group of Indian tribes designed to resist the westward expansion of the United States. In 1811, Tecumseh's forces, led by his brother, attacked Harrison's army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, earning Harrison fame and the nickname "Old Tippecanoe".[2] Harrison strengthened his reputation even more by defeating the British at the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812.[2] In a fictional account of the aftermath of the battle, Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, supposedly set a curse against Harrison and future White House occupants who became president during years with the same end number as Harrison. This fictional account is the basis of the curse legend.[3]
Media mentions
After the observation by Ripley, talk of the curse resurfaced as the next cursed election year approached. A similar oddities cartoon feature, Strange As it Seems by John Hix, appeared prior to Election Day 1940, with "CURSE OVER THE WHITE HOUSE!"[4] A list, running from "1840 - Harrison" to "1920 - Harding" was followed by the ominous "1940 - ??????" and the note that "In the last 100 years, Every U.S. President Elected at 20-Year Intervals Has Died In Office!" Ed Koterba, author of a syndicated column called "Assignment Washington", referred to the subject again in 1960.[5]
As 1980 approached, the curse was sufficiently well-known, and Americans wondered whether the winner of that election would follow the pattern. The Library of Congress conducted a study in the summer of 1980 about the origin of the tale, and concluded that "although the story has been well-known for years, there are no documented sources and no published mentions of it".[citation needed] Running for re-election in 1980, President Jimmy Carter was asked about the curse at a campaign stop in Dayton on October 2 of that year. Taking questions from the crowd, Carter replied, "I'm not afraid. If I knew it was going to happen, I would go ahead and be President and do the best I could, for the last day I could."[6]
Exceptions
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not followed by his death in office, despite being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt within months of his inauguration. Days after Reagan survived the shooting, columnist Jack Anderson wrote "Reagan and the Eerie Zero Factor" and noted that the 40th president had either disproved the superstition, or had nine lives.[7] Reagan, the oldest man to be elected President, also survived treatment for colon cancer while in office. He left office on January 20, 1989, and ultimately died of Alzheimer's Disease on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93.
Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., was found by a jury to be insane, but there was no evidence that he was motivated by a belief in the curse. Moreover, every president from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush faced at least one assassination attempt. President Barack Obama has not been the subject of an attempt on his life, although many threats have been made.
Like the presidents who had died in office, Reagan was succeeded in office by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, which was historically unusual given that Bush was the first incumbent vice president in 152 years to assume the presidency by direct election. The last incumbent vice president to win election had been Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison's immediate predecessor in office.
The next president in the line of the curse, George W. Bush in 2000, was unharmed in an assassination attempt in 2005[8] and finished out his final term on January 20, 2009.
The only president who died in office without being elected in a "cursed" year was Zachary Taylor, who was elected in 1848 and died in 1850.
Presidents in the line of the alleged curse
Elected President Term of death Term of election Cause of death or attempted assassinations Date of death 1840 
William Henry Harrison First First Pneumonia 1841-04-04 1860 
Abraham Lincoln Second First Assassinated 1865-04-15 1880 
James A. Garfield First First Assassinated 1881-09-19 1900 
William McKinley Second Second Assassinated 1901-09-14 1920 
Warren G. Harding First First Uncertain: Heart attack or stroke 1923-08-02 1940 
Franklin D. Roosevelt Fourth Third Cerebral hemorrhage 1945-04-12 1960 
John F. Kennedy First First Assassinated 1963-11-22 1980 
Ronald Reagan n/a First Attempted assassination - injured but not killed 2004-06-05
(Did not die in office)2000 
George W. Bush n/a First Attempted assassinations - uninjured Currently living
(Did not die in office)See also
- List of Presidents of the United States who died in office
References
- ^ Ripley's Believe it or Not, 2nd Series (Simon & Schuster, 1931); an updated reference is on page 140 of the Pocket Books paperback edition of 1948
- ^ a b c The New Big Book Of U.S. Presidents By Todd Davis, Marc Frey
- ^ Randi Henderson and Tom Nugent, "The Zero Curse: More than just a coincidence?" (reprinted from the Baltimore Sun), November 2, 1980, in Syracuse Herald-American, p C-3
- ^ Oakland Tribune, November 5, 1940, p12
- ^ "Pennsylvania Avenue Ponderings", Hammond Times, February 25, 1960, p18
- ^ Henderson and Nugent
- ^ The Sunday Intelligencer (Doylestown, PA), April 5, 1981, p 8
- ^ CNN.com - Bush grenade attacker gets life - Jan 11, 2006
External links
- The Curse of Tecumseh on Snopes.com
- Explanation of the curse based on astrology
- Ripley's Believe It or Not, 1934
Categories:- Curses
- United States presidential elections
- United States presidential history
- William Henry Harrison
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