'Warren Gamaliel Harding' (
November 2,
1865 –
August 2,
1923) was an
American politician and the twenty-ninth
President of the United States, from
1921 to
1923, when he became the sixth president to die in office. A
Republican from
Ohio, Harding was an influential
newspaper publisher with a commanding presence and a flair for public speaking. He served in the
Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as
lieutenant governor of Ohio (1903–1905) and as a U.S. Senator (1915–1921). His political leanings were
conservative, which enabled him to become the compromise choice at the
1920 Republican National Convention. In the
1920 election, he coined the phrase "return to normalcy" and defeated his
Democratic opponent,
James M. Cox, in a landslide, 60.36 % to 34.19%. As president, he appointed a strong cabinet, led by
Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes,
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. However some other appointments proved to be
corrupt. In foreign affairs, Harding signed peace treaties which formally ended
World War I, and led the way to world
naval disarmament at the
Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22. Harding died in
San Francisco, California, 29 months into his term, at age 57 from a
heart attack.
Harding is often ranked as one of the least successful presidents of the United States, despite his immense popularity while in office. Indeed, Harding himself is quoted as saying "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here."
[1]
Early life
Harding was born on
November 2,
1865, near Corsica, Ohio (now
Blooming Grove, Ohio). Harding was the eldest of the eight children of Dr. George Tryon Harding, Sr. and Phoebe Elizabeth (Dickerson) Harding. His birth name was Warren Gamaliel Bancroft Winnipeg Harding. His heroes were
Alexander Hamilton and
Napoleon. His mother was a
midwife, who later obtained her
medical license, and his father taught, for a time, at a
rural school north of
Mount Gilead, Ohio. While he was a teenager, the Harding family moved to
Caledonia, Ohio in neighboring
Marion County when Harding's father acquired ''The Argus'', a local weekly newspaper. It was here that Harding learned the basics of the business. His education was completed at
Ohio Central College in
Iberia, Ohio. While a
college student, he learned more about the
printing and newspaper trade, while working at the ''Union Register'' in Mount Gilead.
After graduating, Harding moved to
Marion, Ohio, where he raised $300 with two friends to purchase the failing ''
Marion Daily Star''. It was the weakest of Marion's three newspapers and the only daily in the growing city. Harding converted the paper's editorial platform to support the Republicans and enjoyed a moderate degree of success. However, his political stance was at odds with those who controlled most of Marion's local
politics. When Harding moved to unseat the ''Marion Independent'' as the official paper of daily record, his actions brought the wrath of Amos Hall Kling, one of Marion's wealthiest
real estate speculators, down upon him.
Warren and Florence Harding pose in their garden.
While Harding won the war of words and made the ''
Marion Daily Star'' one of the biggest newspapers in the county, the battle took a toll on his health. In
1889, when Harding was 24, he suffered from
exhaustion and nervous fatigue. He traveled to
Battle Creek, Michigan, to spend several weeks in a
sanatorium to regain his strength. He later returned to Marion to continue operating the paper. He spent his days boosting the community on the editorial pages, and his evenings "bloviating" (Harding's term for informal conversation) with his friends over games of
poker.
On
July 8,
1891, Harding married
Florence Kling, an older woman, a
divorcée, and the mother of a young son, Marshall Eugene DeWolfe. She had pursued him persistently, until he reluctantly surrendered and proposed. Florence's father, Amos Hall Kling, was Harding's nemesis. Upon hearing that his only daughter intended to marry Harding, Kling disowned her and even forbade his wife to attend her
wedding. He opposed the marriage vigorously and would not speak to his daughter or son-in-law for eight years.
The couple complemented one another with Harding's affable personality balancing his wife's no-nonsense approach to life. Florence Harding inherited her father's determination and business sense and turned the ''Marion Daily Star'' into a
profitable business. She has been credited with helping Harding to achieve greater things than he might have done alone, leading to speculation that she later pushed him all the way to the
White House.
Harding was a
Freemason, raised to the Sublime Degree of a
Master Mason on
August 27 1920, in Marion Lodge #70, F.& A.M., in Marion, Ohio.
Political career
As an influential newspaper publisher with a flair for
public speaking, Harding was elected to the
Ohio State Senate in
1899. He served four years before being elected
Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, a post he occupied from 1903 to 1905. His leanings were conservative, and his record in both offices was relatively undistinguished. He received the
Republican nomination for
Governor of Ohio in 1910, but lost to incumbent
Judson Harmon.
