Warren G. Harding

Warren Gamaliel Harding

29th President of the United States
Term of office	March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923
Preceded by	Woodrow Wilson
Succeeded by	Calvin Coolidge
Date of birth	November 2, 1865
Place of birth	Near Blooming Grove, Ohio
Date of death	August 2, 1923
Place of death	San Francisco, California
Spouse	Florence Kling Harding
Political party	Republican

Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an American politician and the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1923, when he became the sixth president to die in office. A Republican from the state of Ohio, Harding was an influential newspaper publisher with a flair for public speaking before entering politics, first in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as lieutenant governor of Ohio (1903–1905).

Early life

Harding was born on November 2, 1865, near Corsica, Ohio . Harding was the eldest of the eight children of Dr. George Harding and Phoebe Dickerson 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 a teenager, the Harding family moved to Caledonia, Ohio in neighboring Marion County, Ohio when Harding's father acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper. It was here that Harding learned the basics of the business. Harding's education was completed at Ohio Central College in Iberia, Ohio. While a college student, he learned about the printing and newspaper trade while working at the Union Register in Mount Gilead.

After graduation, 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, Harding's 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 Kling, one of Marion's wealthiest real estate speculators, down upon him.

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 regaining 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"

In 1891, Harding married Florence Kling, an older woman, a divorcee, and the mother of a young son. She had pursued him persistently, until he reluctantly surrendered and proposed. Florence's father, Amos 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 balanced 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 could 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 rise

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. At the conclusion of his term as lieutenant governor, Harding returned to private life.

Senator

Re-entering politics five years later, Harding lost a race for governor in 1910 but won election to the United States Senate in 1914. He served in the Senate from 1915 until his inauguration as President on March 4, 1921, becoming the second sitting Senator to be elected President of the United States.

As with his first term as Senator, Harding had a relatively undistinguished record, missing over two-thirds of the roll-call votes. Among them was the vote to send the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the 19th Amendment (granting women's suffrage) to the states for ratification, a measure he had supported. Harding was a strong opponent of President Woodrow Wilson's proposal to create a League of Nations, and he made a speech against its formation, claiming it was a mockery of American democracy.

Election of 1920

Harding inauguration, 1921.

Relatively unknown outside his own state, Harding was a true “dark horse” candidate, winning the United States 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. Phillips and her family received an extended tour of Asia courtesy of the Republican Party, in order to secure her silence. Mrs. Harding's newlywed brother Vetallis “Tal” Kling and his bride Elnora “Nona” Younkins-Hinaman also received an all expense-paid tour of Europe from the Hardings. The bride was a Catholic widow, and the marriage was performed in the Roman Catholic Church at a time when Catholics were viewed as a liability in American politics and were targeted by a recently revived Ku Klux Klan, which was reformed as anti-Catholic, as well as anti-black and anti-Jewish. The Ku Klux Klan was rapidly becoming popular in the Midwest. There is disputed evidence that Harding was a Klan member.

In the 1920 election, Harding ran against Democratic Ohio Governor James M. Cox, whose vice presidential candidate 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 which reflected 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.

The milestone election of 1920 was the first in which women could vote nationwide. Harding received 61% of the national vote and 404 electoral votes, an unprecedented margin of victory. Cox received 36% of the national vote and 127 electoral votes. Socialist Eugene V. Debs, campaigning from 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.

Presidency 1921–1923

The administration of Warren G. Harding followed the Republican Party platform approved at the 1920 Chicago convention. The thrust of the administration was to return the nation to a period in time when business forces — not government watchdog agencies — minded the business of the nation.

Harding also believed in the clear separation of powers; that it was the Congress that was responsible for legislation, and it was Harding’s duty to ensure that it was signed into law. Harding also held high regard for the U.S. Supreme Court and believed that the Court’s role was to act as a safety net for Constitutional matters on behalf of the nation, its interests and most importantly, its citizens. To solidify that notion, he nominated President William Howard Taft for the position of Chief Justice.

During his term, Harding personally answered most of the correspondence sent to him, which included queries posed to the President from United States citizens. It wasn’t until his health began to decline in 1923 that he turned the correspondence over to a staff of assistants.

Harding also pushed for the establishment of the Bureau of Veterans Affairs, the first permanent attempt at answering the needs of those who had served the nation in time of War. Both the President and Mrs. Harding visited with members of the armed services that were hospitalized.

The President also undertook a very active speaking schedule. In October 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, Harding spoke out in favor of thoughtfully approaching the issue of race, stating that the nation could not enjoy the promises of prosperity until the matter of equality was addressed.

