Harding Administration, Warren

[Page 349]Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865–1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in office in 1923. A likeable postwar president who promised the country a “return to normalcy,” his administration was marked by scandals that ended in multiple suicides, arrests of highly placed officials, and the first conviction of a cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, for his part in the Teapot Dome scandal. Prohibition had begun in the last year of President Wilson's presidency, and continued through all of Harding's.

Though the amendment leading to Prohibition had been ratified quickly, there remained considerable opposition to it, and in the early days of Prohibition under Harding's administration, these opponents of the Eighteenth Amendment organized themselves in different ...