On a late Friday afternoon, June 11, 1920, former Ohio Gov. Frank B. Willis stood behind the podium on the stage at the 17th Republican National Convention in Chicago. The coliseum on the city’s South Side was hosting the quadrennial GOP gathering for the fifth consecutive time. And as always, the inside of the large arena was decked out in red, white and blue. American flags hung from the vaulted ceiling and tons of patriotic bunting draped the front of the galleries. On the crowded floor, a haze of cigar smoke hung in the air and sweaty delegates hoisted state signs high above their heads and waved them back and forth. And they were loud.
After the former Buckeye governor was introduced, though, the Ohio delegates made such a racket that they nearly drowned out the other state demonstrations. They had reason to be excited. Willis was set to nominate Ohio Sen. Warren G. Harding to be the next president of the United States.
Willis opened his remarks praising the other nominees, insisting they were all “great men.” No matter who won in Chicago, he pleaded, “let us go out from this convention hall resolved that whoever is nominated here shall be the next President of the United States.” The delegates roared their approval.
Next, Willis pivoted to the case for Harding. “There was never a Republican President elected without the vote of Ohio,” he reminded them. “Did you ever think of this? That out of seven Republicans that have been elected President since the days of Lincoln six of them came from Ohio.” The proud Ohio delegates flashed wide grins and could barely contain their excitement.
The governor’s 12-minute nominating speech electrified the convention in Chicago. And after he announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convention, I name for President of the United States that stalwart son of Ohio, Senator Warren G. Harding,” the hall went berserk. Pictures of Harding floated down from the ceiling and showered the delegates dancing and celebrating on the floor. They cheered. They yelled. They waved their signs. Several of the rowdy Ohio delegates stood on their chairs and chanted Harding’s name. There was general pandemonium on the floor and in the galleries for the next 10 minutes.
One historian later judged Willis’ speech, “perhaps the most effective of the convention.” Still, few in attendance that afternoon gave Harding much of a chance to actually capture the nomination. After all, although the former governor had touted Harding as “Ohio’s second William McKinley,” just six weeks earlier he had struggled to win his own state’s Republican primary.
As a favorite son candidate, Harding had anticipated running unopposed in Ohio’s April primary. Instead, Gen. Leonard Wood, commander of the famous Rough Riders, political heir of Theodore Roosevelt and GOP national frontrunner in 1920, surprised the political establishment and entered Ohio’s Republican contest. William Cooper Proctor of Cincinnati’s Proctor & Gamble had recently taken over Gen. Wood’s bid for the nomination. And under his direction, the campaign invested heavily in Ohio.
Feeling the pressure, Harding launched a hasty statewide tour to fend off Wood’s unexpected challenge and the presidential hopeful stopped in Chillicothe on the morning of April 23, the Friday before the primary vote. Accompanied by his wife Florence, the 54-year-old Harding was welcomed to the city by a small delegation of local Republicans. But the future first lady quickly disappeared with a group of Ross County women for a private meeting on N. Paint Street. Senator Harding was escorted by car to the courthouse where hundreds of Ross County voters were eagerly awaiting his arrival.
Contemporary descriptions of Harding’s physical appearance unfailingly describe him as silver-haired, handsome, square-jawed and straight out of central casting in Hollywood. Harding looked like what many Americans in 1920 imagined a president should look like. And it must have been how those gathered on the corner of Paint and Main streets saw him up on the courthouse steps that morning.
And it certainly didn’t hurt that Harding came from the small city of Marion and spoke in a plain and easy manner. He was very likable. “My visit is chiefly one of cheer and greetings,” he smiled, “with more thought about a Republican victory next November than somebody’s personal triumph at Chicago in June.”
Above all, Harding thought of himself as a loyal Republican and firmly believed in party government over personal government. The American people did not care about individual personalities, he told the Ross County voters, but are “concerned with party policies and the Republican party’s return to power.”
The Republican Party had dominated presidential politics in the half-century following the Civil War. In fact, until Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912, the only Democrat who had managed to win the White House was Grover Cleveland. That meant between the years 1860-1912, the GOP occupied the White House 44 out of 52 years. As long as the Republicans stayed united, they were nearly unbeatable.
