History
Warren G Harding
Warren G. Harding was the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1923. He is known for his campaign slogan "Return to Normalcy" and for his administration's involvement in several scandals, including the Teapot Dome scandal. Harding's presidency was marked by economic prosperity but also by corruption and controversy.
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5 Key excerpts on "Warren G Harding"
- Katherine A.S. Sibley(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times .New York: McGraw-Hill.- Russell, Francis. 1978. “The Shadow of Warren Harding.” The Antioch Review 36(1): 57–76.
- Russell, Thomas H. 1923. The Illustrious Life of Warren G. Harding: Twenty-Ninth President of the United States: From Farm to White House . Chicago: Thomas H. Russell.
- Sinclair, Andrew. 1965. The Available Man: The Life Behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding . New York: Macmillan.
- Trani, Eugene P., and David L. Wilson. 1977. The Presidency of Warren G.Harding . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
- White, William Allen. 1928. Masks in a Pageant . New York: Macmillan.
- Wood, Clement. 1932. Warren Gamaliel Harding: An American Comedy . New York: William Faro.
Further Reading
- Daugherty, Harry M. 1932. The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy . New York: Churchill.
- Faulkner, Harold U. 1950. From Versailles to the New Deal: A Chronicle of the Harding, Coolidge, Hoover Era . New Haven: Yale University Press. Although dated, Faulkner’s study of the three Republican presidents is still an excellent place to begin studying the 1920s.
- Gross, Edwin K. 1965. Vindication for Mr. Normalcy . Buffalo: American Society for the Faithful Recording of History.
- Johnson, Willis Fletcher. 1923. The Life of Warren G. Harding: From Simple Life of the Farm to the Glamour and Power of the White House . Philadelphia: John C. Winston.
- Mee, Charles L., Jr. 1982. The Ohio Gang: The World of Warren G. Harding . New York: M. Evans.
- Murray, Robert K. 1973. The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding–Coolidge Era . New York: Norton.
- Noggle, Burl. 1962. Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s . Baton Rouge: LSU Press. Remains one of the best single volumes on the scandal that engulfed the Harding Administration and led to the first conviction of a cabinet member.
- Noggle, Burl. 1973. “The New Harding.” Reviews in American History 1(1): 126–132.
- Palmer, Niall. 2006. The Twenties in America: Politics and History
eBook - PDF- Paul A. Carter(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Columbia University Press(Publisher)
During Harding's presidency, out in west-ern Missouri, a plainspoken county judge, just then beginning his political career with the blessing of a gamy local Democratic ma-chine, was destined to carry that traditional faith forward into a new generation. In doing so, Harry Truman would necessarily have to work out his own difficult balance between statesmanship and corruption—a more satisfactory balance, many would now say, than that achieved by either Harding or Nixon. To be sure the Harding twenties, like the Truman forties, were extraordinary times for an ordinary citizen to attempt to govern. The month of March 1921, when Warren Harding was inaugu-rated, saw strife and commotion throughout the rest of the civilized world. In southern Italy peasants rose against their landlords; in Egypt socialists and nationalists rose against British rule. In Ireland an Associated Press correspondent was led, blindfolded, to an un-derground hideaway so that the revolutionary leader Eamon De Valera could grant him an interview. In Turkey another revolu-tionary leader, Mustafa Kemal, formally broke with the Sultan's moribund regime; in Russia the three-year-old Bolshevik govern-ment suppressed a sailor's mutiny at Kronstadt and other risings in Minsk and Petrograd. Just over history's horizon were Hitler s Munich beer-hall putsch and Mussolini's march on Rome. Worldwide revolution was in fact not quite so imminent as such events made it appear, but the situation was quite serious enough from the standpoint of the American President-elect. If revolution insists upon overturning established order let other peoples make the tragic experiment, Harding declared in his inaugural address on March 4, 1921. 'There is no place for it in America. That A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 171 would have been news indeed to our Founding Fathers, whom Warren Harding regularly and fervently praised.
