Warren Harding's Front Porch Campaign: Friday, August 13, 1920

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.

8/13/2020

Friday, August 13, 1920

Senator Harding delivers his fifth speech since accepting the nomination on July 22. This afternoon he meets the members of the Ohio Republican Editors Association, who march to the Harding home after a lunch at the Masonic Temple. Harding calls for "the stamp of common, everyday honesty everywhere":

I suppose some people will say I am "looking backward". But if we may look backward to clear our vision we may look forward more confidently, and lift our gaze above and beyond the sordid and selfish things and the baser side of life so horridly revealed when passions are aflame. There is sure progress for a simple-living, reverent people, fearing God, and loving righteousness. It is good to look back to make sure of the way religious mothers taught and then face the front with renewed faith.
If we are living in the past to recall the wisdom of Washington, the equal rights of Jefferson, the genius of Hamilton, the philosophy of Franklin, or the sturdiness of Jackson; if it is looking backward to recall the sympathy and steadfastness of Lincoln, the restoration of McKinley or the awakening by Roosevelt, I am happy to drink of the past for my inspiration for the morrow.

Nick and Alice Longworth travel from Cincinnati for a second visit with the Hardings; they spent a night as their guests on July 12/13. John W. Weeks, former senator from Massachusetts, is also visiting the Hardings and is shown in two of these photographs: