Over the 20 years before Warren G. Harding was elected president, Americans had fought in the Philippines against rebels, sent troops into Mexico, and battled in the "war to end all wars,” World War I. Their economic base had changed quickly and dramatically from farms to factories—a fitful development filled with strikes, violence, and doubts about how an industrial society should be governed. They had crusaded for reform, with the Progressive movement leading the way in attacking the worst economic and social abuses. 240 Warren G. Harding Now Americans longed for quiet. Their international foray in World War I had turned out disappointing, their domestic overhaul exhausting. Into that atmosphere appeared Harding with the words, "I do not believe that anywhere in the world there is so perfect a democracy as in the village.” If the village meant probity, stability, and trust, Americans would be disappointed again. Harding’s presidency exposed probity to graft, stability to tumult, and trust to lies. The greed that corrupted Harding’s friends and the deceit with which they worked destroyed his administration, broke him, and maybe even killed him. Coupled with his own limited talent and limitless incompetence, they made for what many consider to be the worst presidency in America’s history. k Warren Gamaliel Harding, the oldest of eight children, was born on November 2, 1865, in Blooming Grove, located in north-central Ohio, to George Tryon Harding and Phoebe Dickerson Harding. Over the years, his father worked at several different jobs—farming, teaching, and practicing medicine—while dabbling in real estate speculation. Always closer to financial ruin than success, he was still able to maintain his family in a middle-class setting. Warren Harding attended the local rural school. Never possessed of a brilliant mind, he preferred play to study. In 1879 his parents sent him to Ohio Central College with the hope he would become a minister. He joined the school band, occasionally entered debates, and served as the yearbook editor. On graduating in 1882, Harding taught school. He later called it the hardest job he ever had. He did not like having to discipline the children, nor did he like the rumors that followed him into the classroom and that the students whispered—that he was part black, an ancestral trait supposedly dating back to the 18th century. After one term he quit teaching and moved to Marion, a farming town then attracting small manufacturing businesses, where his father had relocated his family. For several months Harding drifted. He studied law but found it too boring; then he sold insurance. In 1884 he worked as a reporter for the Marion Democratic Mirror at $1 per week, but when he supported the Republican presidential candidate, James G. Blaine, the paper fired him. He believed, however, that he had found an occupation he liked. Late in 1884 he raised $300 and, with two partners, bought the Marion Star. This failing newspaper struggled to generate an income, and in short order Harding’s partners sold out to him. Still, he gradually built its circulation, and along with the daily Star he printed the Weekly Star, an openly Republican paper intended to attract advertising revenues from political candidates. Like many a small-town publisher, the usually genial Harding attacked his opponents with gusto. When a competing editor accused him of abandoning his principles in order to fill his wallet with Republican money, Harding retaliated: "This Crawford . . . foams at the mouth whenever his sordid mind grasps anything done without his counsel. This sour, disgruntled, and disappointed old ass [is] an imbecile whose fits will make him a paralytic, then his way of spitting venom will end.” Harding found it hard to say no to anyone, and in 1891, in an unlikely match, he married Florence Kling De Wolfe. A 31-year-old widow with a son, she pursued the handsome Harding, then only 26, with a vengeance. The more he rebuffed her, the more she went after him, showing up at his office, greeting him at the train station, and chasing him down when he tried to sneak away from her. She was far from beautiful, and the couple was far from being in love. Why they married remains puzzling. Because she came from Marion’s leading family, she brought some wealth to the partnership, but her father, a real estate agent and banker, had a falling out with her shortly before she married Harding, so the money may not have amounted to much. From the start, Florence Harding dominated her husband. She took over the newspaper and revitalized it—a much-needed move as he preferred playing poker to working. "She makes life hell for me,” Harding once said and only half in jest called her "Duchess.” To some extent Warren Harding entered politics to get away from his wife. But he also genuinely liked the political world. In 1892 the Republicans asked him to run for county auditor, and he agreed, knowing full well he would lose to the much stronger Democratic machine. Long involved in civic clubs, Harding traveled the state, and as his newspaper grew in size and prominence, he spoke at Republican meetings. He was proud of his speaking skill, and many a listener agreed that with his oratory and good looks, he could win public office. Harding ran for state senate in 1898 in the district comprising Hardin, Logan, Union, and Marion counties and won. He enjoyed the conviviality he found in the legislature—being away from home, hanging around with the boys, and playing poker. Two years later he was reelected. While Harding served in the legislature, Harry M. Daugherty took notice of him. A shrewd political boss and lobbyist, Daugherty looked at Harding’s appearance and manners and, thinking in grand terms, concluded his fellow Ohioan would make a great president. In 1902 he convinced Harding to run for lieutenant governor. Harding