In 1912, though, Theodore Roosevelt bolted from the Republican Party and formed the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party, splitting the presidential vote and handing the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Harding predictably remained steadfastly loyal to the Republican Party and fellow Ohioan, President William Howard Taft. He went further, though, and viciously attacked the popular Roosevelt for splintering his Republican Party and losing the election for Taft.
Roosevelt had a “lust for power,” Harding charged. He was a traitor in the mold of Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr, with “the same tendency to bully and browbeat” and “the same type of egotism and greed for power.” Furthermore, he seethed, the former president “is utterly without conscience and truth, and the greatest faker of all time.” It got rather nasty.
By the time of the 1916 election, though, Harding had visited Roosevelt at his home on Oyster Bay and the two men supposedly made peace. According to Harding, “then and there we agreed to work together and we buried the past and we conferred often thereafter to the time of his death.”
Harding was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the 1916 GOP convention. Nevertheless, candidate Charles Evans Hughes fell short in one of the closest elections in American history. Wilson actually went to bed in the White House that night thinking he had lost. And the next day’s Gazette had the headline, “Race So Close That Another Day May Be Needed to Tell the Result.”
Four years later, though, there was a general consensus that whoever won the Republican nomination in Chicago would be the next president of the United States. And after Theodore Roosevelt died on Jan. 6, 1919, Harding entered the 1920 race intending to restore the GOP to the days of his political idol, the conservative William McKinley.
Outside the courthouse in Chillicothe, therefore, the staunch Republican Harding hammered home his belief that the country was too big for one-man government. “No man, no official, no authority ever lived who could not profit in council and advice. Men really worthwhile ever welcome it,” he said. The Gazette reported that his talk “gave loyal party men much inspiration.” And the old timers in the crowd with fond memories of McKinley’s Republican Party ate it up.
Next, Harding rushed off to Athens, Logan, Nelsonville and Lancaster, before concluding his whirlwind tour the next day in Youngstown. Still, in Tuesday’s election, Harding only managed to beat Wood by 15,000 votes. Wood took nine of Ohio’s delegates and Harding secured the remaining 39. A favorite son candidate was supposed to dominate the vote in their home state.
Afterward, a downhearted Harding told a friend that “it looks like we are done for.” But Mrs. Harding would not hear of it. “Give up? Not until the convention is over,” she insisted. “Think of your friends in Ohio.” She was likely referring to loyal supporters like the ones who had shown up to her husband’s rally in Chillicothe and in dozens of other cities across the Buckeye State. They believed in him and would be sorely disappointed if he gave up now. The senator listened to his wife.
In Chicago, though, despite Gov. Willis’ stirring nominating speech, Harding only managed to win 65 delegates on the first ballot. But unlike modern political conventions where the winner is known well ahead of time, nominees in these days were actually decided in heated battles on the convention floor. And to win, the Republican Party required its nominees to earn a majority vote of the delegates. None of the top tier of candidates came anywhere close, including Gen. Wood. In other words, the convention was deadlocked and Harding just happened to be the most promising of the second tier compromise candidates.
And in between ballot votes, Harding’s energized supporters paraded around the Chicago coliseum carrying banners reading “THE REPUBLICANS NEED OHIO and HARDING MEANS OHIO.” They knew what they were doing. Wilson had taken Ohio in the two previous presidential elections. Put Ohio back in the Republican column, so the thinking went, and the GOP would not only be favored but guaranteed victory in 1920.
The convention dragged on for several days and nine ballot votes, but no candidate met the threshold. On the tenth ballot, though, Harding scored 692 ½ votes and finally went over the top. Imagine the excitement of those who had attended the Harding rally in Chillicothe weeks earlier after they opened the Gazette the next day and read in big, bold print, “Harding Chose to Break the Deadlock in Chicago.” They had just met him outside the Ross County courthouse. Now, Harding might be the next president of the United States.
Not to be outdone, a couple of weeks later, at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, Ohio’s incumbent Gov. James M. Cox captured the Democratic nomination thus guaranteeing that Ohio would add to its reputation as “the mother of presidents.” And because of Camp Sherman, Chillicothe residents knew the wartime governor well.
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