Disarmament
Harding had urged disarmament and lower defense costs during the campaign, but it had not been a major issue. He gave a speech to a joint session of Congress in April 1921, setting out his legislative priorities. Among the few foreign policy matters he mentioned was disarmament, with the president stating that the government could not "be unmindful of the call for reduced expenditure" on defense.
Idaho Senator William Borah had proposed a conference at which the major naval powers, the U.S., Britain, and Japan, would agree to cuts in their fleets. Harding concurred, and after some diplomatic discussions, representatives of nine nations convened in Washington in November 1921. Most of the diplomats first attended Armistice Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, where Harding spoke at the entombment of the Unknown Soldier of World War I, whose identity, "took flight with his imperishable soul. We know not whence he came, only that his death marks him with the everlasting glory of an American dying for his country".
Hughes, in his speech at the opening session of the conference on November 12, 1921, made the American proposal—the U.S. would decommission or not build 30 warships if Great Britain did the same for 19 vessels, and Japan 17 ships. The secretary was generally successful, and agreements were reached on this and other points, including settlements to disputes over islands in the Pacific, and limitations on the use of poison gas. The naval agreement was limited to battleships and to some extent aircraft carriers, and in the end did not prevent rearmament. Nevertheless, Harding and Hughes were widely applauded in the press for their work. Harding had appointed Senator Lodge and the Senate Minority Leader, Alabama's Oscar Underwood, to the U.S. delegation; they helped ensure that the treaties made it through the Senate mostly unscathed, though that body added reservations to some.
The U.S. had acquired over a thousand vessels during World War I, and still owned most of them when Harding took office. Congress had authorized their disposal in 1920, but the Senate would not confirm Wilson's nominees to the Shipping Board. Harding appointed Albert Lasker as its chairman; the advertising executive undertook to run the fleet as profitably as possible until it could be sold. Most ships proved impossible to sell at anything approaching the government's cost. Lasker recommended a large subsidy to the merchant marine to enable the sales, and Harding repeatedly urged Congress to enact it. Unpopular in the Midwest, the bill passed the House, but was defeated by a filibuster in the Senate, and most government ships were eventually scrapped.
Latin America
Intervention in Latin America had been a minor campaign issue; Harding spoke against Wilson's decision to send U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and attacked the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Franklin Roosevelt, for his role in the Haitian intervention. Once Harding was sworn in, Hughes worked to improve relations with Latin American countries who were wary of the American use of the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention; at the time of Harding's inauguration, the U.S. also had troops in Cuba and Nicaragua. The troops stationed in Cuba to protect American interests were withdrawn in 1921; U.S. forces remained in the other three nations through Harding's presidency. In April 1921, Harding gained the ratification of the Thomson–Urrutia Treaty with Colombia, granting that nation $25 million (equivalent to $358.35 million in 2019) as settlement for the U.S.-provoked Panamanian revolution of 1903. The Latin American nations were not fully satisfied, as the U.S. refused to renounce interventionism, though Hughes pledged to limit it to nations near the Panama Canal, and to make it clear what the U.S. aims were.
The U.S. had intervened repeatedly in Mexico under Wilson, and had withdrawn diplomatic recognition, setting conditions for reinstatement. The Mexican government under President Álvaro Obregón wanted recognition before negotiations, but Wilson and his final Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, refused. Both Hughes and Fall opposed recognition; Hughes instead sent a draft treaty to the Mexicans in May 1921, which included pledges to reimburse Americans for losses in Mexico since the 1910 revolution there. Obregón was unwilling to sign a treaty before being recognized, and worked to improve the relationship between American business and Mexico, reaching agreement with creditors, and mounting a public relations campaign in the United States. This had its effect, and by mid-1922, Fall was less influential than he had been, lessening the resistance to recognition. The two presidents appointed commissioners to reach a deal, and the U.S. recognized the Obregón government on August 31, 1923, just under a month after Harding's death, substantially on the terms proffered by Mexico.
Domestic policy
Postwar recession and recovery
When Harding took office on March 4, 1921, the nation was in the midst of a postwar economic decline. At the suggestion of its leaders, Harding called a special session of Congress to convene on April 11. When Harding addressed the joint session the following day, he urged the reduction of income taxes (raised during the war), an increase in tariffs on agricultural goods to protect the American farmer, as well as more wide-ranging reforms, such as support for highways, aviation, and radio. But it was not until May 27 that Congress passed an emergency tariff increase on agricultural products. An act authorizing a Bureau of the Budget followed on June 10; Harding appointed Charles Dawes as bureau director with a mandate to cut expenditures.
