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"First black president of the United States?"


 

NOTES

 

1. The amateur black historian J.A. (Joel Augustus) Rogers, in his book The Five Negro Presidents (New York: Helga M. Rogers, 1965), alleges that — in addition to Harding — Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and one unnamed president (apparently Eisenhower) possessed black racial strains. Although Rogers was able to cite a few secondary sources for his claim for the four presidents other than Harding, the evidence is scanty and lacks credibility.

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2. Some earlier blacks, in addition to Rogers, did make such a claim. For example, the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey believed that Harding had black ancestry. See Robert A. Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. 3 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), p. 85.

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3. Robert H. Ferrell, The Strange Deaths of President Harding (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1996), p. 165; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton," Political Science Quarterly, 112:2 (1997), pp. 179-90; and Jay Tolson, "The 10 Worst Presidents," U.S. News & World Report, February 26, 2007, pp. 40-53.

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4. For the little-publicized scandals of liberal Democratic administrations — those of Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson — see Victor Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate (New York: Dial Press, 1977).

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5. The major historian favorable to Harding has been Robert K. Murray, in The Harding Era: Warren Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969). For a recent sympathetic article see Gary Alan Fine, "Reputational Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of President Harding," American Journal of Sociology, 101:5 (March 1996), pp. 1159-93.

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6. Ferrell, p. 105.

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7. Ferrell, pp. 50-84. In this as in other alleged Harding scandals, the standard of proof accepted by most historians (and even more so by journalists) has been much less rigorous than that demanded by the Establishment media regarding the alleged scandals involving Bill Clinton.

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8. Murray, p. 265.

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9. Murray, p. 534.

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10. Murray, p. 178.

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11. Previously, capital gains had been taxed like ordinary income, but now long-term capital gains could be taxed only at 12.5 percent. See Bruce R. Bartlett, Reaganomics: Supply Side Economics in Action (Westport, Conn.: Arlington House, 1981), p. 99.

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12. Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, updated edition (New York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 61.

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13. Murray N. Rothbard, America's Great Depression (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1963), p. 168.

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14. David H. Jennings, Ohio History 75 (1966), pp. 149-65. Regarding the League of Nations, Harding was not a total irreconcilable like William E. Borah or Hiram Johnson, but rather a strong reservationist like Henry Cabot Lodge. See Murray, pp. 54-59.

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15. Fine, p. 1169.

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16. Murray, pp. 129-66.

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17. Harding sometimes listed as his birthplace Caledonia, Ohio, a town close to Blooming Grove where the family moved when he was a boy.

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18. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 43, 85.

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19. Samuel Hopkins Adams, Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939), p. 280. According to black newspaperman Wendell P. Dabney, when Harding first ran for political office he told black voters that he was black. See Rogers, p. 19.

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20. That is the theme of Russell's work. Adams also mentions it as does H.F. Alderfer in his dissertation, "The Personality and Politics of Warren G. Harding" (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1929). See Adams, pp. 279-80.

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21. Russell, p. 26.

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22. Adams, pp. 281-82. Adams writes that there is extant an affidavit by Calvin G. Kiefer, a cousin of the victim, in the Marion County Courthouse stating that Butler's wife was George T. Harding's sister.

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23. Fine, p. 1169.

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24. Quoted in Randolph C. Downes, "Negro Rights and White Back-Lash in the Campaign of 1920," Ohio History 75:2/3 (Spring/Summer 1966), p. 95.

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25. Downes, p. 98; Fine, p. 1169.

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26. Quoted in Adams, p. 181. According to Russell (pp. 404-405), Tumulty wanted to use the racial-ancestry information but was overruled by Woodrow Wilson.

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27. Downes, pp. 101-102; Russell, pp. 413-15.

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28. Nathaniel Weyl and William Marina, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1971), p. 339.

