Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular presidents at the time of his death. After that, a number of scandals were exposed that greatly damaged his reputation.
Harding lived in rural Ohio all his life, except when political service took him elsewhere. As a young man, he bought The Marion Star and built it into a successful newspaper. Harding served in the Ohio State Senate from 1900 to 1904, and was lieutenant governor for two years. He was defeated for governor in 1910, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1914—the state's first direct election for that office. Harding ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, but was considered a long shot before the convention. When the leading candidates could not garner a majority, and the convention deadlocked, support for Harding increased, and he was nominated on the tenth ballot. He conducted a front porch campaign, remaining mostly in Marion and allowing people to come to him. He promised a return to normalcy of the pre–World War I period, and defeated Democratic nominee James M. Cox in a landslide to become the first sitting senator elected president.
Harding appointed a number of respected figures to his cabinet, including Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Herbert Hoover at Commerce, and Charles Evans Hughes at the State Department. A major foreign policy achievement came with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world's major naval powers agreed on a naval limitations program that lasted a decade. Harding released political prisoners who had been arrested for their opposition to World War I. In 1923, Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.
The exposure of scandals after Harding's death, including Teapot Dome, as well as an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, eroded his popularity. His interior secretary, Albert B. Fall, and his attorney general, Harry Daugherty, were each later tried for corruption in office; Fall was convicted and Daugherty was not. These trials greatly damaged Harding's posthumous reputation. In historical rankings of U.S. presidents during the decades after his term in office, Harding was often rated among the worst. In the subsequent decades, some historians have begun to reassess Harding's historical record in office.
Early life and career
Childhood and education
Warren Harding was born on November 2, 1865, in Blooming Grove, Ohio. Nicknamed "Winnie" as a small child, he was the eldest of eight children born to George Tryon Harding and Phoebe Elizabeth Harding. Phoebe was a state-licensed midwife. Tryon farmed and taught school near Mount Gilead. Through apprenticeship, study, and a year of medical school, Tryon became a doctor and started a small practice. Harding's first ancestor in the Americas was Richard Harding, who arrived from England to Massachusetts Bay around 1624. Harding also had ancestors from Wales and Scotland, and some of his maternal ancestors were Dutch, including the wealthy Van Kirk family.It was rumored by a political opponent in Blooming Grove that one of Harding's great-grandmothers was African American. His great-great-grandfather Amos Harding claimed that a thief, who had been caught in the act by the family, started the rumor in an attempt at extortion or revenge. In 2015, genetic testing of Harding's descendants determined, with more than a 95% chance of accuracy, that he lacked sub-Saharan African forebears within four generations.
In 1870, the Harding family, who were abolitionists, moved to Caledonia, where Tryon acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper. At The Argus, Harding, from the age of 11, learned the basics of the newspaper business. In late 1879, at age 14, he enrolled at his father's alma mater—Ohio Central College in Iberia—where he proved an adept student. He and a friend put out a small newspaper, the Iberia Spectator, during their final year at Ohio Central, intended to appeal to both the college and the town. During his final year, the Harding family moved to Marion, about from Caledonia, and when he graduated in 1882, he joined them there.
On May 6, 1883, Harding joined the Free Baptist Church in Marion, where he later served as a trustee for 25 years and of which he remained a member until his death. The congregation merged with the Northern Baptist Convention in 1911 and became known as the Trinity Baptist Church in 1912.
Editor
In Harding's youth, most of the U.S. population still lived on farms and in small towns. Harding spent much of his life in Marion, a small city in rural central Ohio, and became closely associated with it. When he rose to high office, he made clear his love of Marion and its way of life, telling of the many young Marionites who had left and enjoyed success elsewhere, while suggesting that the man, once the "pride of the school", who had remained behind and become a janitor, was "the happiest one of the lot".Upon graduating, Harding had stints as a teacher and as an insurance man, and made a brief attempt at studying law. He then raised $300 in partnership with others to purchase a failing newspaper, The Marion Star, the weakest of the growing city's three papers and its only daily. The 18-year-old Harding used the railroad pass that came with the paper to attend the 1884 Republican National Convention, where he hobnobbed with better-known journalists and supported the presidential nominee, former Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Harding returned from Chicago to find that the sheriff had reclaimed the paper. During the election campaign, Harding worked for the Marion Democratic Mirror and was annoyed at having to praise the Democratic presidential nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland, who won the election. Afterward, with his father's financial help, Harding gained ownership of the paper.