Mellon's tax cuts
Treasury Secretary Mellon also recommended to Congress that income tax rates be cut. He asked that the excess profits tax on corporations be abolished. The House Ways and Means Committee endorsed Mellon's proposals, but some congressmen, who wanted to raise tax rates on corporations, fought the measure. Harding was unsure what side to endorse, telling a friend, "I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side, and they seem right, and then—God!—I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right." Harding tried compromise, and gained passage of the bill in the House after the end of the excess profits tax was delayed a year. In the Senate, the tax bill became entangled in efforts to vote World War I veterans a soldier's bonus. Frustrated by the delays, on July 12, Harding appeared before the Senate to urge it to pass the tax legislation without the bonus. It was not until November that the revenue bill finally passed, with higher rates than Mellon had proposed.
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon advocated lower tax rates.
Harding had opposed payment of a bonus to veterans, arguing in his Senate address that much was already being done for them by a grateful nation, and that the bill would "break down our Treasury, from which so much is later on to be expected." The Senate sent the bonus bill back to committee, but the issue returned when Congress reconvened in December 1921. A bill providing a bonus, without a means of funding it, was passed by both houses in September 1922. Harding vetoed it, and the veto was narrowly sustained. A bonus, not payable in cash, was voted to soldiers despite Coolidge's veto in 1924.
In his first annual message to Congress, Harding sought the power to adjust tariff rates. The passage of the tariff bill in the Senate, and in conference committee became a feeding frenzy of lobbyist interests. Harding, when he enacted the Fordney–McCumber Tariff Act on September 21, 1922, made a brief signing statement, praising only that the bill gave him some power to adjust rates. According to Trani and Wilson, the bill was "ill-considered. It wrought havoc in international commerce and made the repayment of war debts more difficult."
Mellon ordered a study that demonstrated historically that, as income tax rates were increased, money was driven underground or abroad. He concluded that lower rates would increase tax revenues. Based on his advice, Harding's revenue bill cut taxes, starting in 1922. The top marginal rate was reduced annually in four stages from 73% in 1921 to 25% in 1925. Taxes were cut for lower incomes starting in 1923. The lower rates substantially increased the money flowing to the treasury. They also pushed massive deregulation and federal spending as a share of GDP fell from 6.5% to 3.5%. By late 1922, the economy began to turn around. Unemployment was pared from its 1921 high of 12% to an average of 3.3% for the remainder of the decade. The misery index, which is a combination of unemployment and inflation, had its sharpest decline in U.S. history under Harding. Wages, profits, and productivity all made substantial gains; annual GDP increases averaged at over 5% during the 1920s. Libertarian historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen argue that, "Mellon's tax policies set the stage for the most amazing growth yet seen in America's already impressive economy."
Embracing new technologies
The 1920s were a time of modernization for America. Use of electricity became increasingly common. Mass production of the motor car stimulated other industries, as well, such as highway construction, rubber, steel, and building, as hotels were erected to accommodate the tourists venturing upon the roads. This economic boost helped bring the nation out of the recession. To improve and expand the nation's highway system, Harding signed the Federal Highway Act of 1921. From 1921 to 1923, the federal government spent $162 million (equivalent to $2.4 billion in 2019) on America's highway system, infusing the U.S. economy with a large amount of capital. In 1922, Harding proclaimed that America was in the age of the "motor car", which "reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present-day life."
Harding had urged regulation of radio broadcasting in his April 1921 speech to Congress. Commerce Secretary Hoover took charge of this project, and convened a conference of radio broadcasters in 1922, which led to a voluntary agreement for licensing of radio frequencies through the Commerce Department. Both Harding and Hoover realized something more than an agreement was needed, but Congress was slow to act, not imposing radio regulation until 1927.
Harding also wished to promote aviation, and Hoover again took the lead, convening a national conference on commercial aviation. The discussions focused on safety matters, inspection of airplanes, and licensing of pilots. Harding again promoted legislation but nothing was done until 1926, when the Air Commerce Act created the Bureau of Aeronautics within Hoover's Commerce Department.
Business and labor
Harding's attitude toward business was that government should aid it as much as possible. He was suspicious of organized labor, viewing it as a conspiracy against business. He sought to get them to work together at a conference on unemployment that he called to meet in September 1921 at Hoover's recommendation. Harding warned in his opening address that no federal money would be available. No important legislation came as a result, though some public works projects were accelerated.
Within broad limits, Harding allowed each cabinet secretary to run his department as he saw fit. Hoover expanded the Commerce Department to make it more useful to business. This was consistent with Hoover's view that the private sector should take the lead in managing the economy. Harding greatly respected his Commerce Secretary, often asked his advice, and backed him to the hilt, calling Hoover "the smartest 'gink' I know".
Widespread strikes marked 1922, as labor sought redress for falling wages and increased unemployment. In April, 500,000 coal miners, led by John L. Lewis, struck over wage cuts. Mining executives argued that the industry was seeing hard times; Lewis accused them of trying to break the union. As the strike became protracted, Harding offered compromise to settle it. As Harding proposed, the miners agreed to return to work, and Congress created a commission to look into their grievances.