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29. Downes, p. 103. In his book Educational Sociology (New York: Century, 1919), Chancellor writes that the immigrant Russian Jews of New York "still have their minds full of Russian notions — they are anti-government, anti-capitalism, distinctly anti-Christianity and in a few instances also anti-Judaeanism." (p. 44)

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30. William Estabrook Chancellor, A Theory of Motives, Ideals and Values in Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), p. 427. In regard to education for blacks, Chancellor writes:

A particular feature of the problem of Negro education, so called, is the attempt to reduce them all to the servant class with the servile morality, while, in fact, in the city populations of the Negroes, the mulattos, so called, who are really mestizos, prevail, and in the country populations the true Negroes, the pure blacks, who are often descended from the stocks of African rulers. Now the mestizos are but brothers and cousins in saffron of the men and women in white. Formal education, forgetting the "color line within the color line" and the natural classes of all mankind, too generally attempts to impose upon these mixed races habits of thought and action suitable to the serving class only. The truth is that the Negro desires and needs the resources of the entire encyclopaedia of education in matter and in method. (p. 121)
Moreover, in The United States — A History of Three Centuries, Part II, Colonial Union, 1698-1774 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1905), Chancellor points out the devastating effect on blacks of the slave trade. Africa, he writes, "was set back a thousand years." The slave trade was a "terrible story beside which, the Spanish Inquisition and the Dutch, French, and German wars seem comparatively pardonable." (pp. 14-15)

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31. Adams, pp. 182-83; Russell, pp. 414-15.

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32. Adams, p. 184.

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33. Adams, pp. 178-79; Russell, p. 415.

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34. A statement signed in facsimile handwriting that resembles Chancellor's serves as the foreword. It states: "The Sentinal [sic] Press has acquired unreserved legal title to my original papers relating to my investigations into the ancestry and life of President Warren Gamaliel Harding." Quoted in Adams, p. 275.

The complete title of the book is Warren Gamaliel Harding, President of the United States: A Review of Facts Collected from Anthropological, Historical, and Political Researches by William Estabrook Chancellor formerly Professor of Economics, Politics, and Social Sciences of Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio. (Dayton, Ohio: Sentinal [sic] Press, 1922).

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35. [William Estabrook Chancellor], Warren Gamaliel Harding, President of the United States, p. 97.

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36. Pp. 34, 91. The book claims that as a young man Harding never resented his nickname "Nig" because "every man is secretly proud of his race elements, as he ought to be." (p. 107)

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37. Russell, pp. 529-30.

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38. Russell, pp. 530-31.

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39. Russell writes: "The New York Public Library possesses a copy, as do the Princeton Library and the library of the Ohio Historical Society. A Marion lawyer is the only private individual I know of who owns the book." (p. 531) The Library of Congress also has a copy, which I have read.

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40. There is no evidence that Harding was aware of the suppression campaign. Daugherty was a Harding appointee and close associate of Harding's, and may have acted on his own to put down an obvious political danger to Harding and the Republican Party. See Adams, pp. 282-83.

The episode destroyed Chancellor's scholarly career. A widely published author prior to this time, he would have no book published after the incident, although he would live until 1963. Chancellor quietly returned to Ohio from Canada in 1927 and was able to teach at the University of Cincinnati. Publicly, he would deny he had had anything to do with the book ascribed to him. See Russell, p. 645. The Harding administration's persecution of Chancellor was a blot on what was overall a very good record on civil liberties.

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41. Russell writes: "Because of Chancellor's violent obsession with racial issues one cannot be certain of his unsubstantiated statements, yet he spent much time in Blooming Grove and Caledonia, and in his book on Harding he set down a number of facts that have never been mentioned elsewhere and that are corroborated by later evidence." (p. 43)

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42. Adams interviewed the inhabitants, just as Chancellor did, and achieved similar results. See p. 279.

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43. Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York: The Free Press, 1980), pp. 61-109.

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44. Williamson, p. 98.

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