The Jazz Age President

Defending Warren G. Harding

Ryan S. Walters

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781621578840
• eBook ISBN: 9781684512805
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Biografías políticas

"Presidents are ranked wrong. In The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding, Ryan Walters mounts a case that Harding deserves to move up—and supplies the evidence to make that case strong. -Amity Shlaes, bestselling author of Coolidge He's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever, " "Dead Last, " "Unfit, " and "Incompetent, " to name but a few. Many contemporaries were equally cruel. H. L. Mencken called him a "nitwit." To Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he was a "slob." Such is the current reputation of our 29th President, Warren Gamaliel Harding. In an interesting survey in 1982, which divided the scholarly respondents into "conservative" and "liberal" categories, both groups picked Harding as the worst President. But historian Ryan Walters shows that Harding, a humble man from Marion, Ohio, has been unfairly remembered.He quickly fixed an economy in depression and started theboom of the Roaring Twenties, healed a nation in the throes of social disruption, and reversedAmerica's interventionist foreign policy.

CHAPTER 1 THE LEAGUE

“I am quite convinced as the most bitter ‘irreconcilable’ that the country does not want the Versailles League.”

—Warren Harding

The nation was overjoyed with the news: at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the Armistice went into effect, halting the killing that had consumed Europe since the summer of 1914 and involved the United States for the previous seventeen months. The Great War was over. Ten million soldiers lay dead, along with eight million civilians. Twenty million were wounded, many severely so. There was scarcely a family in Europe untouched by the war; the entire continent, the homeland they knew so well, would be redrawn in the chaotic aftermath. Three of continental Europe’s longest-standing and most powerful monarchies had been toppled. The German kaiser, the emperor of Austria-Hungary, and the Russian tsar were all gone, one way or another. The ancient Ottoman Empire, the long-suffering “sick man of Europe,” had finally fallen as well.

The world that emerged after the guns fell silent and the smoke cleared was far different from the innocence that had prevailed in 1914. When war had come that summer, no one could have believed the ravages that awaited Europe, or the fact that America would eventually be drawn into the conflict. There had been no existential sense of dread in the minds of most people, in Europe or the United States, at the outbreak of the war. Most Americans had seen it as yet another European interfamily squabble, certainly nothing that would require the intervention of the New World, while most Europeans had thought it would be a short war, over perhaps by Christmas.

In those pre-war days, the general mindset on war was certainly different—different from our mindset today, no doubt, but also different from what it would be just four years later. A prevailing attitude in those antebellum days was that war was generally good, a healthy development when it came, even a cleansing process. War would strengthen a nation, not weaken it. Former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, a hero of the Spanish-American War of 1898, wanted America to enter the European conflict immediately in 1914 and tried his best to gain command of an army division in France in 1917 when the nation did finally declare war. Journalist Evan Thomas has branded him a “war lover,” and he certainly was one. “All the great masterful races have been fighting races,” declared Roosevelt at the Naval War College in 1897, “and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal to the best.” The consequences of the full-scale industrialized war that broke out in the summer of 1914 destroyed that notion forever.¹

What Americans came to know as World War I was not quite over on that day in November when the Armistice was announced. Unbeknownst to most American citizens at the time, U.S. forces were part of an international coalition fighting in Russia on one side of a civil war that pitted Bolshevik Communists, the Reds (soon to be called Soviets), against anti-Communist forces known as the Whites. Approximately eleven thousand U.S. troops did their part to try to stop the imposition of a Bolshevik government in Moscow, with American losses near three thousand by the time it was over—only to see Lenin’s new regime emerge triumphant.

But that didn’t matter to those jubilant in the streets in the fall of 1918. “The Armistice made everyone crazy,” wrote historian Nell Irvin Painter. “It was like Mardi Gras all over the country.” One contemporary writer noted that the area of Chicago known as “The Loop” resembled “a nuthouse on fire. The sidewalks were swollen with people, the streets were clogged, and autoists honked their horns, and motor men donged bells in vain. Tons of paper and confetti blizzarded from the upper stories of buildings and sundry noise-makers echoed an insistent racket. People sang, shouted until it seemed that their lungs would burst from their mouths.” When Mary Roberts Rinehart, who had been a war correspondent in Belgium, returned home after the war, she was amazed at what she found. “I was gazing with a sort of terror at an America I hardly knew, a jazzed America, drinking, dancing, spending; developing a cult of ugliness and calling it modernity, and throwing aside the simplicities and charms of living in pursuit of a new god called Smartness.”²