U.S. Senator
In 1912, Harding gave the nominating speech for incumbent
President William Howard Taft at the
Republican National Convention [2] and in 1914 he was
elected to the
United States Senate. He served in the Senate from 1915 until his inauguration as president on
March 4,
1921, becoming the first sitting
Senator to be elected
President of the United States.
In his book, ''
Blink'',
Malcolm Gladwell has suggested that Harding's political success was based on his appearance, essentially that he "looked like a president". Gladwell argues that the first impression of Harding outweighed his intellectual and other deficiencies, and refers to the combination as the 'Warren Harding Error' in how people make decisions.
Election of 1920
Main articles: United States presidential election, 1920
Relatively unknown outside his own state, Harding was a true "
dark horse" candidate, winning the
Republican Party nomination due to the political
machinations of his friends after the nominating convention had become deadlocked. Republican leaders met in a
smoke-filled room at the
Blackstone Hotel in
Chicago to end the deadlock. Before receiving the nomination, he was asked whether there were any embarrassing episodes in his past that might be used against him. His formal education was limited, he had a longstanding affair with the wife of an old friend, and he was a social drinker. Harding answered "No" and the Party moved to nominate him, only to discover later his relationship with
Carrie Fulton Phillips.
In the
1920 election, Harding ran against Democratic
Ohio Governor James M. Cox, whose running-mate was
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. The election was seen in part as a
referendum on whether to continue with the "
progressive" work of the
Woodrow Wilson administration or to revert to the "
laissez-faire" approach of the
William McKinley era.
Harding ran on a promise to "Return to Normalcy", a term he coined to reflect three trends of his time: a renewed
isolationism in reaction to
World War I, a resurgence of
nativism, and a turning away from the government activism of the reform era.
Harding's "front porch campaign" during the late summer and fall of 1920 captured the imagination of the country. Not only was it the first campaign to be heavily covered by the press and to receive widespread
newsreel coverage, but it was also the first modern campaign to use the power of
Hollywood and
Broadway stars, who traveled to Marion for photo opportunities with Harding and his wife.
Al Jolson,
Lillian Russell,
Douglas Fairbanks, and
Mary Pickford were among the conservative-minded luminaries to make the pilgrimage to central Ohio. Business icons
Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, and
Harvey Firestone also lent their cachet to the campaign. From the onset of the campaign until the November election, over 600,000 people traveled to Marion to participate.
The campaign owed a great deal to
Florence Harding, who played perhaps a more active role than any previous candidate's wife in a presidential race. She cultivated the relationship between the campaign and the press. As the business manager of the ''Star'', she understood
reporters and their industry and played to their needs by making herself freely available to answer questions, pose for pictures, or deliver food prepared in her kitchen to the press office, which was a
bungalow she had constructed at the rear of their property in Marion. Mrs. Harding even went so far as to coach her husband on the proper way to wave to
newsreel cameras to make the most of coverage.
The campaign also drew upon Harding's popularity with women. Considered handsome, Harding photographed well compared to Cox. However, it was Harding's support for women's suffrage in the Senate that made him extremely popular with women: the ratification of the
19th Amendment in August 1920 brought huge crowds of women to
Marion, Ohio to hear Harding.
During the campaign, rumors spread that Harding's great-great-grandfather was a
West Indian black and that other blacks might be found in his family tree. In response, Harding's campaign manager said, "No family in the state (of Ohio) has a clearer, a more honorable record than the Hardings, a blue-eyed stock from
New England and
Pennsylvania, the finest pioneer blood." The rumors, perhaps based on no more than local gossip, were circulated by
William Estabrook Chancellor. Rumors may have been sustained by an alleged response of Harding to a friendly reporter, perhaps meant merely to be dismissive: "How do I know, Jim? One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence." (Wallechinsky and Wallace, ''The People's Almanac'')
The election of 1920 was the first in which women could
vote nationwide. Harding received 60% of the national vote and 404
electoral votes, an unprecedented margin of victory. Cox received 34% of the national vote and 127 electoral votes.
Socialist Eugene V. Debs, campaigning from a
federal prison, received 3% of the national vote. Debs was in prison for opposing Wilson's draft; despite the many political differences between the two candidates, when Harding became President, he pardoned Debs.
[1]
Presidency 1921–1923
The administration of Warren G. Harding followed the Republican
platform approved at the
1920 Republican National Convention, which was held in
Chicago.
Harding pushed for the establishment of the
Bureau of Veterans Affairs (later organized as the
Department of Veterans Affairs), the first permanent attempt at answering the needs of those who had served the nation in time of War.