The Hardings visited their home community of Marion, Ohio once during the term when the city celebrated its Centennial the first week of July. The President arrived on 3 July, gave a speech to the community at the Marion County Fairgrounds on 4 July, and left the following morning for other speaking commitments.

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 1921
• Revenue Act of 1921
• Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1922
• Teapot Dome Scandal
• Resignation of Harding's Attorney General for accepting bribes

Administration and Cabinet

frame

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Warren G. Harding	1921–1923
Vice President	Calvin Coolidge	1921–1923
Secretary of State	Charles Evans Hughes	1921–1923
Secretary of the Treasury	Andrew Mellon	1921–1923
Secretary of War	John W. Weeks	1921–1923
Attorney General	Harry M. Daugherty	1921–1923
Postmaster General	Will H. Hays	1921–1922
	Hubert Work	1922–1923
	Harry S. New	1923
Secretary of the Navy	Edwin Denby	1921–1923
Secretary of the Interior	Albert B. Fall	1921–1923
	Hubert Work	1923
Secretary of Agriculture	Henry C. Wallace	1921–1923
Secretary of Commerce	Herbert Hoover	1921–1923
Secretary of Labor	James J. Davis	1921–1923

Supreme Court appointments

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., for 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 United States 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 in office

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. 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. 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 2 August 1923, at the age of 57.

Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack; however, this diagnosis was not made by Dr. Charles Sawyer, the Surgeon General, who was traveling with the presidential party. Upon Sawyer's recommendation, Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy, which soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a plot. Sawyer's medical qualifications were also called into question. 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 21 November 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.

In 1930, a former private investigator named Gaston Means wrote an exploitative book, The Strange Death of President Harding, in which he suggested many people had motives to murder the President, including Mrs. Harding. Means claimed it was possible that Mrs. Harding poisoned the President, a rumor that has clouded the facts of Harding's death and heart condition. In 1933, an exposé in Liberty magazine denounced Means as a fraud who used a ghost writer for the book. The theories advanced by Means — who had previously been imprisoned for actions while an FBI agent — have never been proven; they remain as speculative as they were sensational.

Speaking style

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." 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.

Memorials

• Harding Memorial, Marion, Ohio.
• Harding County, New Mexico is named in his honor.

Ohio Northern University's College of Law was once named after him and later renamed.

• Harding Park Golf Club in San Francisco is named after him.

Trivia

• In Civilization IV, each game concludes with various statistics and a scale comparing the player's score to various historical figures. Harding has the dubious distinction of being third from the bottom, placing below such names as Nero and above Ethelred the Unready and Dan Quayle.
• Harding is the only U.S. president to be elected on his birthday, November 2 (it was his 55th).
• The 1920 presidential election was the only presidential election in which the two major party nominees were office holders from the same state and had the same profession. Both men were from Ohio and were newspaper publishers.
• Harding was the first U.S. president to ride to his inauguration in an automobile.
• Harding was the first U.S. president to speak on the radio and have one in the White House.
• Harding was known to host poker games at the White House. A legend has it that Harding once lost a set of White House china that had belonged to President Benjamin Harrison; White House historians have since debunked that myth.
• Norman Thomas, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and Socialist Party candidate for president, held a childhood job as a newsboy for Harding's Marion Daily Star where he was supervised by Florence Harding.
• In the novel Mumbo-Jumbo by Ishmael Reed, Warren G. Harding is featured as a character, and is alleged to have been assassinated by a secret society after becoming infected with "Jes' Grew".
• President Harding and his wife both appear in fictional form as supporting characters in the novel Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. Charles Joseph Carter (also known as Carter the Great) was a famous stage magician in the early part of the 1900s, and the book offers an alternate explanation for the death of Warren Harding.
• The Hardings also figure in Gore Vidal's 1990 novel Hollywood.
• He was the first U.S. President born after the end of the American Civil War.
• Harding's political rise is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink". Gladwell attributes Harding's success and popularity to his commanding physical appearance and deep gravelly speaking voice, which caused people to overlook or forgive his lack of competence.
• Harding was declared to be the worst president by Stephen Colbert in America (The Book).
• Harding is the subject of the song "Warren Harding" by singer-songwriter Al Stewart on his album Past, Present and Future.

External links

• 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
• 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

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• "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.

Notes

Preceded by: Harry L. Gordon	Lieutenant Governor of Ohio 1904–1906	Succeeded by: Francis W. Treadway
Preceded by: Theodore E. Burton	United States Senator (Class 3) from Ohio 1915–1921	Succeeded by: Frank B. Willis

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