United States presidential election, 1920

The 1920 United States presidential election was the 34th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. In the first election held after the end of World War I and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Republican Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio defeated Democratic Governor James M. Cox of Ohio.

Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson privately hoped for a third term, but party leaders were unwilling to re-nominate the ailing and unpopular incumbent. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had been the front-runner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. With both Wilson and Roosevelt out of the running, the major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a swing state with a large number of electoral votes. Cox won the 1920 Democratic National Convention on the 44th ballot, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the party, and he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot of the 1920 Republican National Convention.

The election was dominated by the American social and political environment in the aftermath of World War I, which was marked by a hostile response to certain aspects of Wilson's foreign policy and a massive reaction against the reformist zeal of the Progressive Era. The wartime economic boom had collapsed and the country was deep in a recession. Wilson's advocacy for America's entry into the League of Nations in the face of a return to non-interventionist opinion challenged his effectiveness as president, and overseas there were wars and revolutions. At home, the year 1919 was marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities. Anarchist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of radicals and terrorists. The Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at Wilson's perceived favoritism of their traditional enemy Great Britain, and his political position was critically weakened after he suffered a stroke in 1919 that left him severely disabled.

Harding all but ignored Cox in the race and essentially campaigned against Wilson by calling for a "return to normalcy". Harding won a landslide victory, sweeping every state outside of the South and becoming the first Republican since the end of Reconstruction to win a former state of the Confederacy, Tennessee. Harding's victory margin of 26.2% in the popular vote remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin in presidential elections since the unopposed re-election of James Monroe in 1820, though other candidates have since exceeded his share of the popular vote. Cox won just 34.1% of the popular vote, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs won 3.4%, despite being in prison at the time. It was also the first election in which women had the right to vote in all 48 states, which caused the total popular vote to increase dramatically, from 18.5 million in 1916 to 26.8 million in 1920. Both vice presidential nominees would eventually become president in their own right (which had never happened before or since): Harding died in 1923 and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge, while the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, would eventually win an unprecedented four consecutive presidential elections starting in 1932, dying shortly into his fourth term.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

Other Candidates

Following the return of former president Theodore Roosevelt to the Republican Party after the previous election, speculation quickly grew as to whether he would make another run for the presidency. Roosevelt's health declined seriously in 1918, however, and he died on January 6, 1919. Attention then turned to the party's unsuccessful 1916 candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, who had narrowly fallen short of defeating Wilson that year, but Hughes remained aloof as to the prospect of another run, and ultimately ruled himself out following the death of his daughter early in 1920.

On June 8, the Republican National Convention met in Chicago. The race was wide open, and soon the convention deadlocked between Major General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Orren Lowden of Illinois.

Other names placed in nomination included Senators Warren G. Harding from Ohio, Hiram Johnson from California, and Miles Poindexter from Washington, Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, philanthropist Herbert Hoover, and Columbia University President Nicholas M. Butler. Senator Robert M. La Follette from Wisconsin was not formally placed in nomination, but received the votes of his state delegation nonetheless. Harding was nominated for president on the tenth ballot, after some delegates shifted their allegiances. The results of the ten ballots were as follows:

File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteFirstBallot1920.svg, First Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteSecondBallot1920.svg, Second Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteThirdBallot1920.svg, Third Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteFourthBallot1920.svg, Fourth Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteFifthBallot1920.svg, Fifth Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteSixthBallot1920.svg, Sixth Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteSeventhBallot1920.svg, Seventh Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteEighthBallot1920.svg, Eighth Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteNinthBallot1920.svg, Ninth Presidential Ballot
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteTenthBallotBeforeShifts1920.svg, Tenth Presidential Ballot
Before Shifts
File:RepublicanPresidentialConventionVoteTenthBallotAfterShifts1920.svg, Tenth Presidential Ballot
After Shifts

Harding's nomination, said to have been secured in negotiations among party bosses in a "smoke-filled room," was engineered by Harry M. Daugherty, Harding's political manager, who became United States Attorney General after his election. Before the convention, Daugherty was quoted as saying, "I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballots, but I think we can afford to take chances that about 11 minutes after two, Friday morning of the convention, when 15 or 12 weary men are sitting around a table, someone will say: 'Who will we nominate?' At that decisive time, the friends of Harding will suggest him and we can well afford to abide by the result." Daugherty's prediction described essentially what occurred, but historians Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris argue that Daugherty's prediction has been given too much weight in narratives of the convention.