On July 1, 1922, 400,000 railroad workers went on strike. Harding proposed a settlement that made some concessions, but management objected. Attorney General Daugherty convinced Judge James H. Wilkerson to issue a sweeping injunction to break the strike. Although there was public support for the Wilkerson injunction, Harding felt it went too far, and had Daugherty and Wilkerson amend it. The injunction succeeded in ending the strike; however, tensions remained high between railroad workers and management for years.
By 1922, the eight-hour day had become common in American industry. One exception was in steel mills, where workers labored through a twelve-hour workday, seven days a week. Hoover considered this practice barbaric and got Harding to convene a conference of steel manufacturers with a view to ending the system. The conference established a committee under the leadership of U. S. Steel chairman Elbert Gary, which in early 1923 recommended against ending the practice. Harding sent a letter to Gary deploring the result, which was printed in the press, and public outcry caused the manufacturers to reverse themselves and standardize the eight-hour day.
Civil rights and immigration
Although Harding's first address to Congress called for passage of anti-lynching legislation, he initially seemed inclined to do no more for African Americans than Republican presidents of the recent past had; he asked Cabinet officers to find places for blacks in their departments. Sinclair suggested that the fact that Harding received two-fifths of the Southern vote in 1920 led him to see political opportunity for his party in the Solid South. On October 26, 1921, Harding gave a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, to a segregated audience of 20,000 whites and 10,000 blacks. Harding, while stating that the social and racial differences between whites and blacks could not be bridged, urged equal political rights for the African American. Many African Americans at that time voted Republican, especially in the Democratic South, and Harding stated he did not mind seeing that support end if the result was a strong two-party system in the South. He was willing to see literacy tests for voting continue, if applied fairly to white and black. "Whether you like it or not," Harding told his segregated audience, "unless our democracy is a lie, you must stand for that equality." The white section of the audience listened in silence, while the black section cheered.
Harding had spoken out against lynching in his April 1921 speech before Congress, and supported Congressman Leonidas Dyer's federal anti-lynching bill, which passed the House of Representatives in January 1922. When it reached the Senate floor in November 1922, it was filibustered by Southern Democrats, and Lodge withdrew it so as to allow the ship subsidy bill Harding favored to be debated (it was likewise filibustered). Blacks blamed Harding for the Dyer bill's defeat; Harding biographer Robert K. Murray noted that it was hastened to its end by Harding's desire to have the ship subsidy bill considered.
With the public suspicious of immigrants, especially those who might be socialists or communists, Congress passed the Per Centum Act of 1921, signed by Harding on May 19, 1921, as a quick means of restricting immigration. The act reduced the numbers of immigrants to 3% of those from a given country living in the U.S., based on the 1910 census. This would, in practice, not restrict immigration from Ireland and Germany, but would bar many Italians and eastern European Jews. Harding and Secretary of Labor James Davis believed that enforcement had to be humane, and at the Secretary's recommendation, Harding allowed almost a thousand deportable immigrants to remain. Coolidge later signed the Immigration Act of 1924, permanently restricting immigration to the U.S.
Debs and political prisoners
Harding's Socialist opponent in the 1920 election, Eugene Debs, was serving a ten-year sentence in the Atlanta Penitentiary for speaking against the war. Wilson had refused to pardon him before leaving office. Daugherty met with Debs, and was deeply impressed. There was opposition from veterans, including the American Legion, and also from Florence Harding. The president did not feel he could release Debs until the war was officially over, but once the peace treaties were signed, commuted Debs' sentence on December 23, 1921. At Harding's request, Debs visited the president at the White House before going home to Indiana.
Harding released 23 other war opponents at the same time as Debs, and continued to review cases and release political prisoners throughout his presidency. Harding defended his prisoner releases as necessary to return the nation to normalcy.
Judicial appointments
Harding appointed four justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. When Chief Justice Edward Douglass White died in May 1921, Harding was unsure whether to appoint former president Taft or former Utah senator George Sutherland—he had promised seats on the court to both men. After briefly considering awaiting another vacancy and appointing them both, he chose Taft as Chief Justice. Sutherland was appointed to the court in 1922, to be followed by two other economic conservatives, Pierce Butler and Edward Terry Sanford, in 1923.
Harding also appointed six judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, 42 judges to the United States district courts, and two judges to the United States Court of Customs Appeals.
