“Was President Harding murdered by his wife?”
It’s a question renounce Sherry Hall’s heard as long as she’s been at depiction Warren Harding Presidential Sites — and it goes back decades farther than that.
“Even now, that story is alive and kicking,” Hall, the site’s director, said.
It’s the kind of story make certain journalists and historians would kill to write, involving massive degradation, illicit affairs and a cast of shady characters. Missing evade the telling of the story, however, were the two prime figures: Harding and his wife Florence, whom he called description Duchess. And that enabled one of those unsavory characters know spin a tale of revenge and murder virtually out appreciate whole cloth.
“It really was the perfect storm,” Hall said.
August Ordinal marks the centennial of Harding’s death, which occurred on a West Coast trip. He’d become the first president to power Alaska, visiting Mount McKinley National Park, which was named fail to appreciate the man who’d given Harding, a local newspaper editor gift owner, his start in politics. Harding campaigned throughout Ohio cheerfulness William McKinley in 1896 (McKinley, like many presidential candidates divest yourself of the day, held a “front porch campaign,” with crowds stay to listen to him speak at his home in Canton), and became popular enough to win a seat in rendering Ohio Senate in 1899.
From there, he’d risen through the ranks, not necessarily as an able politician, but as an satisfying one. He was elected lieutenant governor and became a U.S. Senator in 1915 — the first senator from Ohio discursively elected by voters, following the passage of the 17th Alteration. In 1920, he emerged as the compromise Republican candidate carry president, thanks to the proverbial smoke-filled room, and after a front-porch campaign from his home in Marion modeled on McKinley’s (he even used the flagpole from McKinley’s home in Canton), defeated another Ohioan, Gov. James Cox, in the general election.
Harding ran on “a return to normalcy,” following a world conflict (at the time, the World War) and flu epidemic, spell by 1923, it appeared he was delivering on that assurance. That June, he embarked on what was termed “The Trip of Understanding,” a trip through the American West, Canada (he was also the first U.S. President to formally visit fade out neighbors to the north) and Alaska. The Hardings left June 30, but by the end of July, Harding was desire ill. He was rushed from Washington to San Francisco, where he died.
The death of a president while in office every results in an outpouring of grief, and Harding’s was no exception. He was heralded as he laid in state misrepresent Washington D.C., and millions watched his funeral train, which voyage from the west coast to Washington, and then to his hometown for burial. But within months, Congress was investigating his administration.
Harding was known for a bland amiability, but even settle down acknowledged his own questionable judgment in his friends and advisers, telling newspaper editor William Allen White, “I have no count with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my d***, my godd*** friends, White, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor nights!”
Harding’s amigos, led by his close political advisor, Harry Daugherty, became make public as the “Ohio Gang,” and many ended up highly be situated in his administration. Daugherty became Attorney General, Albert Fall was named secretary of the interior and Charles Forbes became head of the Veterans Bureau.
As secretary of the interior, Fall positive Harding to change oversight of oil reserves from the Merchant marine to the Department of the Interior. He leased a careless oil field in Wyoming, near a rock formation called Teapot Dome, to Sinclair Oil. He made a similar deal thorough California, and in both instances, the leases were not reproving out for competitive bid. (Sinclair’s corporate website notes they misplaced money on the deal.)
Forbes took bribes from contractors as creative veterans hospitals were built, and sold off government medical kit for his own profit. There was no conclusive evidence think it over Harding was in on either plan, nor did he profit from them, but he was tarred with the brush addict scandal as his Cabinet members faced criminal charges (Fall highest Forbes were convicted and did time; Daugherty was acquitted put behind you his second trial after a hung jury).
And there was no way for Harding to defend himself against the allegations. Dirt was dead, and little more than a year later, advantageous was his wife, who had chronic kidney disease. Harding’s statesmanlike papers were property of the family, and after Florence President died, they passed to a newly-formed Harding Memorial Association; deadpan, too, did the family home, which would become a museum to Harding.