The elation was due partly to the fact that no one had believed the war would end so quickly, even with the participation of American troops. Soon after arriving in Paris, U.S. general “Black Jack” Pershing had warned the Allies that his soldiers would not be fully trained and operational until 1919. And many had believed the war would probably drag on until at least 1920—including Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, who agreed with the assessment that the country would probably need “an Army of five millions of men by January 1, 1920.” He wrote, “Moreover, I have a pretty strong conviction, that under the present plan, we will have an Army that size if the war continues throughout the year.” But now it was over. Still-green American doughboys, arriving by the thousands every day, had made the difference, providing much needed relief to worn out British and French troops and—with a million men on the field—helping to stop the last-ditch German offensive meant to win victory for the kaiser. They also played a vital role in the counter-offensive that pushed Allied forces toward Germany itself.³

The end of the war was the occasion for the festivities, but it was not the only thing that everyone was celebrating. Nearly a year before, a new virus that history has termed the “Spanish flu” had devastated troop encampments in Europe and then spread worldwide. The first known case in the United States, and perhaps the world, emerged at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March 1918. Within a few days, more than 500 were sick. By the time it was over, half a billion people worldwide had contracted the bug and it had killed as many as 100 million, some 5 percent of the world’s population, spreading as far north as the Arctic and to the remotest of the South Pacific islands. It is thought that more than a quarter of the entire populace of the United States was infected, with as many as 675,000 dead in influenza hospitals across the country. Under Woodrow Wilson, the federal government, then deeply entrenched in the war, had done nothing, but state and local governments had instituted severe restrictions and regulations, going so far as to keep the public from schools, theaters, churches, bars, and anywhere else people congregated in order to check the spread as best they could. But by the Armistice, the pandemic seemed to be subsiding, too. People were now free to congregate once again, and they were jubilant to be able to do so.⁴

Though America had not suffered the same devastation as Europe, the war had had an enormous effect on Americans across the country, regardless of their standing in life, and it had done so in a very short period of time. It wasn’t just the 4.7 million who had served in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), the 117,000 dead, the 320,000 sick and wounded, and the millions who worked in war industries. It was also the hardships imposed on the people by their own government. The new income tax, instituted in 1913, had ballooned to catastrophically high rates, with the wealthy paying three-quarters of their income in taxes. And no class of American was immune. Even the poorest citizen paid a minimum of 4 percent to finance the war. The federal budget had grown more than 20-fold, while the national debt shot up to more than 25 times what it had been in 1914. The people also had to deal with the shortages, rationing, and inflation that always come with war.

The government had instituted a draft to press citizens into military service and cracked down on civil liberties with the passage of new laws designed to punish espionage and sedition. In shades of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, any criticism of the federal government was swiftly and harshly punished. Despite the clear violation of the protections of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court would eventually uphold the government’s actions because of a “clear and present danger” to the nation. With Wilson’s crusade in Europe finally over in November 1918, Americans were ecstatic that life would be returning to normal very soon. The elation, though, would be short-lived.

With the Armistice in place and hostilities abated, the next phase would be to secure peace. President Wilson decided to do something no other American commander in chief had ever done. He traveled to France in December 1918 to personally represent the United States in the peace talks at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris.

The peace conference faced a monumental task. The assemblage had to deal with a war-ravaged continent, shattered economies, starving and displaced people, angry victims, fallen monarchies, colonial possessions, and hostile nationalities clamoring for independence, not to mention finding of fault and assigning reparations, which would itself be a massive undertaking led by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. The work lasted six months and produced a treaty that virtually ensured another war, as Pennsylvania senator Philander C. Knox, who had served as secretary of state under Wilson’s predecessor, William Howard Taft, warned the president in a Senate speech that proved eerily prophetic. The treaty “does not spell peace but war—war more woeful and devastating than the one we have but now closed. The instrument before us is not the Treaty but the Truce of Versailles,” he said.⁵

The Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Europe, created nine new nations, placed the blame for the war on Germany, imposed harsh reparations payments, and created Wilson’s signature League of Nations, a forerunner to the United Nations, crafted for the purpose of solving world disputes—or, as the Wall Street Journal called it, “Mr. Wilson’s pet scheme to ameliorate everything and banish trouble from the world.” That would be the main sticking point in the U.S. Senate, a body controlled by the Republican Party since the mid-term election in November 1918. Needing a vote of two-thirds of the members for ratification, the treaty met with stiff but not insurmountable opposition. A little finesse and goodwill from the White House, and the treaty would likely navigate the one treacherous obstacle in its path.⁶

The contention centered on Articles X and XI of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which introduced the new concept of global collective security:

The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.

Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. In case any such emergency should arise the Secretary General shall on the request of any Member of the League forthwith summon a meeting of the Council.

For independence-minded senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, these clauses were more than a little troubling; they represented a vital threat to the sovereignty of the United States. The treaty would obligate the nation to go to war to defend any member nation under threat and potentially call for the mobilization of American troops without the approval of Congress. This was an abdication of congressional prerogatives that Lodge and many other senators would not take lightly.