Political setbacks and western tour
Entering the 1922 midterm congressional election campaign, Harding and the Republicans had followed through on many of their campaign promises. But some of the fulfilled pledges, like cutting taxes for the well-off, did not appeal to the electorate. The economy had not returned to normalcy, with unemployment at 11 percent, and organized labor angry over the outcome of the strikes. From 303 Republicans elected to the House in 1920, the new 68th Congress would see that party fall to a 221–213 majority. In the Senate, the Republicans lost eight seats, and had 51 of 96 senators in the new Congress, which Harding did not survive to meet.
A month after the election, the lame-duck session of the old 67th Congress met. Harding had come to believe that his early view of the presidency—that it should propose policies, but leave whether to adopt them to Congress—was not enough, and he lobbied Congress, although in vain, to get his ship subsidy bill through. Once Congress left town in early March 1923, Harding's popularity in the country began to recover. The economy was improving, and the programs of Harding's more able Cabinet members, such as Hughes, Mellon and Hoover, were showing results. Most Republicans realized that there was no practical alternative to supporting Harding in 1924.
In the first half of 1923, Harding did two acts that were later said to indicate foreknowledge of death: he sold the Star (though undertaking to remain as a contributing editor for ten years after his presidency), and made a new will. Harding had long suffered occasional health problems, but when he was not experiencing symptoms, he tended to eat, drink and smoke too much. By 1919, he was aware he had a heart condition. Stress caused by the presidency and by Florence Harding's ill health (she had a chronic kidney condition) debilitated him, and he never really recovered from an episode of influenza in January 1923. After that, Harding, an avid golfer, had difficulty completing a round. In June 1923, Ohio Senator Willis met with Harding, but brought to the president's attention only two of the five items he intended to discuss. When asked why, Willis responded, "Warren seemed so tired."
In early June 1923, Harding set out on a journey, which he dubbed the "Voyage of Understanding." The president planned to cross the country, go north to Alaska Territory, journey south along the West Coast, then travel by a US Navy ship from San Diego along the Mexican and Central America West Coast, through the Panama Canal, to Puerto Rico, and to return to Washington at the end of August. Harding loved to travel and had long contemplated a trip to Alaska. The trip would allow him to speak widely across the country, to politic and bloviate in advance of the 1924 campaign, and allow him some rest away from Washington's oppressive summer heat.
Harding's political advisers had given him a physically demanding schedule, even though the president had ordered it cut back. In Kansas City, Harding spoke on transportation issues; in Hutchinson, Kansas, agriculture was the theme. In Denver, he spoke on Prohibition, and continued west making a series of speeches not matched by any president until Franklin Roosevelt. Harding had become a supporter of the World Court, and wanted the U.S. to become a member. In addition to making speeches, he visited Yellowstone and Zion National Parks, and dedicated a monument on the Oregon Trail at a celebration organized by venerable pioneer Ezra Meeker and others.
On July 5, Harding embarked on USS Henderson in Washington state. The first president to visit Alaska, he spent hours watching the dramatic landscapes from the deck of the Henderson. After several stops along the coast, the presidential party left the ship at Seward to take the Alaska Central Railway to McKinley Park and Fairbanks, where he addressed a crowd of 1,500 in 94 °F (34 °C) heat. The party was to return to Seward by the Richardson Trail, but due to Harding's fatigue, it went by train.
On July 26, 1923, Harding toured Vancouver, British Columbia as the first sitting American president to visit Canada. He was welcomed by the Premier of British Columbia and the Mayor of Vancouver, and spoke to a crowd of over 50,000. Two years after his death, a memorial to Harding was unveiled in Stanley Park. Harding visited a golf course, but completed only six holes before becoming fatigued. After resting for about one hour, he played the 17th and 18th holes so it would appear he had completed the round. He was not successful in hiding his exhaustion; one reporter deemed him looking so tired that a rest of mere days would not be sufficient to refresh him.
In Seattle the next day, Harding kept up his busy schedule, giving a speech to 25,000 people at the stadium at the University of Washington. In the final speech he gave, Harding predicted statehood for Alaska. The president rushed through his speech, not waiting for applause by the audience.
Death and funeral
President Harding went to bed early on the evening of July 27, 1923, a few hours after giving a speech at the University of Washington. Later that night, he called for his physician Charles E. Sawyer, complaining of pain in the upper abdomen. Sawyer thought that it was a recurrence of a dietary upset, but Dr. Joel T. Boone suspected a heart problem. The press was told Harding had experienced an "acute gastrointestinal attack" and the President's scheduled weekend in Portland was canceled. He felt better the next day, as the train rushed to San Francisco; they arrived on the morning of July 29 and he insisted on walking from the train to the car, which rushed him to the Palace Hotel where he suffered a relapse. Doctors found not only that his heart was causing problems, but also that he had pneumonia, and he was confined to bed rest in his hotel room. Doctors treated him with liquid caffeine and digitalis, and he seemed to improve. Hoover released Harding's foreign policy address advocating membership in the World Court, and the president was pleased that it was favorably received. By the afternoon of August 2, doctors allowed him to sit up in bed. At around 7:30 pm that evening, Florence was reading him "A Calm Review of a Calm Man," a flattering article from The Saturday Evening Post; she paused to fluff his pillows and he told her, "That's good. Go on, read some more." which were to be his last words. She resumed reading when a few seconds later, Harding suddenly twisted convulsively and collapsed back in the bed, gasping. Florence Harding immediately called the doctors into the room, but they were unable to revive the President with stimulants; Warren G. Harding was pronounced dead a few minutes later at the age of 57. His death was initially attributed to a cerebral hemorrhage, as doctors at the time did not generally understand the symptoms of cardiac arrest.