In April 1921, speaking before a joint session of congress he called for peacemaking with
Germany and
Austria, emergency
tariffs, new
immigration laws, regulation of
radio and trans cable communications retrenchment in government,
tax reduction, repeal of wartime excess profits tax, reduction of
railroad rates, promotion of
agricultural interests, a national budget system, a great
merchant marine and a department of public welfare. He also called for the abolition of
lynching. But he did not want to make enemies in his own
party and with the Democrats and did not fight for his program.
[2]
The Hardings visited their home community of Marion, Ohio once during the term when the city celebrated its
Centennial during the first week of July. The President arrived on
July 3, gave a speech to the community at the Marion County Fairgrounds on
July 4, and left the following morning for other speaking commitments.
Major events during presidency
★
Peace treaties signed with Germany, Austria and
Hungary, formally ending
World War I for the United States
★ Established the
Bureau of Veteran Affairs
★ Treaty to indemnify
Colombia for its loss of
Panama
★
Washington Naval Conference 1921–1922
★
Budget and Accounting Act of 1921
★
Revenue Act of 1921
★
Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1922
★
Teapot Dome scandal
★ Created the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, 1923 (now the
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska)
★ Resignation of Harding's
Attorney General for accepting
bribes
★ Pardon of war protester
Eugene Debs and other
political prisoners
Administration and cabinet
Portrait of President Harding.
Supreme Court appointments
The Taft Court, 1925
Harding appointed the following justices to the
Supreme Court of the United States:
★
William Howard Taft – Chief Justice – 1921
★
★ Harding was the only President to have appointed a previous President to the Supreme Court.
★
George Sutherland – 1922
★
Pierce Butler – 1923
★
Edward Terry Sanford – 1923
Administrative scandals
Upon winning the election, Harding appointed many of his old allies to prominent political positions. Known as the "
Ohio Gang" (a term used by Charles Mee, Jr., in his book of the same name), some of the appointees used their new powers to rob the government. It is unclear how much, if anything, Harding himself knew about his friends' illicit activities.
The most infamous scandal of the time was the
Teapot Dome affair, which shook the nation for years after Harding's death. The scandal involved
Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, who was
convicted of accepting bribes and illegal no-interest personal loans in exchange for the leasing of public
oil fields to business associates. (Absent the bribes and personal loans, the leases themselves were quite legal.) In 1931, Fall became the first member of a
presidential Cabinet to be sent to
prison.
Thomas Miller, head of the
Office of Alien Property, was convicted of accepting bribes.
Jess Smith, personal aide to the
Attorney General, destroyed papers and then committed
suicide.
Charles Forbes, director of the
Veterans Bureau, skimmed profits, earned large amounts of
kickbacks, and directed underground alcohol and drug distribution. He was convicted of
fraud and
bribery and drew a two-year
sentence. Charles Cramer, an aide to Charles Forbes, also committed suicide.
No evidence to date suggests that Harding personally profited from these crimes, but he was apparently unable to stop them. "My God, this is a hell of a job!" Harding said. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, my God-damned friends... they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
Death
President Harding's casket passes by the front of the
White House.
In June 1923, Harding set out on a cross-country "Voyage of Understanding," planning to meet ordinary people and explain his policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit
Alaska.
[3] Rumors of
corruption in his administration were beginning to circulate in Washington by this time, and Harding was profoundly shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently detailing illegal activities previously unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through
British Columbia, he developed what was thought to be a severe case of
food poisoning. He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now
Husky Stadium) at the
University of Washington campus in
Seattle, Washington. He then took the
train south. Arriving at the
Palace Hotel in
San Francisco, he developed
pneumonia. Harding died of either a
heart attack or a
stroke at 7:35 p.m. on
August 2 1923. The formal announcement, printed in the New York ''Times'' of that day, stated that "A
stroke of
apoplexy was the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week.
[4]
Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a
heart attack; however, this
diagnosis was not made by Dr.
Charles E. Sawyer, the
Surgeon General, who was traveling with the presidential party. Mrs. Harding refused permission for an
autopsy, which soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by his wife. Gaston B. Means, an amateur historian and
gadfly, noted in his book ''The Strange Death of President Harding'' (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death lent themselves to some suspecting he had been poisoned. Several individuals attached to him, personally, and politically, would have welcomed Harding's death, as they would have been disgraced in association by his imminent impeachment. Although Means was later discredited for publically accusing Mrs. Harding of the murder, enough doubts surround the President's death to keep reputable scholars open to the possibility of murder.
