Early life and marriage

Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on November 2, 1865, on a farm near Corsica (later Blooming Grove), Ohio. He was the eldest of eight children of George Tryon and Phoebe Dickerson Harding. As the family struggled to make ends meet, Warren's father left farming to become a country doctor.

Warren attended local schools before entering Ohio Central College at age 14. After graduating in 1882, he tried his hand at several jobs, including teaching. In 1884 he bought a struggling weekly newspaper in Marion, Ohio, to which he devoted himself.

In 1891 Harding married Florence Kling De Wolfe, the daughter of a Marion banker. She helped her husband transform the Marion Star into a successful daily paper. The couple had no children.

Political career

As the Star prospered, Harding turned to politics. A strong supporter of the Republican party, he built a local reputation as a conservative public speaker. He was elected an Ohio state senator in 1898 and lieutenant governor in 1903. In 1910, however, he was defeated in his bid for the governorship.

Harding gained national recognition when he was chosen to nominate William Howard Taft at the 1912 Republican National Convention. In 1914 he was elected to the United States Senate. He was a popular senator who usually voted according to Republican policy.

Nomination and election

During World War I (1914–18) the U.S. public was asked to sacrifice greatly to aid the war effort. By 1920 the people were upset by the restrictions and disappointments of the war years. They were disillusioned also by an economic decline that arrived in the spring of 1920. They blamed their troubles on President Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats.

In 1920 Republican Party leaders called on Harding to be their presidential candidate. Harding's campaign call for a return to normalcy was just what war-weary voters wanted to hear. On November 2, 1920, they elected him president by the widest margin recorded to that time.

Presidency

At the start of his administration, Harding called a special session of Congress and recommended a conservative agenda. During his term Congress lowered taxes on businesses and sharply reduced the number of people allowed to immigrate to the United States. The most important achievement of the Harding presidency was the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference of 1921–22. At this meeting in Washington, D.C., the world's major powers agreed to limit expansion of their navies.

Harding's Cabinet was a mixture of distinguished leaders and personal or political friends. The president had complete confidence in them all. His faith in some of his appointees proved to be misplaced, however. Later it would be revealed that a group of high-ranking officials known as the Ohio Gang had taken part in a variety of corrupt activities.

The most serious example of wrongdoing in Harding's administration was the Teapot Dome scandal, which erupted in 1923. In 1921 the secretary of the interior had persuaded Harding to transfer authority over two of the nation's most important oil reserves—Elk Hills in California and Teapot Dome in Wyoming—from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior. He then secretly leased these reserves to friends in the oil business, receiving large cash gifts in return.

Death in office

Harding was never personally involved in the scandals of his administration. However, he was aware of the actions of the Ohio Gang and failed to bring its corruption to light.

By the spring of 1923 Harding was visibly upset by the behavior of his trusted associates. He sought escape from Washington in mid-June by taking a cross-country tour with his wife and a party of 65. Exhausted, he became ill in Seattle and was taken to San Francisco. On August 2 he died there from either a heart attack or stroke. Vice President Calvin Coolidge succeeded him.

Harding had been a popular president, and he was deeply mourned. After his death, however, evidence of the corruption of his administration was made public. His reputation suffered as a result. By the mid-1920s, the public began to regard Harding as a man who simply did not measure up to the responsibilities of his high office.