Once the presidential nomination was finally settled, the party bosses and Sen. Harding recommended Wisconsin Sen. Irvine Lenroot to the delegates for the second spot, but the delegates revolted and nominated Coolidge, who was very popular over his handling of the Boston Police Strike from the year before. The Tally:

Source for convention coverage: Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, ''Convention Decisions and Voting Records'' (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1973), pp. 200–208.

Democratic Party nomination

Other Candidates

It was widely accepted prior to the election that President Woodrow Wilson would not run for a third term, and would certainly not be nominated if he did make an attempt to regain the nomination. While Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall had long held a desire to succeed Wilson, his indecisive handling of the situation around Wilson's illness and incapacity destroyed any credibility he had as a candidate, and in the end he did not formally put himself forward for the nomination.

Although William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary) was the strongest candidate, Wilson blocked his nomination in hopes a deadlocked convention would demand that he run for a third term, even though he was seriously ill, physically immobile, and in seclusion at the time. The Democrats, meeting in San Francisco between June 28 and July 6 (the first time a major party held its nominating convention in an urban center on the Pacific coast), nominated another newspaper editor from Ohio, Governor James M. Cox, as their presidential candidate, and 38-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fifth cousin of the late president Theodore Roosevelt, for vice-president.

Early favorites for the nomination had included McAdoo and Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Others placed in nomination included New York Governor Al Smith, United Kingdom Ambassador John W. Davis, New Jersey Governor Edward I. Edwards, and Oklahoma Senator Robert Latham Owen.

Other candidates

Socialist Party

Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs was incarcerated at the Atlanta federal penitentiary at the time for advocating non-compliance with the draft during World War I. He received the largest number of popular votes ever received by a Socialist Party candidate in the United States, although not the largest percentage of the popular vote. Debs received double this percentage in the election of 1912. The 1920 election was Debs's fifth and last attempt to become president.

In 1919, members of the Socialist Party who had come from Russian language federation of the party and other more radical groups within the party started to create their own papers and membership dues and cards. These members supported a platform that was similar to the Communist International and elected twelve of their members to the fifteen-member National Executive Committee. However, there was accusations of election irregularities and an Emergency Convention held on August 30, 1919, suspended seven of the party's twelve language federations and expelled the party affiliates in Michigan, Massachusetts, and Ohio. The more radical members of the party held a convention in New York City in June 1919, which was attended by 94 delegates from twenty states. A vote to create a new party was defeated by a vote of 55 to 38 causing 31 delegates to withdraw from the convention. These 31 delegates held their own convention in Chicago on September 1, where they founded the Communist Party USA. The Communist Party USA attempted to give its presidential nomination to Debs, but he declined the nomination.

The Socialist Party held its 1919 convention in Chicago with 140 delegates in attendance. Twenty-six delegates, who were members of the party's left-wing, left the convention. These delegates attempted to unite with the Communist Party USA, but formed the Communist Labor Party of America on September 2, after those attempts failed.

The Socialist Party had 100,000 members before the splits, but it fell to 55,000 members while the Communist Party had 35,000 members and the Communist Labor Party had 10,000 members. The Communist Party claimed to have 60,000 members while the Communist Labor Party claimed to have 30,000 members. The United Communist Party was formed in May 1920 between the Communist Labor Party and some members of the Communist Party. The United Communist Party and the Communist Party united in December 1921 to form the Workers Party of America.

Edward Henry, who was a friend of Debs, Lena Morrow Lewis, and Oscar Ameringer nominated Debs for the party's nomination on May 13, 1920, and the 134 delegates to the national convention voted unanimously to give him the nomination. Kate Richards O'Hare, who was also in prison, was considered for the vice-presidential nomination, but Seymour Stedman was selected by a vote of 106 to 26, which was later made unanimous, in order to have one of the candidates campaign. James H. Maurer was also considered for the vice-presidential nomination, but he declined due to his duties as head of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor. Debs accepted the presidential nomination in an Atlanta prison on May 29, after being notified by Seymour, James Oneal, and Julius Gerber.

During the campaign the Socialists had four airplanes drop socialist literature over Toledo, Ohio. The wife of Charles Edward Russell claimed that the ghost of Susan B. Anthony told her to vote for Debs. Over 60,000 people donated to the Socialist Party's campaign fund. Gerber predicted that Debs would receive three million votes and that five Socialists would be elected to Congress. Debs received 913,693 votes with his largest amount of support coming from New York. His vote total was over 50% more than what Allan L. Benson had received in the 1916 election. Debs later chose to not run for president in the 1924 election and instead supported Robert M. La Follette.

