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.

8/08/2020

Sunday, August 8, 1920

Although Senator Harding refuses to comment publicly on Governor Cox's acceptance speech until an upcoming speech on his front porch, campaign advisors release a statement in which the governor's speech is described as "a curious mixture of errors and misstatements as to the facts so well known that mere utterance can cause nothing less than amazement."

Harding sends a telegram to Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, a suffragette leader now in Tennessee working to ensure the state assembly ratifies the 19th amendment:

You may say for me to Republican members of the general assembly of Tennessee that it will be highly pleasing to have the Republicans of that state play their full and becoming part in consummating the constitutional grant of woman suffrage.

It no longer is a question of policy—it is a matter of Republican contribution to a grant of suffrage to which our party is committed and for which our party in the main is responsible.

Here's a picture of a "Great Ohioan Who Will Lead the Republicans to Victory" on the front page of the "rotogravure section" in today's Los Angeles Sunday Times:

In Dayton, Governor Cox spends part of his day recording some of his speeches, including excerpts from his acceptance speech.

Sources:

  • "Cox 'Canned Speech' Emphatic on League." New York Times. 9 August 1920.
  • "Harding Managers Assail Cox Speech." New York Times. 9 August 1920.


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