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Vote: | America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration. |
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Vote: | I don't know much about Americanism, but it's a damn good word with which to carry an election. |
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Vote: | I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it. |
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Vote: | I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! |
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Vote: | Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. |
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Biography
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Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865–August 2, 1923) was an American politician and the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1923, when he became the sixth president to die in office. A Republican from the U.S. state of Ohio, Harding was an influential newspaper publisher with a flair for public speaking before entering politics, first in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as Lieutenant Governor (1903–1905).
Harding was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1899. He served four years before being elected Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, a post he occupied from 1903 to 1905. His leanings were conservative, his record in both offices relatively undistinguished. At the conclusion of his term, Harding returned to private life, only to reenter politics ten years later as a U.S. Senator (1914–1921), where he again had a relatively undistinguished record, missing over two-thirds of the roll-call votes. A political unknown at the time of the 1920 Republican National Convention, Harding emerged as a dark horse to become the presidential nominee through political maneuvering. In the 1920 election he defeated his Democratic opponent James M. Cox in a landslide, 60.36 to 34.19 percent (404 to 127 in the electoral college). He adopted hands-off laissez-faire policies both on economic and social policy. Plagued by scandals in his administration—despite being personally honest—Harding died suddenly three years into his term due to complications from pneumonia and possible food poisoning. He was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.
Early life Harding was born on November 2, 1865, near Corsica, Ohio (now Blooming Grove) in Morrow County. Harding was the oldest of the eight children of Dr. George Harding and Phoebe Dickerson Harding. His boyhood heroes were Alexander Hamilton and Napoleon. His mother was a midwife who later obtained her medical license. While a teenager, the Harding family moved to Caledonia in neighboring Marion County when Harding's father acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper, where Harding learned the basics of the newspaper business. Harding's education was completed at Ohio Central College (later Muskingum College) in Iberia.
After graduation, Harding moved to Marion, where he raised $300 with two friends to purchase the failing Marion Daily Star. It was the weakest of Marion's three newspapers and the only daily in the growing city. Harding converted the paper's editorial platform to support the Republicans and enjoyed a moderate degree of success. However, Harding's political stance was at odds with those who controlled most of Marion's local politics. When Harding moved to unseat the Marion Independent as the official paper of daily record, his actions brought the wrath of Amos Kling, one of Marion's wealthiest real estate speculators, down upon him.
While Harding won the war of words and made the Daily Star the biggest newspaper in Marion, the battle took a toll on his health. In 1889, when Harding was 24, he suffered exhaustion and nervous fatigue. He traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan to spend several weeks in a sanitarium regaining his strength, later returning to Marion to continue operating the Star. He spent his days boosting the community on the editorial pages, and his evenings "bloviating" (Harding's term for informal conversation) with his friends over games of poker.
In 1891, Harding married Florence Mabel Kling DeWolfe, a divorcee and the mother of one son. Five years older than Harding, she had pursued him persistently, until he reluctantly surrendered and proposed. Florence's father was Harding's nemesis, Amos Kling. Upon hearing that his only daughter intended to marry Harding, Amos Kling cut her completely out of the family and even forbade his wife to attend her wedding. He opposed the marriage vigorously and would not speak to his daughter or son-in-law for eight years.
While the marriage was not one of full-blown passions, the couple complemented one another, Harding's affable personality balancing his wife's no-nonsense approach to life. Florence Harding inherited her father's determination and business sense, and turned the Marion Daily Star into a profitable business. One of the Hardings' paperboys at the Star was the young Norman Thomas, son of the city's Presbyterian Church minister, who later became a noted journalist and socialist leader in New York City. Thomas, who ran for President on the socialist ticket, often credited his work ethic to Florence Harding, whom he remembered fondly in his recollections of life in Marion. Florence's drive has been credited with helping Harding to achieve greater things than he could have done alone, leading to speculation that she later pushed him all the way to the White House.
Harding was also a member of the Freemasons. He was raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason on August 27, 1920, in Marion Lodge No. 70, F. & A.M., Marion, Ohio.
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Warren Harding".
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