Farmer-Labor Party

Other Candidates

Prohibition Party

Other Candidates

Meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, there was some question whether the Prohibition Party would field an independent ticket as opposed to endorsing either Harding or Cox, but this was predicated on either making a clear statement that they would not move to weaken the Eighteenth Amendment; neither chose to make any such commitment. The ticket favored by most present was that of William Jennings Bryan for President and William "Billy" Sunday for Vice President, and indeed when a motion was made to nominate Bryan by acclamation, of the more than two hundred present it was only opposed by six. Upon hearing of his nomination however Bryan declined the gesture, not wishing to remain singularly focused on the prohibition question or to sever his ties with the Democratic Party entirely. Some had considered Billy Sunday a possible substitute but Sunday was "satisfied" with Republican nominee Warren Harding, while others thought about potentially nominating Henry Ford as their standard-bearer. With the nomination thrown wide open, the Party ultimately opted to nominate keynote speaker and Methodist minister Aaron Watkins of Ohio, over other candidates such as 1916 Convention Chair Robert Patton of Illinois, itinerant minister Daniel Poling of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Charles Randall of California. Historian David Leigh Colvin of New York was nominated for the Vice Presidency.

American Party

James E. Ferguson, a former Governor of Texas, announced his candidacy on April 21, 1920 in Temple, Texas under the badge of "American Party". Ferguson was opposed to Democrats whom he saw as too controlled by elite academic interests as seen when Woodrow Wilson endorsed rival Thomas H. Ball in the gubernatorial primary, and hoped to help the Republicans carry Texas for the first time (Texas never went Republican during Reconstruction). Initially Ferguson and running mate William J. Hough hoped to carry their campaign to other states, but Ferguson was unable to get on the ballot anywhere outside of Texas. Ferguson did manage to gain almost ten percent of the vote in Texas, and won eleven counties in the southeast of the state.Scammon, Richard M. (compiler); ''America at the Polls: A Handbook of Presidential Election Statistics 1920–1964'' pp. 426-430, 456

General election

Return to normalcy

Warren Harding's main campaign slogan was a "return to normalcy", playing upon the weariness of the American public after the social upheaval of the Progressive Era. Additionally, the international responsibilities engendered by the Allied victory in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles proved deeply unpopular, causing a reaction against Wilson, who had pushed especially hard for the latter.

Ethnic issues

Irish Americans were powerful in the Democratic party, and groups such as Clan na Gael opposed going to war alongside their enemy Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rising of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. Wilson had won the presidential election of 1916 with strong support from German-Americans and Irish-Americans, largely because of his slogan "He kept us out of war" and the longstanding American policy of isolationism. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, however, he reneged on his commitments to the Irish-American community, who vehemently denounced him. His dilemma was that Britain was his war ally. Events such as the anti-British Black Tom and Kingsland Explosions in 1916 on American soil (in part the result of wartime Irish and German co-ordination) and the Irish anti-conscription crisis of 1918 were all embarrassing to recall in 1920.

Britain had already passed an Irish Home Rule Act in 1914, suspended for the war's duration. However the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin had led to increased support for the more radical Sinn Féin who in 1919 formed the First Dáil, effectively declaring Ireland independent, sparking the Irish War of Independence. Britain was to pass the Government of Ireland Act in late 1920, by which Ireland would have 2 home-ruled states within the British empire. This satisfied Wilson. The provisions of these were inadequate to the supporters of the Irish Republic, however, which claimed full sovereignty. This position was also supported by many Irish Americans. The American Committee for Relief in Ireland was set up in 1920 to assist victims of the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21. Some Irish-American Senators joined the "irreconcilables" who blocked the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and United States membership in the League of Nations.

Wilson blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for his unsuccessful campaign to have the United States join the League of Nations, saying, "There is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say—I cannot say too often—any man who carries a hyphen about with him .e., a hyphenated American">hyphenated_American.html" ;"title=".e., a hyphenated American">.e., a hyphenated Americancarries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

Of the $5,500,000 raised by supporters of the Irish Republic in the United States in 1919–20, the Dublin parliament (Dáil Éireann (Irish Republic)">Dáil Éireann