The Harding Tomb in Marion
Harding's death came as a great shock to the nation. He was liked and admired, and both the press and public had followed his illness closely and been reassured by his apparent recovery. His body was carried to his train in a casket for a journey across the nation followed closely in the newspapers. Nine million people lined the tracks as his body was taken from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where he lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda. After funeral services there, the body was transported to Marion, Ohio, for burial.
In Marion, Harding's body was placed on a horse-drawn hearse, which was followed by President Coolidge and Chief Justice Taft, then by Harding's widow and his father. They followed it through the city, past the Star building, and finally to the Marion Cemetery where the casket was placed in the cemetery's receiving vault. Funeral guests included inventor Thomas Edison and industrialist businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. Warren and Florence Harding rest in the Harding Tomb, which was dedicated in 1931 by President Hoover.
Scandals
Harding appointed a number of friends and acquaintances to federal positions. Some served competently, such as Charles E. Sawyer, the Hardings' personal physician from Marion who attended to them in the White House. Sawyer alerted Harding to the Veterans' Bureau scandal. Others proved ineffective in office, such as Daniel R. Crissinger, a Marion lawyer whom Harding made Comptroller of the Currency and later a governor of the Federal Reserve Board; or Harding's old friend Frank Scobey, Director of the Mint, who Trani and Wilson noted "did little damage during his tenure." Others of these associates proved corrupt and were later dubbed the "Ohio Gang".
Most of the scandals that have marred the reputation of Harding's administration did not emerge until after his death. The Veterans' Bureau scandal was known to Harding in January 1923 but, according to Trani and Wilson, "the president's handling of it did him little credit". Harding allowed the corrupt director of the bureau, Charles R. Forbes, to flee to Europe, though he later returned and served prison time. Harding had learned that Daugherty's factotum at the Justice Department, Jess Smith, was involved in corruption. The president ordered Daugherty to get Smith out of Washington and removed his name from the upcoming presidential trip to Alaska. Smith committed suicide on May 30, 1923. It is uncertain how much Harding knew about Smith's illicit activities. Murray noted that Harding was not involved in the corruption and did not condone it.
Hoover accompanied Harding on the Western trip and later wrote that Harding asked then what Hoover would do if he knew of some great scandal, whether to publicize it or bury it. Hoover replied that Harding should publish and get credit for integrity, and asked for details. Harding stated that it had to do with Smith but, when Hoover enquired as to Daugherty's possible involvement, Harding refused to answer.
Teapot Dome
The scandal which has likely done the greatest damage to Harding's reputation is Teapot Dome. Like most of the administration's scandals, it came to public light after Harding's death, and he was not aware of the illegal aspects. Teapot Dome involved an oil reserve in Wyoming which was one of three set aside for the use of the Navy in a national emergency. There was a longstanding argument that the reserves should be developed; Wilson's first Interior Secretary Franklin Knight Lane was an advocate of this position. When the Harding administration took office, Interior Secretary Fall took up Lane's argument and Harding signed an executive order in May 1921 transferring the reserves from the Navy Department to Interior. This was done with the consent of Navy Secretary Edwin C. Denby.
The Interior Department announced in July 1921 that Edward Doheny had been awarded a lease to drill along the edges of the Elk Hills naval reserve in California. The announcement attracted little controversy, as the oil would have been lost to wells on adjacent private land. Wyoming Senator John Kendrick had heard from constituents that Teapot Dome had also been leased, but no announcement had been made. The Interior Department refused to provide documentation, so he secured the passage of a Senate resolution compelling disclosure. The department sent a copy of the lease granting drilling rights to Harry Sinclair's Mammoth Oil Company, along with a statement that there had been no competitive bidding because military preparedness was involved—Mammoth was to build oil tanks for the Navy as part of the deal. This satisfied some people, but some conservationists, such as Gifford Pinchot, Harry A. Slattery, and others, pushed for a full investigation into Fall and his activities. They got Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. to begin a Senate investigation into the oil leases. La Follette persuaded Democratic Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh to lead the investigation, and Walsh read through the truckload of material provided by the Interior Department through 1922 into 1923, including a letter from Harding stating that the transfer and leases had been with his knowledge and approval.
