A Note on My Harding Research

The information I posted during 2020 mostly covered Warren Harding's front-porch campaign from his home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio. The campaign officially started on July 31, 1920, and ended on September 25. The plan was to post daily on events that occurred exactly 100 years ago that day, but I shared other information as well. You'll have to read bottom-to-top if you want to follow the campaign from Day 1.

I used the open web for some of my research but also information accessible by using my library card or my subscription to www.newspapers.com. The most useful resource was the Marion Star, which was owned by the Hardings at the time of the campaign. I also browsed online copies of other newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Star, and the Dayton Daily News, which, in 1920, was owned by Harding's Democratic opponent, Governor James M. Cox. I also posted information from other newspapers that covered Harding's trips away from Marion during the campaign.

Another great resource I used was Dale E. Cottrill's The Conciliator, a 1969 biography of the president that expanded an earlier bibliography of Harding's speeches. An online version is available at the Internet Archive, but I used a hard copy borrowed from the State Library of Ohio.

Readers should not construe anything posted here as a political statement on my part. I just like Harding as a historical topic.

7/15/2020

Thursday, July 15, 1920

Harding continues to work on his acceptance speech, while dealing with responses to his position on the suffrage issue. According to the New York Times, "Statements issued this afternoon by both suffragists and anti-suffragists indicate that Senator Harding is 'between the devil and the deep blue sea' in the suffrage issue... The anti-suffragists produced a letter written by Senator Harding July 6 in which he said he refused to be the partisan in any particular group. The suffragists charged the Republican candidate with evading his responsibility, and chided him with failing to mention that Republican governors in Vermont and Connecticut had barred the progress of the Federal amendment... Anti-suffragists said today that their representatives held a conference in Chicago with Senator Harding just before his nomination. They also said that in asking Senator Harding not to exercise pressure upon Republican Governors they 'probably' counted upon the idea that Senator Harding, up to the Autumn of 1919, had never been a professed advocate of suffrage."

From today's report in the Marion Star, we learn that Harding sent Howard Mannington, a member of his staff, to Columbus to "take word to suffragists that Senator Harding will allow them twenty minutes to present their views on the suffrage situation and its meaning in the political campaign this year. It was announced to them by Mr. Mannington that the nominee will make no reply other than in his formal speech of acceptance."

Harding receives a letter of congratulations from W. Lanier Washington, the "hereditary representative of George Washington in the Society of Cincinnati," who is struck by Harding's resemblance in pictures to Washington. (I don't see it.)


"Just Before the Shootin'"

A Billy Ireland cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch offers this warning: "My advice to innocent bystanders is for 'em to get high - and stay there! This thing is goin' to bust wide open in a minute!"

Additional Resources:
Sources:
  • "Anti-Suffragists Also Rap Harding." New York Times. 16 July 1920.
  • "First Voters with Harding." Marion Star. 15 July 1920.
  • Ireland, Billy. "Just Before the Shootin'" Columbus Dispatch. 15 July 1920
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