Not that Harding’s staff didn’t notice the warning signs. They popped up all along the way, even before he had left on the journey. As the new year of 1923 broke, presidential physician Lieutenant Commander Joel T. Boone of the United States Navy, one of two physicians attached to the president, noticed a persistent cough in his commander in chief as well as a deep-rooted fatigue that the president could not shake off. Boone and primary presidential physician General Charles Sawyer, a longtime Harding family friend, educated in the homeopathic field of medicine, concluded that Harding’s symptoms were a result of the stress he had experienced during his wife’s illness the previous September. The fatigue continued right up to when Harding boarded the train at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and never completely subsided.

  From left, President Warren G. Harding, First Lady Florence Harding, and secretary George Christian leaving Union Station on the Voyage of Understanding, June 20, 1923 (Library of Congress).

  Secret Service agent Edmund Starling, whom Harding affectionately called “The Colonel,” observed the same symptoms in the president as Dr. Boone. Starling had been a favorite of Woodrow Wilson, Harding’s predecessor in the White House. Starling never hid his affection for Wilson, but Harding and his wife, Florence, known as the Duchess, won him over quickly. Upon hearing that political operatives had arranged for Starling to leave the White House due to his loyalty to Wilson, he dolefully prepared to leave his beloved service and return home to Kentucky.

  A few days after the inauguration, Mrs. Harding called for Colonel Starling at the White House. “Mr. Starling,” she said as he entered the room. “I owe you an apology. On our arrival in Washington, we were given information about you which was entirely untrue. I am sorry for that, and I want to make a request of you. I want you to stay with my husband as long as he is president and go with him wherever he goes. I know that he will be safe with you.”3

  Starling’s melancholy lifted immediately with the First Lady’s words. “Thank you, Mrs. Harding,” he replied. “I will do my best to fulfill the obligation you have asked me to undertake.”4

  Years later, in his memoirs, Starling would remember President Harding as “the kindest man I ever knew.” He further stated that Harding “could not bear to believe that there was evil in any man or selfishness behind any plea for help.” However, Starling also noted Harding’s one critical flaw: “He was weak and trusted everyone.”5

  As the winter of 1923 edged toward the spring, Arthur Brooks, the president’s valued African American valet, pulled Starling aside in a White House corridor. Starling immediately noticed the worry in Brooks’s eyes. “Colonel, something is going to happen to our boss,”6 the valet said, distressed by his own words.

  “What’s the matter?” Starling asked.7

  “He can’t sleep at night. He can’t lie down. He has to be propped up with pillows and he sits up that way all night. If he lies down, he can’t get his breath,” Brooks confessed.8

  Brooks had been a presidential valet since the beginning of William Howard Taft’s presidency. A soldier who fought in the Spanish–American War and commanded a battalion of militia in the District of Columbia, Brooks was a treasured member of the White House staff. He cared deeply for each president he served. His clothing choices for his commanders in chief transformed each chief executive into some of the “smartest dressed men in the capital.”9

  Starling reassured Brooks that he would discuss the valet’s concerns with the president’s doctors. Starling knew Brooks was right. Harding complained of fatigue after 11 or 12 holes of golf. Starling also knew that Harding would not cancel the Voyage of Understanding. It had already been canceled the previous year, and the president would not allow another delay.

  Harding wanted to visit Alaska to hear and see firsthand the results of the battle between the industrialists and conservationists, each vying to be masters of Alaska’s future. Exploitation versus conservation had become a big fight in the 1920s. Many industries—timber, minerals, fisheries—all wanted to exploit their respective interests for maximum profit. These businesses complained that government red tape and regulations were killing their respective industries by “locking up” their commercial interests and that it was detrimental to Alaska’s survival. They pointed out that the declining population of Alaska was due to these bureaucratic barriers. Before his visit, Harding tended to side with the industrialists, but after his visit, he became convinced that conservatism was the key to Alaska’s future. Harding found that these industries were not seeing a decline in output, but an increase. It was the industries with the least number of regulations that were falling off. The sputtering economy of the first two years of Harding’s administration prompted a decrease of output in certain industries. Gold had all but dried up, and the consequential shrinkage of those mining towns caused prospectors to flee back to the United States and Canada.

  Harding touted how conservatism had saved many important industries and said more regulation was needed. In Seattle, on his return to the United States, Harding vowed:

  More restriction is necessary and urgent. Conservation must be effected. Conservation of industry is no blow at vested interests. If there is defiance it is better to destroy the defiant investor than to demolish a national resource which needs only guarding against greed to remain a permanent asset of incalculable value.10

  Before his journey started, Harding began to hear soft, accusatory voices that grew louder every day, implicating his administration in a widening scandal concerning the Teapot Dome oil reserves. Congress had heard the same voices, and investigators fanned out across the country to interview those associated with the scandal. Insinuations spread that secretary of the interior and former senator Albert Fall had accepted bribes from friends in return for siphoning the oil under the ground at Teapot Dome. The investigation had not yet engulfed the president, but as the investigation grew in intensity, Harding’s health grew worse with every sordid detail.