Hearings into Teapot Dome began in October 1923, two months after Harding's death. Fall had left office earlier that year, and he denied receiving any money from Sinclair or Doheny; Sinclair agreed. The following month, Walsh learned that Fall had spent lavishly on expanding and improving his New Mexico ranch. Fall reappeared and stated that the money had come as a loan from Harding's friend and The Washington Post publisher Edward B. McLean, but McLean denied it when he testified. Doheny told the committee that he had given Fall the money in cash as a personal loan out of regard for their past association, but Fall invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he was compelled to appear again, rather than answer questions.
Investigators found that Fall and a relative had received a total of about $400,000 from Doheny and Sinclair, and that the transfers were contemporaneous with the controversial leases. Fall was convicted in 1929 of accepting bribes, and in 1931 became the first U.S. cabinet member to be imprisoned for crimes committed in office. Sinclair was convicted only of contempt of court for jury tampering. Doheny was brought to trial before a jury in April 1930 for giving the bribe that Fall had been convicted of accepting, but he was acquitted.
Justice Department
Harry M. Daugherty was implicated in the scandals but was never convicted of any offense.
Harding's appointment of Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney General received more criticism than any other. Daugherty's Ohio lobbying and back-room maneuvers were not considered to qualify him for his office. When the scandals broke in 1923 and 1924, Daugherty's many enemies were delighted at the prospect of connecting him with the dishonesty, and assumed he had taken part in Teapot Dome, though Fall and Daugherty were not friends. In February 1924, the Senate voted to investigate the Justice Department, where Daugherty remained Attorney General.
Democratic Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler was on the investigating committee and assumed the role of prosecutor when hearings began on March 12, 1924. Jess Smith had engaged in influence peddling before his suicide, conspiring with two other Ohioans, Howard Mannington and Fred A. Caskey, to accept payoffs from alcohol bootleggers to secure either immunity from prosecution or the release of liquor from government warehouses. Mannington and Caskey's residence became infamous as the Little Green House on K Street. Some witnesses, such as Smith's divorced wife Roxy Stinson, and corrupt former FBI agent Gaston Means, alleged that Daugherty was personally involved. Coolidge requested Daugherty's resignation when the Attorney General indicated that he would not allow Wheeler's committee access to Justice Department records, and Daugherty complied on March 28, 1924.
The illicit activity that caused Daugherty the most problems was a Smith deal with Colonel Thomas W. Miller, a former Delaware congressman, whom Harding had appointed Alien Property Custodian. Smith and Miller received a payoff of almost half a million dollars for getting a German-owned firm, the American Metal Company, released to new U.S. owners. Smith deposited $50,000 in a joint account with Daugherty, used for political purposes. Records relating to that account were destroyed by Daugherty and his brother. Miller and Daugherty were indicted for defrauding the government. The first trial, in September 1926, resulted in a hung jury; at the second, early in 1927, Miller was convicted and served prison time, but the jury again hung as to Daugherty. Though charges against Daugherty were then dropped, and he was never convicted of any offense, his refusal to take the stand in his own defense devastated what was left of his reputation. The former Attorney General remained defiant, blaming his troubles on his enemies in the labor movement and on the Communists, and wrote that he had "done nothing that prevents my looking the whole world in the face".
Veterans' Bureau
Charles R. Forbes, the energetic director of the Veterans' Bureau, sought to consolidate control of veterans' hospitals and their construction in his bureau. At the start of Harding's presidency, this power was vested in the Treasury Department. The politically-powerful American Legion backed Forbes and denigrated those who opposed him, like Secretary Mellon, and in April 1922, Harding agreed to transfer control to the Veterans' Bureau. Forbes' main task was to ensure that new hospitals were built around the country to help the 300,000 wounded World War I veterans.
Near the beginning of 1922, Forbes had met Elias Mortimer, agent for the Thompson-Black Construction Company of St. Louis, which wanted to construct the hospitals. The two men became close, and Mortimer paid for Forbes' travels through the West, looking at potential hospital sites for the wounded World War I veterans. Forbes was also friendly with Charles F. Hurley, owner of the Hurley-Mason Construction Company of Washington state. Harding had ordered that all contracts be pursuant to public notice, but the three worked out a deal whereby the two companies would get the contracts with the profits divided three ways. Some of the money went to the bureau's chief counsel, Charles F. Cramer. Forbes defrauded the government in this hospital construction, increasing construction costs from $3,000 to $4,000 per bed. A tenth of the inflated construction billings was set aside for the conspirators, with Forbes receiving a third of the take. The graft then spread to land acquisition, with Forbes authorizing the purchase of a San Francisco tract – that was worth less than $20,000 – for $105,000. At least $25,000 of the resulting financial excess was divided between Forbes and Cramer.
