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.

9/20/2020

Monday, September 20, 1920

Senator Harding speaks to a delegation of Civil War veterans and a delegation of supporters from Kentucky and Tennessee:

My Countrymen all: This is a very unusual occasion, and you have made my heart very glad this morning. I count it a very fine thing that we should have present this morning the sons of the state which gave to America the immortal Lincoln, under whose inspiration you fought, along with these representatives of the Grand Army of the Republic and kindred organizations, which gave to America the indissoluble union and preserved our nationality. 

Somehow or other I find myself with a new deference, a little higher regard for the Grand Army today, if that be possible, than I ever had before. We are talking nowadays very much about preservation of American nationality, and I never speak of it without the full consciousness that had it not been for you there would be no nationality today to preserve. 

And I like to think of the blend of Kentucky and Tennessee with the sons of the North who saved the Union. I like to think that in this year 1920 there are few wounds of the Civil War remaining, there are few evidences of sectionalism in our national life; and there is no one who regrets the winning of the war by the North and the preservation of this wonderful land of ours...

Sources:

  • "North Joins South Today." Marion Star. 20 September 1920.

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