Harding was succeeded by
Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who was sworn in by his father, a
justice of the peace, in
Plymouth Notch,
Vermont.
Following his death, Harding's body was returned to Washington, where it was placed in the East Room of the
White House pending a
state funeral at the
United States Capitol.
White House employees at the time were quoted as saying that the night before the funeral, they heard Mrs. Harding speak for more than an hour to her dead husband. The most commonly reported (though never verified) remark attributed to Mrs. Harding at this time was "They can't hurt you now, Warren."
Harding was entombed in the receiving vault of the Marion Cemetery, Marion, Ohio, in August 1923. Following Mrs. Harding's death on
November 21,
1924, she too was temporarily buried next to her husband. Both bodies were moved in December 1927 to the newly completed
Harding Memorial in Marion, which was dedicated by President
Herbert Hoover in 1931. The lapse between the final interment and the dedication was partly because of the aftermath of the
Teapot Dome scandal.
At the time of his death, Harding was also survived by his father. Harding and
John F. Kennedy are the only two presidents to have predeceased their father.
Personal scandals and allegations
Extramarital affairs
The extent to which Harding engaged in extra-marital affairs is somewhat controversial. It has been recorded in primary documents that during his lifetime, Harding had an affair with
Carrie Fulton Phillips;
Nan Britton wrote ''The President's Daughter'' in 1927, documenting her affair and child (Elizabeth Ann) with Harding.
Rumors of the Harding love letters circulated through Marion, Ohio, for many years. However, their existence was not confirmed until 1968, when author
Francis Russell gained access to them during his research for his book, ''The Shadow of Blooming Grove''. The letters were in the possession of Phillips. Phillips kept the letters in a box in a closet and was reluctant to share them. Russell persuaded her to relent, and the letters showed conclusively that Harding had a 15-year relationship with Mrs. Phillips, who was then the wife of his friend James Phillips, owner of the local
department store, the Uhler-Phillips Company. Mrs. Phillips was ten years younger than Harding. By 1915, she began pressing Harding to leave his wife. When he refused, she left her husband and moved to
Berlin with her daughter Isabel. However, as the United States became increasingly likely to be drawn into
World War I, Mrs. Phillips moved back to the U.S. and the affair reignited. Harding was now a U.S. senator, and a vote was coming up on a declaration of war against
Germany.
Mrs. Phillips threatened to go public with their affair if the Senator supported the war, but Harding defied her and voted for war, and Phillips did not reveal the scandal to the world. When Harding won the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, he did not disclose the relationship to party officials. Once they learned of the affair, it was too late to find another nominee. To reduce the likelihood of a scandal breaking, the
Republican National Committee sent Phillips and her family on a trip to
Japan and paid them over $50,000. She also received monthly payments thereafter, becoming the first and only person known to have successfully
extorted money from a major
political party.
The letters Harding wrote to Mrs. Phillips were confiscated at the request of the Harding heirs, who requested and received a
court injunction prohibiting their inclusion in Russell's book. Russell in turn left quoted passages from the letters as blank passages in protest against the Harding heirs' actions. The Harding-Phillips love letters remain under an Ohio court protective order that expires in 2023, 100 years after Harding's death, after which the content of the letters may be published or reviewed.
Warren Gamaliel Harding.
Besides Mrs. Phillips, Harding also reportedly had an affair with Nan Britton, the daughter of Harding's friend Dr. Britton of Marion. Britton's claim that he had fathered her child was widely circulated in the years just after Harding's death, and it is often cited as one of the best-known "facts" about Harding, but it has not been proved to the satisfaction of most historians.
Nan Britton's obsession with Harding started at an early age when she began pasting pictures of Senator Harding on her bedroom walls. According to Britton's book ''The President's Daughter'', she and Senator Harding conceived a daughter,
Elizabeth Ann, in January of 1919, in his Senate office. Elizabeth Ann was born on
October 22 1919. Harding never met Elizabeth Ann but paid large amounts of
child support. Harding and Britton, according to unsubstantiated reports, continued their affair while he was President, using a closet adjacent to the
Oval Office for
privacy. Following Harding's death, Britton unsuccessfully
sued the estate of Warren G. Harding on behalf of Elizabeth Ann. Under
cross-examination by Harding heirs' attorney, Grant Mouser (a former member of Congress himself), Britton's testimony was riddled with inconsistencies, and she lost her case. Britton married a Mr. Christian, who adopted Elizabeth Ann. In
adulthood, Elizabeth Ann married Henry Blaesing and raised a family. During most of her life she shied from press coverage about her alleged birthright, and refused requests for interviews in her later years. She died on
November 17,
2005, in
Oregon.