  Rumors of irregularities at the Justice Department also reached Harding’s ears involving Attorney General Harry Daugherty and his assistant Jess Smith, both longtime friends of the president. Whispers hovered around Washington that both men were protecting bootleggers in exchange for large amounts of money.11 Others accused the attorney general of intimidation and harassment. By the time Harding left Washington for Alaska, Jess Smith had committed suicide and Daugherty removed himself from accompanying the president on his Alaskan journey.12

  Charles Forbes, head of the Veterans’ Bureau and a Harding favorite, resigned in early 1923 after being accused of taking bribes and receiving kickbacks from contractors to build veterans’ hospitals in their cities and towns. Investigators also accused Forbes of selling much-needed military hospital supplies for pennies on the dollar and pocketing the money. Dr. Charles Sawyer and others witnessed the supplies leaving warehouses by train and warned Harding that Forbes was up to no good. The president summoned Forbes to the White House and ordered him to stop doing it. Forbes ignored the president and continued his campaign of graft. Harding demanded to see Forbes again and when he arrived at the president’s office, Harding allegedly grabbed him by the throat and shouted at him, “You double-crossing bastard!”13 Forbes quickly fled America for the safety of France. He resigned on February 15, 1923, while overseas.

  Herbert Hoover, the secretary of commerce, recalled how, while sailing to Alaska onboard the Henderson, “I found Harding exceedingly nervous and distraught.”14 Harding insisted on playing bridge with Hoover every day, starting in the morning after breakfast up until at least midnight. Unable to take the constant card playing, Hoover managed to find four other bridge players to take shifts playing with the president. The card playing took such a toll on Hoover that he never played bridge again after the sea journey to Alaska.

  One afternoon, not long out of Tacoma, the Henderson’s point of departure, Harding asked Hoover a question during a break in the bridge game. They were the only two in the presidential cabin, and Hoover sat next to the president. Warren Harding trusted his secretary of commerce. Hoover’s exploits in feeding the hungry and displaced in Belgium during the World War, and then feeding all of Europe later, as well as making sure that the United States maintained its food supply, minted him as an American hero and legend. Briefly a challenger of Harding’s during the 1920 presidential primaries, when Hoover quit the race, Harding immediately decided he wanted Hoover in his cabinet, much to the chagrin of many conservatives in the Republican party who distrusted Hoover due to his service as food administrator under Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. Harding had his way and appointed Hoover to the Commerce Department, where he became the secretary and, as Hoover’s critics pointed out, undersecretary of every other department in the executive branch.

  In the privacy of the Henderson cabin, Harding leaned into his commerce secretary and quietly spoke. “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?”15

  “Publish it, and at least get credit for integrity on your side,”16 Hoover responded immediately. He asked for particulars, but Harding did not share much other than an indication of some irregularities at the Justice Department. When Hoover queried if Daugherty was involved, “He [Harding] abruptly dried up and never raised the question again.”17

  Interior Secretary Hubert Work had been seated near the president at the podium on Friday afternoon, July 27, while the president spoke on Alaska at Husky Stadium in Seattle in front of 30,000 people. He watched uncomfortably as Harding rushed through the speech, sometimes mumbling his words. Work sat helplessly as pages from the speech slipped off the podium and Harding had to steady himself against the podium to keep from losing balance. Hoover, who wrote the speech, quickly retrieved the pages and showed the president where he had left off. Later that evening Work, Hoover, and Speaker of the House Frederick Gillett hustled President Harding onto his train after he gave a few remarks at the Seattle Press Club. Dr. Boone held the door open for Harding as the president entered the Superb. Boone watched as the president threw his straw hat across the car, then turned to Boone and confessed his exhaustion. “Doctor, I’ll tell the world that one Warren Harding has had a most strenuous and fatiguing day and he is an exhausted man.”18 Presidential valet Brooks eyed his chief with trepidation. Noticing the president’s wan, flaccid face, Brooks undressed the chief executive and put him to bed. As the train pulled out of Seattle into the darkness, Hoover summoned the president’s closest advisers and suggested the stopover in Portland be canceled and that the train continue onto Mercer, California, to Yosemite Park, the next stop on the tour.19 Everyone agreed.

  As the train headed south, it stopped in Eugene, Oregon, around 5:30 a.m. to allow that state’s two senators, Charles McNary and Robert N. Stanfield, to board and meet the president. McNary had carried with him telegrams and petitions from his constituents urging Harding to call a special session of Congress to provide additional federal relief to farmers. The senator wanted to present them to the president. Herbert Hoover greeted them in the predawn station as they boarded the train. There, Secretary Hoover earnestly informed McNary and Stanfield that there would be no meeting with the president. If they had anything to discuss regarding presidential business, they could discuss it with him.20 Hoover explained further that the president would not see anyone this morning and needed complete rest. After the stop, the train continued from Eugene, heading south toward Yosemite National Park.

