The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 52
I wanted very much to see Mr. Harding, of course, not having been with him since June, and when I wrote to him in Marion that I would leave Chicago for our home town the night of election and see him there, I immediately had his hearty approval and his worded assurance by letter that he was "hungry" to see me. That was the word he used.
At campaign headquarters they knew of my intended visit to Marion and, before I left, Mr. Witt handed me a letter of appreciation. I have this letter pasted in my Harding scrapbook. It commends my "faithfulness, efficiency and initiative" in the campaign work at the Republican National Headquarters. I do not remember how Mr. Witt happened to give me this letter, but I recall very vividly one story which the Ohio Democrats, in casting about for propaganda, were endeavoring to circulate. It stirred me to such bitter indignation that my expressed desire to work overtime, or all night if necessary, to effect its immediate repudiation, may have been so marked as to excite wonder on the part of those about me. The remembrance of my zealous belligerence may have prompted Mr. Witt's letter of appreciation.
The story to which I allude had to do with the propaganda of a statement that Mr. Harding's family had a strain of colored blood in their veins. I do not know how the promoters supported their story nor whence its origin; I only know that my being revolted at such a suggestion. The first time it reached my ears was one morning when my boss at campaign headquarters received an out-of-town telephone call, apprising him that such a story had been circulated in that particular town, and requesting suitable literature as a means of refutation. Well I remember how he turned to us in the office, repeating what had been said to him over the phone, and how someone in the office said, "Tell them it's a damned lie," and how I reiterated with all the intensity of one who knew better than anyone else the falsity of such story, "Yes, tell them it's a damned lie!" I was defending my own baby.
The following day as I entered the headquarters I found, stacked outside along the corridor and inside our offices, great piles of genealogical sheets, tracing, in diagram form, the Harding stock back to Stephen Harding, who was born about 1624.
It is needless to comment upon the reaction of this piece of unfair and unsuccessful propaganda. All one needs to do is to recall the Harding majority, unprecedented in the history of national elections.