Speaking style
Although a commanding and powerful speaker, Harding was notorious for his verbal gaffes, such as his comment "I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved."
[5] His errors were compounded by his insistence on writing his own speeches. Although it might not have been a mispronunciation as some thought, Harding's most famous "mistake" was his use of the word "normalcy" when the more correct word to use at the time would have been "normality." Harding decided he liked the sound of the word and made "Return to Normalcy" a recurring theme. Critic
H.L. Mencken disagreed, saying of Harding, "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." Mencken also coined the term "Gamalielese" to refer to Harding's distinctive style of speech. Upon Harding's death, poet
E. E. Cummings said "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."
Some suggest Harding had a form of
aphasia.
[6]
Memorials
★
Warren G. Harding High School,
Warren,
Ohio
★ Warren G. Harding Middle School, Steubenville, Ohio
★ Warren G.Harding High School; Bridgeport, Connecticut
★ Warren G. Harding Middle School,
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
★
Harding Memorial,
Marion, Ohio.
★
Marion Harding High School,
Marion,
Ohio
★
Harding County, New Mexico is named in his honor.
★ Ohio Northern University's College of Law was once named after him but was later renamed.
★
Harding Park Golf Club in San Francisco is named after him.
★ Peace Treaty Marker.
Somerville,
New Jersey. In 1921, at the estate of
New Jersey Governor
Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, Warren Harding signed the peace treaty which ended America's involvement in World War I. Today, the estate is long gone and
suburban sprawl has replaced it with
mini-malls. The marker remains in a patch of grass near a
Burger King parking lot along
Route 28, just North of the
Somerville traffic circle.
★
Harding Charter Preparatory High School,
Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma
Bibliography
★ Anthony, Carl S. ''Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President.'' (1998)
★ Downes Randolph C. ''The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Hardin, 1865–1920.'' Ohio University Press, 1970
★ Fine, Gary Alan. "Reputational Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of President Harding." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 1996 101(5): 1159-1193. Issn: 0002-9602 Fulltext: in Jstor and Ebsco
★ Grant, Philip A., Jr. "President Warren G. Harding and the British War Debt Question, 1921-1923." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' 1995 25(3): 479-487. Issn: 0360-4918
★ Kenneth J. Grieb; ''The Latin American Policy of Warren G. Harding''
1976 online
★ Malin, James C. ''The United States after the World War''
1930. online detailed analysis of foreign and economic policies
★ Morello, John A. ''Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding.'' Praeger, 2001.
★ Murray Robert K. ''The Harding Era 1921-1923: Warren G. Harding and his Administration.'' University of Minnesota Press, 1969, the standard academic study
★ Payne, Phillip. "Instant History and the Legacy of Scandal: the Tangled Memory of Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon, and William Jefferson Clinton." ''Prospects'' 2003 28: 597-625. Issn: 0361-2333
★ Russell, Francis. ''The Shadow of Blooming Grove'' , 1968. biography
★ Andrew Sinclair; ''The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding''
1965 online full-scale biography
Media
External links
★
Extensive essay on Warren G. Harding and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs
★
American President: Warren Harding
★
Harding, Garfield, and Arthur
★
Audio clips of Harding's speeches
★
Inaugural Address
★
The Harding home (historic site, Ohio)
★
First State of the Union Address of Warren Harding
★
Second State of the Union Address of Warren Harding
★
C-Span The American Presidents
★
White House biography
★
Presidential Biography by Stanley L. Klos
★
Warren G. Harding Links
★
1920 Presidential Election Links
★
★
A political cartoon about Harding from
Married to the Sea
★
Harding Park Golf Club in San Francisco
References
★ "''Social Equality Impossible for Negro, Says President, Pleading for Fair Treatment''."
Atlanta-Journal Constitution, October 27, 1921.
★ "An International Problem"
Marion Daily Star, October 26, 1921.
References
1. Eugene V. Debs
2. Murray (1969)
3. President Harding's 1923 Visit to Utah by W. Paul Reeve
History Blazer July 1995
4. Harding a Farm Boy Who Rose by Work
5. Stephen Pile, ''The Book of Heroic Failures'' (Futura, 1980) p.180.
6. President Warren Harding: Health and Medical History
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