  Now, just before 8:00 a.m., in sight of the Roseburg train station, President Harding summoned Secretary Work to his private compartment.21 Work had recently replaced the disgraced Albert Fall in the Interior department. Hubert Work expressed no surprise at his summons. He bore the responsibilities not only of a cabinet secretary, but also of a medical doctor. Walking down the tight, swaying hallway to the presidential compartment, Work recalled the president’s collapse the previous night and felt all Harding needed was some rest. As soon as he opened the door to the bedroom and looked at the president, Work quickly changed his mind. He did not like what he saw. Sensing Dr. Work’s concern, Dr. Sawyer and the First Lady explained how the president had been up most of the night wracked with stomach cramps and other digestive disorders. He could not keep food down. Like Brooks last night, Work noticed the pale, wan skin and the fact that Harding’s exhaustion kept him from getting out of bed.

  Sensing Work’s concern, Harding weakly motioned him forward. Work leaned in to keep Harding from expending much energy in talk. As Sawyer and Mrs. Harding listened, Harding explained to Work that he had been sick for the last two days. Dr. Sawyer interrupted and said that he believed that the president suffered from the effects of eating a bad batch of canned crabs and had contracted food poisoning. Harding told Work he did not consider his illness serious. The president asked Work to speak to the crowd gathered at the train station and apologize that their president could not address them himself. Privately, Work doubted the crabmeat diagnosis but decided to use it as an excuse to deflect any concern that the illness might be more serious than tainted food.22

  As a physician, Work had observed during the last few days that Harding had reached the point of exhaustion. The heat, the crowds in Seattle, the parades, and the speech he had given in front of tens of thousands of people, coming off the already exhaustive Alaskan trip, had completely ground down the president. While a homeopathic doctor like Charles Sawyer might interpret Harding’s symptoms as the result of tainted crab, Dr. Work, a medically trained, skilled, and nationally respected physician, sensed something more sinister. Dr. Work soothingly told Harding that he would, of course, speak in the president’s absence, and he expressed the hope he would feel better soon.

  After Work left the president’s compartment, he relayed the message to the presidential party that Harding would not be speaking at Roseburg. Hoover, Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, and the First Lady all agreed to speak briefly at the station.23

  Hubert Work had only been in Harding’s cabinet as a secretary since March. Born on a farm in rural Marion Center, Pennsylvania, he entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1885 and became a licensed physician. After medical school, Work moved to Colorado, where he opened a medical practice. He entered Colorado Republican party politics in 1908, moving quickly up the ranks. He became Colorado state Republican chairman and a member of the Republican National Committee from 1913 to 1919. During that time, he served during World War I, rising to the rank of colonel, and organized the medical aspects of the draft. In 1920, Work helped organize support for the Harding/Coolidge ticket. As his reward, Harding named him assistant postmaster general. In January 1922, he became postmaster general and, a year later, replaced Fall as secretary of the interior. Throughout his rise in Republican politics, Work still practiced as a physician. He served as president of the Colorado State Medical Society and then the American Medico/Psychological Association.

  Just a few moments after the train stopped, Secretary Work opened the rear door to the Superb and apologized to the disappointed crowd for the president’s absence. “You should know at this point,” Work explained from the presidential platform, “that it comes about that during our last day at sea, many of us were attacked by a temporary indisposition, not seasickness, but due to an item of food put up in a can.”24

  He continued in the already blistering early morning sun.

  Had he [Harding] been able yesterday to care for himself he would have been in his usual vigorous health this morning….

  He was two hours in the sun bareheaded acknowledging the plaudits and afterwards spoke to more than one hundred thousand people at three different times. The president was overtaxed. So this morning he called me to ask me to say the things in a confidential way to you.25

  Hoover, Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace and Florence Harding followed Work, each saying a few words to the disappointed crowd of four thousand gathered at the station. Many had already drifted away when it was clear that the president would not appear. When the speakers finished to muted applause, they waited until Southern Pacific railway personnel changed engines on the caravan so that they could continue the journey south to Yosemite and the next destination on the presidential special.

  As the train began to roll, Work grabbed Hoover’s arm and took the young man aside. Ditching the stump speech style that he had just used on the Roseburg crowd, Work told Hoover, in a soft, yet direct voice, that he did not like the way the president looked. “I think he is a sick man,” Work said solemnly.26

  Dr. Work relayed to Hoover that he had spoken to Dr. Sawyer and even Sawyer, the life-long promoter of Harding’s robust health, seemed concerned. “Dr. Sawyer said the president had a bad night and was extremely fatigued; he expressed concern over the lack of resilience which [h]is life-long familiarity as Harding’s personal physician had accustomed him to expect. However, the president himself, with characteristic cheerfulness, felt confident he would be all right if he could have a day or two of rest.”27

  Dr. Charles Sawyer, President Harding’s personal physician, 1923 (Library of Congress).

 

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