Through the later years of the 1880s, Harding built the Star. The city of Marion tended to vote Republican, but Marion County was Democratic. Accordingly, Harding adopted a tempered editorial stance, declaring the daily Star nonpartisan and circulating a weekly edition that was moderately Republican. This policy attracted advertisers and put the town's Republican weekly out of business. According to his biographer, Andrew Sinclair:
The population of Marion grew from 4,000 in 1880 to twice that in 1890, and to 12,000 by 1900. This growth helped the Star, and Harding did his best to promote the city, purchasing stock in many local enterprises. A few of these turned out badly, but he was generally successful as an investor, leaving an estate of $850,000 in 1923. According to Harding biographer John Dean, Harding's "civic influence was that of an activist who used his editorial page to effectively keep his nose—and a prodding voice—in all the town's public business". To date, Harding is the only U.S. president to have had full-time journalism experience. He became an ardent supporter of Governor Joseph B. Foraker, a Republican.
Harding first came to know Florence Kling, five years older than he, as the daughter of a local banker and developer. Amos Kling was a man accustomed to getting his way, but Harding attacked him relentlessly in the paper. Amos involved Florence in all his affairs, taking her to work from the time she could walk. As hard-headed as her father, Florence came into conflict with him after returning from music college. After she eloped with Pete deWolfe, and returned to Marion without deWolfe and with an infant called Marshall, Amos agreed to raise the boy, but would not support Florence, who made a living as a piano teacher. One of her students was Harding's sister Charity. By 1886, Florence Kling had obtained a divorce, and she and Harding were courting, though who was pursuing whom is uncertain.
The budding match snuffed out a truce between the Klings. Amos believed that the Hardings had African American blood, and was also offended by Harding's editorial stances. He started to spread rumors of Harding's supposed black heritage, and encouraged local businessmen to boycott Harding's business interests. When Harding found out what Kling was doing, he warned Kling "that he would beat the tar out of the little man if he didn't cease."
The Hardings married on July 8, 1891, at their new home on Mount Vernon Avenue in Marion, which they had designed together in the Queen Anne style. The marriage produced no children. Harding affectionately called his wife "the Duchess" for a character in a serial from The New York Sun who kept a close eye on "the Duke" and their money.
Florence Harding became deeply involved in her husband's career, both at the Star and after he entered politics. Exhibiting her father's determination and business sense, she helped turn the Star into a profitable enterprise through her tight management of the paper's circulation department. She has been credited with helping Harding achieve more than he might have alone; some have suggested that she pushed him all the way to the White House.
Start in politics
Soon after purchasing the Star, Harding turned his attention to politics, supporting Foraker in his first successful bid for governor in 1885. Foraker was part of the war generation that challenged older Ohio Republicans, such as Senator John Sherman, for control of state politics. Harding, always a party loyalist, supported Foraker in the complex internecine warfare that was Ohio Republican politics. Harding was willing to tolerate Democrats as necessary to a two-party system, but had only contempt for those who bolted the Republican Party to join third-party movements. He was a delegate to the Republican state convention in 1888, at the age of 22, representing Marion County, and would be elected a delegate in most years until becoming president.Harding's success as an editor took a toll on his health. Five times between 1889 and 1901, he spent time at the Battle Creek Sanitorium for reasons Sinclair described as "fatigue, overstrain, and nervous illnesses". Dean ties these visits to early occurrences of the heart ailment that would kill Harding in 1923. During one such absence from Marion, in 1894, the Star's business manager quit. Florence Harding took his place. She became her husband's top assistant at the Star on the business side, maintaining her role until the Hardings moved to Washington in 1915. Her competence allowed Harding to travel to make speeches—his use of the free railroad pass increased greatly after his marriage. Florence Harding practiced strict economy and wrote of Harding, "he does well when he listens to me and poorly when he does not."
In 1892, Harding traveled to Washington, where he met Democratic Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan, and listened to the "Boy Orator of the Platte" speak on the floor of the House of Representatives. Harding traveled to Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Both visits were without Florence. Democrats generally won Marion County's offices; when Harding ran for auditor in 1895, he lost, but did better than expected. The following year, Harding was one of many orators who spoke across Ohio as part of the campaign of the Republican presidential candidate, that state's former governor, William McKinley. According to Dean, "while working for McKinley began making a name for himself through Ohio".