Dr. Charles E. Sawyer
Intent on making more money, Forbes in November 1922 began selling valuable hospital supplies under his control in large warehouses at the Perryville Depot in Maryland. The government had stockpiled huge quantities of hospital supplies during the first World War, which Forbes unloaded for a fraction of their cost to the Boston firm of Thompson and Kelly at a time when the Veterans' Bureau was buying supplies for the hospitals at a much higher price.
The check on Forbes' authority at Perryville was Dr. Sawyer, Harding's physician and chairman of the Federal Hospitalization Board. Sawyer told Harding that Forbes was selling valuable hospital supplies to an insider contractor. At first Harding did not believe it, but Sawyer secured proof in January 1923. A shocked Harding, who alternated between rage and despondency over the corruption in his administration, summoned Forbes to the White House and demanded his resignation. Harding did not want an open scandal and allowed Forbes to flee to Europe, from where he resigned on February 15, 1923. In spite of Harding's efforts, gossip about Forbes' activities resulted in the Senate ordering an investigation two weeks later, and in mid-March, Cramer committed suicide.
Mortimer was willing to tell all, as Forbes had had an affair with his wife (which also broke up the Forbes' marriage). The construction executive was the star witness at the hearings in late 1923, after Harding's death. Forbes returned from Europe to testify, but convinced few, and in 1924, he and John W. Thompson, of Thompson–Black, were tried in Chicago for conspiracy to defraud the government. Both were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Forbes began to serve his sentence in 1926; Thompson, who had a bad heart, died that year before commencing his. According to Trani and Wilson, "One of the most troublesome aspects of the Harding presidency was that he appeared to be far more concerned with political liabilities of a scandal than in securing justice."
Extramarital affairs
Harding had an extramarital affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips of Marion, which lasted about fifteen years before ending in 1920. Letters from Harding to Phillips were discovered by Harding biographer Francis Russell in the possession of Marion attorney Donald Williamson while Russell was researching his book in 1963. Before that, the affair was not generally known. Williamson donated the letters to the Ohio Historical Society. Some there wanted the letters destroyed to preserve what remained of Harding's reputation. A lawsuit ensued, with Harding's heirs claiming copyright over the letters. The case was ultimately settled in 1971, with the letters donated to the Library of Congress. They were sealed until 2014, but before their opening, historians used copies at Case Western Reserve University and in Russell's papers at the University of Wyoming. Russell concluded from the letters that Phillips was the love of Harding's life—"the enticements of his mind and body combined in one person", but historian Justin P. Coffey in his 2014 review of Harding biographies criticizes him for "obsess[ing] over Harding's sex life".
The allegations of Harding's other known mistress, Nan Britton, long remained uncertain. In 1927, Britton, also a Marionite, published The President's Daughter, alleging that her child Elizabeth Ann Blaesing had been fathered by Harding. The book, which was dedicated to "all unwedded mothers" and "their innocent children whose fathers are usually not known to the world", was sold, like pornography, door-to-door, wrapped in brown paper. The late president's reputation had deteriorated since his death in 1923, and many believed Britton. The public was tantalized by salacious details such as Britton's claim that the two had sex in a White House closet, with Secret Service agents posted to ward off intruders. Although part of the public believed her, a jury found against her when she alleged she was libeled by a refutation of her book. According to Harding family lore, the late president was infertile and could not have fathered a child, having suffered from mumps in childhood; Britton maintained that Harding had provided child support of $500 per month for the daughter he never met, but she had destroyed romantic correspondence from him at his request.
Harding's biographers, writing while Britton's allegations remained uncertain, differed on their truth; Russell believed them unquestioningly while Dean, having reviewed Britton's papers at UCLA, regarded them as unproven. In 2015, DNA tests performed by Ancestry.com were used by members of the Harding and Blaesing families to determine that Harding was Elizabeth's father. Sinclair wondered why Harding's infidelity was held so much against him, given that Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1884 although it was known he had a mistress and may have fathered a son out of wedlock.
Historical view
Upon his death, Harding was deeply mourned. He was called a man of peace in many European newspapers; American journalists praised him lavishly, with some describing him as having given his life for his country. His associates were stunned by his demise; Daugherty wrote, "I can hardly write about it or allow myself to think about it yet." Hughes stated, "I cannot realize that our beloved Chief is no longer with us."