won, but bickering within the Republican Party caused him to refuse reelection. Harding returned to his newspaper while factional fights among Republicans continued, and the Democrats dominated the state. In 1910 Daugherty ran Harding for governor. Although Harding lost, he received a boost in 1912 when President William Howard Taft selected him as his nominating speaker at the Republican National Convention. Later that year he again ran for governor—and again lost. At that point he thought about quitting politics for good, but in 1914 Daugherty convinced him to seek the U.S. Senate. This time he won. Much as he had in the Ohio legislature, Harding enjoyed serving in the Senate. He went to the horse track, played golf, and sat down with his buddies for endless hands of poker. With such a schedule he answered only 50 percent of the roll calls, and no one ranked him higher than mediocre in ability, but he made many friends. Harding seldom took a stand on issues, yet he opposed measures that regulated industry, disliked the Prohibition amendment—though he voted for it after he saw it would pass—and supported President Woodrow Wilson’s war effort. By and large, other senators found Harding outgoing and completely harmless. Without Daugherty, and without the changing times, Harding’s career would have amounted to little more than being an obscure senator. He showed no burning desire to reach the White House and several times said the presidency required more talent than he could possibly muster. Nevertheless, in 1916 Daugherty arranged for Harding to serve as the keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, a prelude to a greater moment. Two years later World War I ended, and Americans were soon expressing deep regret over their involvement in it. Bickering among European nations that wanted retribution against Germany bespoke the same old world rather than the new harmonious one promised by Wilson. Americans also grew tired of progressive domestic crusades, as well as with the strife and problems associated with industry. Many waxed nostalgic and longed for a supposedly simpler past, when their country avoided foreign involvement and rural villages encouraged community. Harding came from a small town, and his statements were in accord with this nostalgia. Where progressives questioned society, Harding reassured Americans that their modern economic system produced more good than bad. "American business is not a monster,” he said. "It is the guardian of our happiness.” In summer 1919 Pennsylvania senator Boies Penrose, another Republican boss, joined Daugherty in backing Harding for the presidency. Warren G. Harding 241 242 Warren G. Harding Harding ran in three primaries, winning one narrowly and losing the other two handily, but because there were few such contests back then and because they lacked the influence they have today, it was Daugherty’s dealing that would make the difference in whether Harding got the nomination. To reporters Daugherty predicted the Republicans would make their choice not on any convention floor, but hidden away in a hotel room in the early morning hours. At the 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago—the first one where women attended as delegates—a deadlock developed between the two front-runners: General Leonard Wood, backed by soap manufacturer William Cooper Procter, and Frank Lowden, governor of Illinois. The political bosses, however, distrusted Wood as too reform minded and distanced themselves from Lowden after newspapers revealed that his supporters used money to convince delegates to vote for him. The bosses wanted someone with a spotless record and someone they could control. Meeting at two o’clock in the morning, in a since-legendary smoke-filled room at the Blackstone Hotel, 15 Republican leaders decided to anoint Warren G. Harding, knowing full well that almost anyone they picked would ride the wave of public discontent with the Democrats into the White House. First, however, they met with Harding and asked him if there might be anything in his past that would cause embarrassment. He thought about it for awhile and then said no. Harding won on the 10th ballot. The longtime poker player said, "I feel like a man who goes in on a pair of eights and comes out with aces full.” Only six months earlier he had told a friend, "The only thing I really worry about is that I might be nominated.” Boies Penrose, on his deathbed, advised his fellow Republicans to keep Harding quiet for fear the candidate would blow the election. As a result, party leaders devised a front-porch campaign where Harding mainly stayed at home, though he did make a few public speeches and campaigned on a limited whistle-stop tour. As photographers crowded around Harding, his wife protected his image. "Just let me catch him lighting a cigarette where any hostile eye might see him!” Florence Harding said. "He can’t play cards until the campaign is over, either.” Harding stuck to broad generalities, but at various times he called for a high tariff, the creation of a public welfare department, and restrictions on immigration. At Cleveland, Ohio, he said, "I want my chance to lead in making America a land where men and women place the welfare of America above their own selfish interests; where no class contentions can arise because men’s minds understand other men’s hearts and aspirations; where the strong serve all of us to the end that all of us may serve the weak.” As victory neared, Harding grew more confident. A friend, Evalyn Walsh McLean, recalled: "The constant adulation of the people was beginning to have an effect on Senator Harding. He was more and more inclined to believe in himself. He cherished an idea that when a man was elevated to the presidency his wits by some automatic mental chemistry were increased to fit the stature of his office.” Harding