[82]
Local supporters had come to Harrison's relief, by appointing him Clerk of Courts for Hamilton County, where he worked from 1836 until 1840.[83] Chevalier remarked, "His friends back east talk of making him President, while here we make him clerk of an inferior court."[81] He also cultivated corn and established a distillery to produce whiskey, but closed it after he became disturbed by the effects of alcohol on its consumers. In an address to the Hamilton County Agricultural Board in 1831, he said that he had sinned in making whiskey and hoped that others would learn from his mistake and stop the production of liquors.[84]
About this time, he met abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor George DeBaptiste who lived in nearby Madison, and the two became friends. Harrison wrote at the time, "we might look forward to a day when a North American sun would not look down upon a slave."[85] DeBaptiste became his valet, and later White House steward.[86]
Burr closes his account of Harrison by describing an event, denied by some of his friends—a reception given the general at Philadelphia, in 1836. 