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.

8/19/2020

Thursday, August 19, 1920

For the second consecutive day, Senator Harding delivers two speeches. His first, to a group of Civil War veterans from Hardin County, Ohio, is "brief" and shared here in its entirety:
You have paid me a very exceptional compliment, and it is a joy for me to come over here to greet you. I don't think it has fallen to the lot of any man in the capacity of a candidate to have a greater tribute paid to him than the call of such a body of veterans of the Civil War. When I stop to think of the long period that has passed since you went to the front in 1861 it brings to me a new realization of what you did, first in your service to country in preserving nationality and second in laying down your arms and returning to citizenship, giving to the country the leaven of patriotism. 

From my earliest recollections I have a distinct remembrance of Civil War soldiers in their activities of citizenship and their marked influence in political progress. If the millions of sons who went forth in the defense of our national rights in the World War can turn to a new birth of patriotism as you did, that will compensate us for all our part in the great world struggle. The man who goes forth to offer all on the altars of country returns a better patriot. We need a new birth of patriotism in our country. 

You didn't enter the war to free the slave, although that was a becoming ideal. You didn't go to war because you hated any group in the South or to establish any new conception of justice. But you entered the conflict because you found the Union was threatened; you went to save the Union and nationality. 

There have been a variety of opinions as to why your grandsons went to war. Your sons went to war with Spain for humanity. Some have said that your grandsons went to war for democracy and some that they went forth to insure that there would be no wars in the future. If we went to war for democracy, shouldn't we have gone in when it first started? And if we went to war to insure that there would be no more wars, shouldn't we have gone in before so many millions had been sacrificed? 

The simple truth is that your grandsons went to war when Congress made the declaration because our nationality and rights had been threatened. Then it was possible to call the sons of America to battle. 

That doesn't mean that when the war is over we should surrender what we went in to maintain. If I am elected president of the United States and it is within my power, there will never be a surrender of that which you have handed down to the generation of today.
In the afternoon, members and former members of the Ohio General Assembly marched to the Harding Home to hear a lengthier speech, described by the New York Times as "an exhaustive defense of the Senate." This is the part I liked best:
I remember a very amusing incident which happened in the Senate debates relating to the adoption of a modified cloture rule. It ought to be said, in passing, that the proposition for cloture came from an executive who looked upon the proceedings of the Senate with more or less contempt. In the progress of the debate, a very eminent senator, who argued very earnestly that an hour was ample time for the intelligent and ample discussion of any pending question, required an hour and a half of his time to utter all that he had to say on that particular subject.
Harry Daugherty speaks briefly, and Florence Harding is greeted by the crowd.

This evening, Harding plays host to Harry L. Davis, the Republican nominee for governor, Frank B. Willis, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, and George H. Clark, chair of the Republican state advisory committee. They discuss plans for the campaign.

This cartoon - "Harding's Conception of the Ship of State" - will appear on the editorial page of the St. Louis Star on Saturday:

Sources:

  • "Achievements Accomplished." Marion Star. 19 August 1920.
  • "Harding Defends Senate as Saving Our Nationality." New York Times. 20 August 1920.
  • "Harding's Conception of the Ship of State." St. Louis Star. 21 August 1920.
  • "Old Soldiers Greet Nominee." Marion Star. 19 August 1920.
  • "Party Plans Are Taken Up." Marion Star. 20 August 1920.

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