reaped the benefits of the frontporch strategy and the desire of voters to oust the Democrats. Voters responded enthusiastically when he said, "America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.” He defeated his opponent, James M. Cox, a self-made millionaire and progressive reformer, by a margin of 404 to 127 electoral votes. President Harding appointed several men with outstanding backgrounds to his cabinet, including Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state, Herbert Hoover as secretary of commerce, and Henry Wallace as secretary of agriculture. Later in 1921 he named former president William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of the United States. Other appointments caused dismay, most notably Albert B. Fall as secretary of the interior and Harry Daugherty as attorney general. Fall held strong anticonservation views and angered environmentalists. Daugherty’s Warren G. Harding 243 qualifications amounted to little more than a law degree and many years as a backroom political manipulator. To critics Harding responded, "Harry Daugherty has been my best friend from the beginning of this whole thing. He tells me he wants to be attorney general, and by God he will be attorney general.” Early in 1922 President Harding invited the world’s powers to the Washington Armament Conference. He appointed Charles Evans Hughes, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Oscar Underwood to the American delegation. The countries signed nine different treaties. In one, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan agreed to a 10-year moratorium on the building of warships displacing more than 10,000 tons. In another, all those present guaranteed China’s territorial integrity. Although the U.S. Senate ratified the treaties, it expressed its continued postwar hostility to foreign entanglements when it insisted "there is no commitment to armed force, no alliance, no obligation to join in any defense.” During his first year in office, Harding ignored the advice of Republican leaders and pardoned socialist Eugene V. Debs, a family friend then in jail for having violated the Sedition Act during World War I. He appointed Charles G. Dawes to reform the budget process, a move that led to more responsible accounting. In 1922 he signed the Fordney-McCumber Act, which established the highest tariff yet, while he vetoed a bill to provide a bonus for war veterans, saying the government lacked the money to pay for it. Writing in American Heritage magazine in July 1998, Carl S. Anthony emphasizes Harding’s commendable qualities and his laudable accomplishments on the domestic scene. He notes, for example, that Harding stood up for laborers when he backed collective bargaining and pressured businesses to reduce the typical 12-hour day as a way to lessen injuries in factories and mines. The president showed his support for technology when he promoted the 1921 Federal Highway Act, a bill that provided $75 million for building a national highway system. Unusual for the times, Harding showed no racial or ethnic bias. He went against society’s widespread anti-Semitism and appointed his good friend Albert Lasker, a Jew, to head the Shipping Board. While speaking in the South, the president advocated black civil rights and called for equality in education, employment, and politics. Although he tempered his remarks by saying whites and blacks should remain separate socially, he challenged practices that white supremacists considered essential, and he introduced into Congress an antilynching law, which the Senate rejected. Yet according to William Howard Taft, Harding expressed racial views that corresponded with popular prejudice. When Taft urged Harding to protect Republicans in the South by appointing only whites to offices there, the president agreed and, Taft noted, "said sarcastically that this was a matter he must of course give attention to because of his reputed ancestry. . . . He said he believed in a Lily White Republican party and not a Black and Tan.” Whatever Harding’s accomplishments, he thought Congress should take the lead on most matters, and when he disagreed with Capitol Hill he usually conceded his point. More damning, corruption ruined his presidency. As with Ulysses S. Grant, known for the most scandalous White House prior to Harding’s, the president trusted others too much. From the beginning of Harding’s tenure, a poker-playing friend, Charles Forbes, accepted kickbacks as head of the Veterans’ Bureau when he sold "surplus material” at prices well below what they cost the government. In one instance he unloaded 84,000 unused bedsheets, for which the government had paid $1.37 each, for 26. each. At other times Forbes bought items at inflated prices. In another scheme he received money in exchange for fixing bids on hospital construction projects. President Harding learned about his friend’s conduct in 1922, called him to the White House, yelled at him, and shoved him against a wall. Early in 1923 Harding fired Forbes. 244 Warren G. Harding In March, Charles F. Cramer, attorney for the Veterans’ Bureau, shot himself to death after writing several letters to Harding, all unsent. Stories circulated that the letters told about more graft. But they mysteriously disappeared, likely picked up and destroyed by William J. Burns, head of the federal government’s Bureau of Investigation. Harding probably heard about other scandals. One in particular involved another of his friends, Jesse Smith, a loud-mouthed and, to many, obnoxious man who was Harry Daugherty’s close companion. Since the beginning of Harding’s tenure, Smith, Daugherty, and the rest of their "Ohio Gang” had sold government jobs from their "Little Green House” on K Street in Washington. Although Harding knew nothing about the payoffs, he approved the appointments. Smith made more money when he issued government licenses to distillers so they could sell liquor "for medicinal purposes” during Prohibition. In March 1923, Harding advised him to avoid an investigation by leaving town. Soon after, Smith was found dead with a .32-caliber revolver in his hand. Evidence showed he had been burning his correspondence. An inquiry ruled his death a suicide, but many suspected he had been murdered to keep him quiet. Harding’s job genuinely baffled him. To one friend he said, "I listen to one side and they seem right, and then—God!