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.

9/04/2020

Saturday, September 4, 1920

Senator Harding takes time from working on his Labor Day speech to greet members of the Great Lakes naval training station this morning. 

I appreciate deeply your coming here to see me. I assume that your coming is in large part due to the fact that I am a candidate for the presidency. It is because I feel more deeply about it every day that I want to tell you, American citizens, and through you, as many Americans as possible, my ideas of the responsibilities of a candidate for the highest office the people can bestow. The first of these responsibilities I have borne in mind and I will continue to preserve it. It arises from the fact that my duty as a candidate, before election, compels me to put higher even than obligation to a great and wise and growing political party, my obligations to all Americans.

He lends H. J. Siroky, solo cornetist, the new gold-plaited cornet he received on Friday from an instrument manufacturer from Indiana. This may be a photograph of Siroky and the new coronet.



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