Warren G. Harding

Extramarital affairs

Many self-appointed experts on Harding's infidelities base their suppositions on innuendo, speculation, and stories that swirled around the President following his death. What is known, and has been recorded in primary documents, is that during his lifetime, Harding had an affair with Mrs. Carrie Fulton Phillips; he was also rumored to have had an affair with Miss Nan Britton, though information for this comes mostly from her book, written after his death.

Related Topics:
Carrie Fulton Phillips - Nan Britton

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Rumors of the Harding love letters circulated through Marion, Ohio for many years. However, their existence was not confirmed until author Francis Russell gained access to them during his research for his book, The Shadow of Blooming Grove. The letters were in the possession of Harding's one true love, Carrie Fulton Phillips, who by the 1960s was very elderly. Phillips kept the letters in a box in a closet and was reluctant to share them. Russell persuaded her to relent, and the letters showed conclusively that Harding had a 15-year relationship with Mrs. Phillips, who was then the wife of his friend James Phillips, owner of the local department store, the Uhler-Phillips Company. Mrs. Phillips was ten years younger than Harding. By 1915, she began pressing Harding to leave his wife. When he refused, she left her husband and moved to Berlin with her daughter Isabel. However, as the United States became increasingly likely to be drawn into World War I, Mrs. Phillips moved back to the U.S. and the affair reignited. Harding was now an Ohio Senator, and a vote was coming up on a declaration of war against Germany.

Related Topics:
The Shadow of Blooming Grove - Carrie Fulton Phillips - 1915 - Berlin - World War I - Germany

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Mrs. Phillips threatened to go public with their affair if the Senator supported the war, but Harding defied her and voted for war, and Carrie did not reveal the scandal to the world. When Harding won the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, he did not disclose the relationship to party officials. Once they learned of the affair, it was too late to find another nominee. To reduce the likelihood of a scandal breaking, the Republican National Committee sent Carrie and her family on a trip to Japan and paid them over $50,000. Mrs. Phillips also received monthly payments thereafter, becoming the first and only person known to have successfully extorted money from a major political party.

Related Topics:
1920 - Republican National Committee - Japan

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The letters Harding wrote to Mrs. Phillips were confiscated at the request of the Harding heirs, who requested and received a court injunction prohibiting their inclusion in Francis Russell's book, The Shadow of Blooming Grove. Russell in turn left quoted passages from the letters as blank passages in protest against the Harding heirs' actions. The Harding-Phillips love letters remain under an Ohio court protective order that expires in 2024, after which the content of the letters may be published and/or reviewed.

Related Topics:
The Shadow of Blooming Grove - 2024

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Besides Mrs. Phillips, Harding also reportedly had an affair with Nan Britton, the daughter of Harding's late friend, a Dr. Britton of Marion. Nan's obsession with Harding started at an early age when she began pasting pictures of then-Senator Harding on her bedroom walls. According to Nan's kiss-and-tell book The President's Daughter, published after Harding's death, she and Senator Harding conceived "their" daughter, Elizabeth Ann, in January 1919 in his Senate office. Harding never met Nan's daughter, but paid large amounts of child support. Harding and Britton, according to unsubstantiated reports, continued their affair while he was President, using a closet adjacent to the Oval Office for privacy. Following Harding's death, Nan Britton unsuccessfully sued the estate of Warren G. Harding on behalf of Elizabeth Ann. Under cross-examination by the Harding heirs' attorney, Grant Mouser (a former member of Congress himself), Britton's testimony was riddled with inconsistencies, and she lost her case. Britton married a Mr. Christian, who adopted Elizabeth Ann. Now Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, Nan Britton's daughter has been a resident of California for most of her life and was still living as of 2002.

Related Topics:
Nan Britton - January - 1919 - Child support - Oval Office - Grant Mouser - Elizabeth Ann Blaesing - 2002

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