eBook - ePubDifficult Reputations
Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial
- Gary Alan Fine(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
23 He told White that “I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God-damn friends, White, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!” (Barber 1972:191). President Hoover noted:Here was a man whose soul was being seared by a great disillusionment. We saw him gradually weaken not only from physical exhaustion but from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he had trusted, by men who he had believed were devoted friends. . . . That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding. . . . But these acts never touched the character of Warren Harding. He gave his life in worthy accomplishment for his country. (Blanchard 1931:47)Harding could have been defined as victim and martyr. Yet the solidification of Harding’s role as a machine politician (the Ohio Gang, the smoke-filled room) made such a defense implausible and ineffective. While his defenders claimed that Harding tried to be a good president, they were unable to create a reputation of a strong charismatic leader betrayed by evil men.Rather than defending the administration, many Republicans admitted the scandals, but strategically localized them by blaming Fall and Daugherty (Russell 1968:623). Secretary of State Hughes struck a defensive tone in his eulogy at a joint memorial service of Congress held in early 1924:We, who look on with critics’ eyes, Exempt from action’s crucial test, Human ourselves, at least are wise In honoring one who did his best. (Murray 1973:102)Similarly, in his keynote address at the 1924 Republican convention, Theodore Burton dealt directly with the scandals (“unworthy motives and grasping avarice”), while insisting that the corruption did not affect the ability of Coolidge to lead the nation (Fuess 1940:344). Without a sustained attempt to preserve the memory of Harding, his public stock sank lower and lower. With popular volumes presenting a lurid account of his affair with Nan Britton (Britton 1927) and fantastic claims that he had been murdered (Means 1930), Harding’s place in history was solidified.
eBook - ePubThe Jazz Age President
Defending Warren G. Harding
- Ryan S. Walters(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Regnery History(Publisher)
“He was a real man, without pretensions of any kinds. He loved his friends with a devotion that after surpassed wisdom and in his heart there was no room for animosity against enemies. Yet one’s heart rebels and even in this hour of sorrow asks whether it was the decree of fate or the foolishness of friends that has sent this great American to an untimely end.” Only time “will fix his place in history for the rest of the world.” 42 From the Los Angeles Times : “We mourn and the whole world mourns with us the passing of a gentle, kindly soul. Men are great as they are kind. Warren G. Harding was both kind and great. He will go down into the history of this nation as one of the greatest of the Presidents. It is impossible to estimate the debt that the world owes his memory. He came to the White House at a time when the world lay bleeding in the ashes of its agony. And his voice went out to the world, calm and steady, brave and reassuring under his sane, cool, practical guidance.” Elected “in the midst of a crisis,” he “laid no claim to brilliancy. He was more than brilliant; he was great. Plain people recognized in Warren G. Harding a plain, honest, genuine, square-dealing, simple-spoken man like themselves; they knew his words and they knew him and they believed in him as few public men have been believed before. In Harding the plain virtues of common sense rose to positive genius. He had a level, sane judgment that was a pillar of strength not only to our own nation but to the world.” 43 As these eulogies attest, Harding was a beloved president. People around the country recognized his humility, his honesty, and his kindness toward everyone he met. But the scandals tarnished his reputation. They came out after his death, when he could no longer act or defend himself. And rumors, lies, smears, and innuendo were used to wreck his reputation. The unjust campaign to smear President Harding continues to this day.
eBook - PDFThe Brief American Pageant
A History of the Republic, Volume II: Since 1865
- David Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, Mel Piehl, , David Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, Mel Piehl(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Just as news of the scandals was beginning to break, he died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, of pneu-monia and thrombosis. Mourning millions, not yet fully aware of the graft in Washington, expressed genuine sorrow. The brutal fact is that Harding simply was not a strong enough man for the presidency—as he himself privately admitted. Such was his weakness that he tolerated people and conditions that subjected the Republic to its worst disgrace since the days of President Grant. “Silent Cal” Coolidge News of Harding’s death was sped to Vice President Coolidge, then visiting at his father’s New England farmhouse. By the light of two kerosene lamps the elder Coolidge, a justice of the peace, used the old family Bible to administer the presidential oath to his son. This homespun setting was symbolic of Coolidge. Quite unlike Harding, the stern-faced Vermonter, with his thin nose and tightly set lips, embodied the New England virtues of honesty, morality, industry, and frugality. His dour visage prompted the acerbic observation that he had been “weaned on a pickle.” Coolidge seemed to be a crystallization of the commonplace. Painfully shy, he was blessed with only mediocre powers of leadership. He would occasionally display a dry wit in private; but his speeches, delivered in a nasal New England twang, were invariably boring. Teapot Dome scandal (1921) A tawdry affair involving the illegal lease of priceless naval oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California. The scandal, which implicated President Harding’s secretary of the interior, was one of several that gave his administration a reputation for corruption. The Granger Collection, NYC The Harding Scandals This 1924 cartoon satirizing the misdemeanors of the Harding administration shows the sale of the Capitol, the White House, and even the Washington Monument. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
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