Andrew Harding Popular Books

Andrew Harding Biography & Facts

Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an American politician who served as the 29th president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. After his death, a number of scandals were exposed, including Teapot Dome, as well as an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, which tarnished his reputation. Harding lived in rural Ohio all his life, except when political service took him elsewhere. As a young man, he bought The Marion Star and built it into a successful newspaper. Harding served in the Ohio State Senate from 1900 to 1904, and was lieutenant governor for two years. He was defeated for governor in 1910, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1914—the state's first direct election for that office. Harding ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, but was considered a long shot before the convention. When the leading candidates could not garner a majority, and the convention deadlocked, support for Harding increased, and he was nominated on the tenth ballot. He conducted a front porch campaign, remaining mostly in Marion and allowing people to come to him. He promised a return to normalcy of the pre–World War I period, and defeated Democratic nominee James M. Cox in a landslide to become the first sitting senator elected president. Harding appointed a number of respected figures to his cabinet, including Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Herbert Hoover at Commerce, and Charles Evans Hughes at the State Department. A major foreign policy achievement came with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world's major naval powers agreed on a naval limitations program that lasted a decade. Harding released political prisoners who had been arrested for their opposition to World War I. In 1923, Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. Harding died as one of the most popular presidents in history, but the subsequent exposure of scandals eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of extramarital affairs. Harding's interior secretary, Albert B. Fall, and his attorney general, Harry Daugherty, were each later tried for corruption in office. Fall was convicted though Daugherty was not. These trials greatly damaged Harding's posthumous reputation. In historical rankings of the U.S. presidents during the decades after his term in office, Harding was often rated among the worst. But in recent decades, some historians have begun to reassess the conventional views of Harding's historical record in office. Early life and career Childhood and education Warren Harding was born on November 2, 1865, in Blooming Grove, Ohio. Nicknamed "Winnie" as a small child, he was the eldest of eight children born to George Tryon Harding (usually known as Tryon) and Phoebe Elizabeth (née Dickerson) Harding. Phoebe was a state-licensed midwife. Tryon farmed and taught school near Mount Gilead. Through apprenticeship, study, and a year of medical school, Tryon became a doctor and started a small practice. Harding's first ancestor in the Americas was Richard Harding, who arrived from England to Massachusetts Bay around 1624. Harding also had ancestors from Wales and Scotland, and some of his maternal ancestors were Dutch, including the wealthy Van Kirk family. It was rumored by a political opponent in Blooming Grove that one of Harding's great-grandmothers was African American. His great-great-grandfather Amos Harding claimed that a thief, who had been caught in the act by the family, started the rumor in an attempt at extortion or revenge. In 2015, genetic testing of Harding's descendants determined, with more than a 95% chance of accuracy, that he lacked sub-Saharan African forebears within four generations. In 1870, the Harding family, who were abolitionists, moved to Caledonia, where Tryon acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper. At The Argus, Harding, from the age of 11, learned the basics of the newspaper business. In late 1879, at age 14, he enrolled at his father's alma mater—Ohio Central College in Iberia—where he proved an adept student. He and a friend put out a small newspaper, the Iberia Spectator, during their final year at Ohio Central, intended to appeal to both the college and the town. During his final year, the Harding family moved to Marion, about 6 miles (10 km) from Caledonia, and when he graduated in 1882, he joined them there. Editor In Harding's youth, most of the U.S. population still lived on farms and in small towns. Harding spent much of his life in Marion, a small city in rural central Ohio, and became closely associated with it. When he rose to high office, he made clear his love of Marion and its way of life, telling of the many young Marionites who had left and enjoyed success elsewhere, while suggesting that the man, once the "pride of the school", who had remained behind and become a janitor, was "the happiest one of the lot". Upon graduating, Harding had stints as a teacher and as an insurance man, and made a brief attempt at studying law. He then raised $300 (equivalent to $9,800 in 2023) in partnership with others to purchase a failing newspaper, The Marion Star, the weakest of the growing city's three papers and its only daily. The 18-year-old Harding used the railroad pass that came with the paper to attend the 1884 Republican National Convention, where he hobnobbed with better-known journalists and supported the presidential nominee, former Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Harding returned from Chicago to find that the sheriff had reclaimed the paper. During the election campaign, Harding worked for the Marion Democratic Mirror and was annoyed at having to praise the Democratic presidential nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland, who won the election. Afterward, with his father's financial help, Harding redeemed the paper. Through the later years of the 1880s, Harding built the Star. The city of Marion tended to vote Republican (as did Ohio), but Marion County was Democratic. Accordingly, Harding adopted a tempered editorial stance, declaring the daily Star nonpartisan and circulating a weekly edition that was moderatelyh Republican. This policy attracted advertisers and put the town's Republican weekly out of business. According to his biographer, Andrew Sinclair: The success of Harding with the Star was certainly in the model of Horatio Alger. He started with nothing, and through working, stalling, bluffing, withholding payments, borrowing back wages, boasting, and manipulating, he turned a dying rag into a powerful small-town newspaper. Much of his success had to do with his good looks, affability, enthusiasm, and persistence, but he was also lucky. As Machiavelli once pointed out, cleverness will take a man far, but he cannot do without good fortune. The population of Marion grew from 4,000 .... Discover the Andrew Harding popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Andrew Harding books.