—I talk to the other side and they seem just as right, and here I am where I started. I know somewhere there is a book that will give me the truth, but hell!— I couldn’t read the book.” To another he said, "I knew that this job would be too much for me.” And to journalist William Allen White he said, "My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But damn my friends, my God-damn friends, White, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!” To escape his troubles—most still hidden from public view—he decided to tour the West, but escape proved elusive. While in Kansas City, the wife of interior secretary Albert Fall visited him. After their conversation, Harding appeared more troubled than ever. By the time he reached the Pacific Coast, he was openly talking about betrayal. At one point he called Herbert Hoover into his shipboard cabin and asked him, "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly, or would you bury it?” Hoover advised him to expose it. Harding traveled to Alaska and then arrived in Seattle, where he fell ill from eating bad crabmeat. He improved and continued his trip but in San Francisco he caught pneumonia. Headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle revealed a rapid change. "PRESIDENT RAPIDLY IMPROVING,” one said, only to be followed by another just a day later: "HARDING DEAD.” Doctors believed a blood clot killed him on August 2, 1923, but Florence Harding, who had been with him on the trip, refused to allow an autopsy. Soon rumors circulated: The president, depressed over scandals yet to be revealed, killed himself; or Florence Harding, angered by her husband’s affairs with several women, killed him. In truth, Harding had suffered from high blood pressure and other problems before the trip, and stress over the unfolding scandals may have contributed to his death. The country saw Harding as a decent man who stood above graft, and so it mourned him. Then the Teapot Dome scandal broke, and it became difficult to find anyone who would even attend the interment of his body in his tomb, built several months after his death. A Senate committee, led by Democrat Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, began hearings in October 1923. Walsh found that Albert Fall, who had retired from the cabinet in March, had accepted $400,000 from two millionaires: E. L. Doheny of the Pan-American Petroleum Company and Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company. The two had paid the money to gain control over government oil fields held in reserve for the navy, one at Elk Hills, California, and the other at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. In 1921 Harding had approved transferring these oil fields from the navy department to the interior Warren G. Harding 245 department. Half of the $400,000 payment— which Harding was unaware of at the time— had gone to the Republican Party. The Senate continued to investigate and exposed other scandals so extensive that the phrase Teapot Dome came to mean more than the graft involving Fall (much as in the 1970s the word Watergate, under President Richard Nixon, came to mean more than the break-in at the Watergate complex). Subsequently, several officials in the Harding administration were brought to trial. Albert Fall was convicted of bribery and sentenced to one year in prison. Charles Forbes received a two-year prison term for bribery and conspiracy. Harry Daugherty, who resigned as attorney general at President Calvin Coolidge’s request in March 1924, was tried for conspiracy in a case involving the transfer of German assets seized during World War I. He was eventually acquitted, but one of his associates was found guilty. As the public learned about these scandals, it began learning about Harding’s numerous extramarital affairs. He had had a long relationship with Nan Britton, a native of Marion, Ohio, who lived in New York City. The affair had begun in 1916 when she was 20 years old and was continuing at the time he told the political bosses he knew of nothing in his past that could cause embarrassment. In 1927 Britton claimed Harding was the father of her daughter. Harding had also been involved in a relationship with a woman named Carrie Phillips, shortly before 1920. Phillips had blackmailed Harding; his campaign managers had paid $20,000 to keep her quiet during the presidential race and an additional $2,000 per month while he served in the White House. Harding had engaged in at least two other affairs, one in which he had paid for an abortion and another with Grace Cross, his presidential secretary. Florence Harding had known about her husband’s amorous escapades and once caught him in a tryst in the White House. At the time of his death, she knew also about the political scandals brewing. As a result, before leaving Washington she collected papers from the Oval Office and from Harding’s study and burned them. At one point she took a black suitcase loaded with bundles of papers and threw it on to a fire. But she destroyed only part of the historical record. Committee hearings and trial transcripts remained and exposed a president who, though personally not involved in graft, lacked the talent, courage, and strength to control it. Americans in the 1920s had looked back toward the village and found their heritage had
been robbed by greed.