A prominent son of Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge had served in the U.S. Senate since 1893, and before that in the state legislature and in the U.S. House. Best friends with Theodore Roosevelt until the latter’s untimely passing in January 1919, Lodge was one of the leaders of the Republican Party and, unofficially at least, the Senate’s majority leader after the GOP takeover of Congress in 1918. Lodge, wrote journalist Edward Lowry, “is a figure apart in the Senate, and, whether the other Senators acknowledge the fact or not, they do allow him a place of his own. He is one of the personalities. Strangers in the galleries always ask to have him pointed out. There is an atmosphere about him of tradition, of legend, myth.”⁷

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lodge would get the treaty first; it had to pass through his committee before it could receive a floor vote. In a deliberate delaying tactic, Lodge spent a full two weeks publicly reading the treaty to the other members, even though it was in a bound volume for anyone to see. As an astute politician, Lodge knew that the longer he could delay the vote on the treaty in the Senate, the stronger the opposition would grow. The opposition was mainly over the proposed League of Nations, not the other provisions of the treaty. Eventually the Senate broke down into four different groups. The treaty, with the League intact as is, did have its proponents, mostly Democrats, numbering about forty members. Then there was the opposition. The “mild reservationists” were mainly Republicans who were generally in favor but wanted some slight modifications. The “strong reservationists,” led by Lodge, sought major revisions, or they would not support the treaty. Finally there were the irreconcilables, who numbered only about fifteen members, but included such notables as William Borah of Idaho, Hiram Johnson of California, and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. They vowed not to vote for the treaty under any circumstances.

Senator Harding, a proponent of “America First,” favored the treaty, but, like Lodge, he had strong reservations about the League. He wrote that he wanted “to preserve all of the League proposal which we can accept with safety to the United States, in the hope that the conscience of the Nations may be directed to perfecting a safe plan of cooperation toward maintained peace. But there will be no surrender of things essentially and vitally American.” Lodge, Harding, and the other members of the large “strong reservationist” camp argued that the treaty would be ratified easily if Wilson would simply permit some modifications so that decisions to go to war and to mobilize U.S. troops remained solely in the hands of Congress.⁸

But Woodrow Wilson, the high-minded moral idealist, was not a compromising man. A Southern Democrat born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856, he had come of age in the South during the Reconstruction era, where he was instilled with the attitudes of most white Southerners of the time. He was highly educated, first at Davidson College in North Carolina and then in law school at the University of Virginia. After souring on a legal career, he earned a Ph.D. in government from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A born academic, he was first a professor at Princeton, later its president, and then governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 before he entered the White House.⁹

A deeply religious man, Wilson prayed on his knees twice a day, but along with his piousness went a rigid and uncompromising mindset. He was a moralist who saw the world in black and white, who believed in absolute right and absolute wrong—which had the effect of making him quite stubborn. He was used to getting his way and was known to end friendships if his companion did not agree with his position on a given issue. The Kansas journalist William Allen White noted this dark side of Wilson, writing that he would “break ruthlessly and irrevocably, without defense or explanation, any friendship which threatened his prestige.” Wilson’s Paris press secretary, the journalist Ray Stannard Baker, remarked that Wilson was “a good hater.” King George V referred to him as “an odious man.” He could be petty and vindictive. He was arrogant, self-righteous, and pompous. After his election in 1912, Wilson told an aide, “I wish it to be clearly understood that I owe you nothing. Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal could have prevented that.” Presidential historian Thomas Bailey described him as an “intellectually arrogant reformer” who was “bent on rocking the boat of big business and browbeating Congress.”¹⁰

The latter charge fit Woodrow Wilson perfectly. On the fight over the League, he vowed, “Anyone who opposes me in that, I’ll crush!” When told that without changes his proposal would likely be voted down, Wilson responded that there would be no changes. “The Senate must take its medicine,” he said. The obstinate attitude was justified by the way Wilson saw himself: not so much as a constitutional president but more of a prime minister with complete mastery over Parliament. The mere thought of a meeting with Lodge to discuss changes that would ensure passage of the treaty was unthinkable to Wilson. Lodge should have realized very quickly that Wilson would be more than a little inflexible about his treaty. Wilson safeguarded the treaty like a mother hen hovering over her chicks. He took the unusual step of personally deliverin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction: Why Defend Warren G. Harding?
• Prologue: The Most Maligned President in American History
• Chapter 1: The League
• Chapter 2: 1919: The Year of Upheaval
• Chapter 3: The Fight for the Republican Presidential Nomination
• Chapter 4: The Election of 1920
• Chapter 5: The Harding Administration
• Chapter 6: Rebuilding a Depressed Economy
• Chapter 7: Putting America First
• Chapter 8: Harding, National Healer
• Chapter 9: The Scandals
• Conclusion: Restoring Harding’s Reputation
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright