The Indictment

The Indictment, John A. Murphy, Brockston Publishing Co, 2000

As a US Senator from Ohio in the early part of the 20th century, Warren G. Harding could charitably be called "undistinguished". Not having much in the way of formal education, he spent his life without making any constructive public achievements and without advocating any public measure at all, while missing hundreds of Senate votes. In short, he makes some of today's less intelligent politicians look like intellectuals.

Harding was reluctant when asked to run for President in the 1920 election. But with enough pressure from the bosses, and liberal amounts of cash paid to delegates at the convention, Harding received the Republican nomination.

Around this time, William Estabrook Chancellor was a tenured professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio. A veritable one-man teaching and writing machine, in his life he wrote at least 40 books on subjects like education, history and politics, his list of published articles numbers well over a thousand, while teaching twenty-three (yes, 23) different courses at the College of Wooster. Finding that there was nothing like a definitive biography of Harding, Chancellor set out to write it. He found that Harding was approximately one-eighth negro, a fact known, and not considered a big thing, by the people of Harding's hometown.

Despite several signed affidavits by Chancellor that he never gave his research to anyone for political purposes, Harding's ancestry was spread all over the country, giving the impression that he was all negro. Having little or no resemblance to his original research, the flyers all had Chancellor's name on them. The resulting bad publicity caused Chancellor to lose his job.

Chancellor then decided to put his research into a book-length biography of Harding, privately printed and sold only by mail order. Safely in the White House, Harding heard about this and blew his top. He ordered the Secret Service to open Chancellor's mail and take down the addresses of everyone who ordered a copy of the book. Agents also went to Chancellor and made it very clear to him that burning the manuscript and forgetting the whole idea would be a very healthy thing to do. Chancellor's fear that he would either be jailed or forcibly confined to a mental institution for the rest of his life forced him to seek asylum in Canada. (This is also the same President Harding who gave Cabinet positions to his friends and cronies, and fathered an illegitimate child while in the White House.)

It's hard to believe that the events in this book really happened. I found this to be a very interesting and well done story, not just for history buffs, but for everyone.