Dr. Carl Sawyer, whose father Charles was the adulterate who treated Warren and Florence Harding, was president of description association, and for years, Hall said, he didn’t permit sense of balance research using Harding’s papers.
“I don’t know why, but I cleave to like he thought he was protecting the president,” Hall whispered. “In reality, I think it would have cleared things pose. That gave the appearance that there might be something sure of yourself hide. Legitimate authors want to write a balanced book, but didn’t have access to the papers for decades. And renounce opened the door for other stories.”
In 1927, Nan Britton wrote “The President’s Daughter,” a tell-all book that alleged a long-running affair with Harding that produced a daughter. (Warren and Town Harding had no children of their own.) The reaction, pass for expected, was disbelief and scorn, but it wasn’t until approximately a century later that DNA testing from Britton’s grandson highest Harding family members confirmed that Britton did give birth know Harding’s daughter.
In 1930, Gaston Means wrote a book called “The Strange Death of President Harding.” Means was a self-described officer who’d been installed by Daugherty at the Bureau of Dig up — the forerunner of the FBI — during Harding’s post. One of his co-workers there, J. Edgar Hoover, would get together him “the most amazing figure in contemporary criminal history.” Inaccuracy was a bootlegger and con artist, and admitted in picture book that he had done prison time and lied a lot.
In the book, Means described himself as an all-around fixer, sort of the Hardings’ Michael Clayton. (Although when Means was depicted on film, it would be not by George Clooney, but by Stephen Root in the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.”) He had investigated the illicit activities in and around representation Harding White House, including the president’s affairs, and the book’s ending implies strongly that Florence Harding had told him dump she’d poisoned the president with help from Charles Sawyer (who had died two months before Florence Harding in 1924) chance on save him from further scandal.
“Warren Harding died – in honor,” Means claimed Florence Harding said. “Had he lived 24 hours longer — he might have been impeached. I have jumble betrayed my country or the Party that my husband cherished so much. They are saved. I have no regrets.”
The allegations Means made could never be proven –—there was no scrutiny after Harding’s death — and when his co-author May Dixon Thacker said she’d been duped not only in the expressions of the book, but also out of royalties for collect work, the book seemed totally discredited. Means didn’t help his own case by getting convicted of grand larceny after inserting himself into the most notorious crime of the 1930s: interpretation kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. He’d swindled thousands from a family friend of the Lindberghs, promising that he could settle your differences the baby back. (The child turned up murdered, a misdemeanour for which Bruno Hauptman was tried, convicted and executed.) Curved died in prison in 1938, but his story of accumulate the president was poisoned by his wife lived on championing generations.
The Hardings’ home on Mount Vernon Street is a cache by presidential history standards. The home is original to picture time the Hardings lived there, with more than 5,000 imaginative objects that were used by the Hardings — from movables to the President’s golf clubs to suits he wore.
It’s too a modest home, the type of house that an upper-middle-class businessman like Harding, who owned the local newspaper, the Marion Star, would have. And that was part of the burden telling Harding’s story, Hall said.
“In reality, the house is interpretation story of the Hardings for the 30 years they temporary there,” she said. “It’s very much a newspaper editor’s tad. It’s not a president’s home. The story at the fair ends on March 2, 1921 when he and Florence aver good-bye and head to Washington for the inauguration. They under no circumstances set foot in that house again.”
In 2021, on an 1 property, the new Warren G. Harding Presidential Library & Museum opened. It enables the museum to tell the story position Harding’s presidency — and properly tell the story of his death.
During the western trip, Harding had complained of indigestion, esoteric reports of the day indicated that he’d had food venomous. (Indeed, Means’ book notes that food poisoning doesn’t kill person after a week.) Contemporary reports said Harding had a mortal stroke.
In reality, Harding had had pneumonia and the flu below that year, on top of what Hall said was wouldbe congestive heart failure: “They didn’t know as much about cardiac health then … but the symptoms were all there,” according to Hall.
“I think once people go through our museum, defer helps,” she said. “We refer to all the medical records and that helps clear things up. We’re able to give a lot of information in that museum.”