Hagiographic accounts of Harding's life quickly followed his death, such as Joe Mitchell Chapple's Life and Times of Warren G. Harding, Our After-War President (1924). By then, the scandals were breaking, and the Harding administration soon became a byword for corruption in the view of the public. Works written in the late 1920s helped shape Harding's historical reputation: Masks in a Pageant, by William Allen White, mocked and dismissed Harding, as did Samuel Hopkins Adams' fictionalized account of the Harding administration, Revelry. These books depicted Harding's time in office as one of great presidential weakness. The publication of Nan Britton's bestselling book disclosing they had had an affair also lowered the late president in public esteem. President Coolidge, not wishing to be further associated with his predecessor, refused to dedicate the Harding Tomb. Hoover, Coolidge's successor, was similarly reluctant, but with Coolidge in attendance presided over the dedication in 1931. By that time, with the Great Depression in full swing, Hoover was nearly as discredited as Harding.
Adams continued to shape the negative view of Harding with several nonfiction works in the 1930s, culminating with The Incredible Era—The Life and Times of Warren G. Harding (1939) in which he called his subject "an amiable, well-meaning third-rate Mr. Babbitt, with the equipment of a small-town semi-educated journalist ... It could not work. It did not work." Dean deems the works of White and Adams "remarkably unbalanced and unfair accounts, exaggerating the negative, assigning responsibility to Harding for all wrongs, and denying him credit for anything done right. Today there is considerable evidence refuting their portrayals of Harding. Yet the myth has persisted."
The opening of Harding's papers for research in 1964 sparked a small spate of biographies, of which the most controversial was Russell's The Shadow of Blooming Grove (1968), which concluded that the rumors of black ancestry (the "shadow" of the title) deeply affected Harding in his formative years, causing both Harding's conservatism and his desire to get along with everyone. Coffey faults Russell's methods, and deems the biography "largely critical, though not entirely unsympathetic." Murray's The Harding Era (1969) took a more positive view of the president, and put him in the context of his times. Trani and Wilson faulted Murray for "a tendency to go overboard" in trying to connect Harding with the successful policies of cabinet officers, and for asserting, without sufficient evidence, that a new, more assertive Harding had emerged by 1923.
Later decades saw revisionist books published on Harding. Robert Ferrell's The Strange Deaths of President Harding (1996), according to Coffey, "spends almost the entire work challenging every story about Harding and concludes that almost everything that is read and taught about his subject is wrong." In 2004, John Dean, noted for his involvement in another presidential scandal, Watergate, wrote the Harding volume in "The American Presidents" series of short biographies, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Coffey deemed that book the most revisionist to date, and faults Dean for glossing over some unfavorable episodes in Harding's life, like his silence during the 1914 Senate campaign, when his opponent Hogan was being attacked for his faith.
Harding has traditionally been ranked as one of the worst presidents. In a 1948 poll conducted by Harvard University, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. conducted a survey of scholars' opinions of the presidents, Harding ranked last among the 29 presidents considered. He has also been last in other polls since, which Ferrell attributes to scholars reading little but sensational accounts of Harding. Murray argued that Harding deserves more credit than historians have given: "He was certainly the equal of a Franklin Pierce, an Andrew Johnson, a Benjamin Harrison, or even a Calvin Coolidge. In concrete accomplishments, his administration was superior to a sizable portion of those in the nation's history." Coffey believes "the academic lack of interest in Harding has cost him his reputation, as scholars still rank Harding as nearly dead last among presidents."
Trani faults Harding's own lack of depth and decisiveness as bringing about his tarnished legacy. Still, some authors and historians continue to call for a reconsideration of Harding's presidency. Murray argued that Harding sowed the seeds for his administration's poor standing:
In the American system, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander in the White House. If Harding can rightly claim the achievements of a Hughes in State or a Hoover in Commerce, he must also shoulder responsibility for a Daugherty in Justice and a Fall in Interior. Especially must he bear the onus of his lack of punitive action against such men as Forbes and Smith. By his inaction, he forfeited whatever chance he had to maintain the integrity of his position and salvage a favorable image for himself and his administration. As it was, the subsequent popular and scholarly negative verdict was inevitable, if not wholly deserved.
Notes
Kling was determined that his daughter be able to make a living if it became necessary, and so sent her to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. After their estrangement, it became necessary.
Harding apparently never knew with certainty whether he had any black ancestry, telling a reporter, "One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence."
Although Harding did not invent the word "normalcy," he is credited with popularizing it. The other word that Harding popularized was bloviate, which he said was a somewhat-obsolete term used in Ohio meaning to sit around and talk. After Harding's resurrection of it, it came to mean empty oratory.
Mencken nevertheless voted for Harding.
Harding resigned from the Senate in January 1921, waiting until Cox's term as governor expired. A Republican governor, Harry L. Davis, appointed Willis, already elected to a full term on Harding's coattails, to serve the remainder of Harding's term.
By Hughes's departure from office in 1925, American forces had left the Dominican Republic and were about to leave Nicaragua. The departure from Haiti was still being planned.
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