The New Yorker - USA (2020-09-21)

28 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER21, 2020

memoirs, Cox pointed out how blocs
of ethnic voters were either aggrieved
with Wilson for going to war (the Ger­
mans) or angry with him for abandon­
ing their interests, such as Irish inde­
pendence, in the Versailles negotiations.
It was this “racial lineup,” Cox wrote,
which guaranteed a G.O.P. victory.
American participation in a League
of Nations would only cement those
grievances, but Wilson remained de­
termined to see the U.S. join. The effects
of his stroke rendered him so inactive
and so little visible that, for stretches
of the 1920 campaign, Cox and Har­
ding appeared to be running for a job
that no longer existed. The President’s
wife, Edith, along with his physician
and his secretary, kept affairs of state
operating at a minimal level, while Wil­
son navigated what his biographer
A. Scott Berg calls “a twilight zone—a
state of physical exhaustion, emotional
turbulence and mental unrest.”
The League became, to Cox’s clear
disadvantage, the central issue of the
1920 campaign after he was permitted
to visit the White House on Sunday,
July 18th. The sight of the disabled
Wilson moved him to tears, changing
the dynamic between the two men and
ultimately the tenor of the whole cam­
paign. Cox had been sufficiently luke­
warm toward the League that Wilson
was initially anything but enthusiastic
about his candidacy. Now, however, the
nominee impulsively pledged to Wil­
son his “million percent support” for
the League. Cox’s ardor became emo­
tive and personal, prompting him to
tell one campaign audience that Wil­
son had been reduced to “the saddest
picture in all history” by the ad­homi­
nem hatred of his tormentors in the
Republican­controlled Senate.
Harding tried to finesse the League
issue. His willingness to consider a
different “international association” or
a souped­up version of the World Court
left him open to charges of waffling.
Moreover, the Democrats’ new com­
mitment to the League gave Repub­
lican senators Henry Cabot Lodge,
Hiram Johnson, and William Borah a
reason to hold their candidate’s feet to
the rejectionist fire. As Cox pronounced
opposition to the League a betrayal of
“the boys who died in France,” Lodge
attacked the new organization as “a

breeder of war.” By October 7th, Har­

ding appeared ready to offer a straight

answer. “I favor staying out,” he told

the citizens of Des Moines.

The League issue came to the fore

partly because it could be decided yes

or no. Domestic anxieties never at­

tained the same clarity but were ever

present. In fact, the initials H.C.L.,

which turn up in headlines and stories,

were shorthand not for Henry Cabot

Lodge but for the high cost of living.

Rising postwar prices for beef, coal,

and sugar preoccupied householders

and bureaucrats. The economic situa­

tion was not nearly as dire as the one

strangling 2020, but then, as now, the

federal response looked ham­fisted.

The War Department sold off stock­

piled canned meat, and the Justice De­

partment’s H.C.L. task force recom­

mended, as an affordable “common

sense garment,” a dress made from sugar

sacks. Until prices began coming down

in September, Harding blamed the in­

cumbent Democrats, in one speech in­

toning, with an ecstatic, Whitmanesque

repetition, the phrase “more produc­

tion,” as the essential cure for consumer

woe. A protective tariff, he believed,

was also in order.

Throughout the year, labor was res­

tive. The Wobblies, members of the In­

dustrial Workers of the World, were

said to be planning a “reign of terror”

in the Pacific Northwest. The White

House jawboned striking coal miners

back to work, and threatened D.C. sewer

workers, who were contemplating a

walkout, with replacement by U.S.

troops. The biggest, blackest headline

of the campaign appeared in mid­Sep­

tember, after an attack on New York’s

financial district: “20 KILLED IN WALL

STREET EXPLOSION.” (The final death

toll was thirty­eight.) Inside J.P. Mor­

gan’s bank, as Beverly Gage recon­

structed the scene in her book, “The

Day Wall Street Exploded” (2009), one

man experienced “a shudder followed

by a blizzard of white” as “papers burst

from their files.” On the streets outside,

“men on fire dropped to the ground:

‘Save me! Save me! Put me out!’ Cus­

tomers fled barbershops, with cream on

their faces, aprons streaming behind.... ”

No one was ever convicted of the at­

tack, but evidence pointed to Italian

anarchists, heightening the appeals to

nativism and isolationism.

The socialist Eugene V. Debs, al­

ready imprisoned for sedition in en­

couraging draft resistance during the

war, continued a third­party Presiden­

tial campaign from the Atlanta Fed­

eral Penitentiary. He told the press that

he was glad to have an alibi for his

whereabouts during the bombing.

R

acial violence remained a phenom­

enon of such dailiness in 1920 that

its occurrence, even when reported,

was perceived as being more inevita­

ble than eventful, something that re­

quired an occasional word from the

candidates without anybody believing

it would seriously affect the election.

During the campaign, there were lynch­

ings in Duluth, Minnesota; Paris, Texas;

Graham, North Carolina; Corinth,

Mississippi; Macclenny, Florida; and

elsewhere. The Star had occasionally,

over the previous year, published strong

editorials against lynching, but the

paper’s complacency more often pre­

vailed. When it had reason to feature

or consider the Civil War, only as dis­

tant from 1920 as the Kennedy Presi­

dency is from our own day, it took sat­

isfaction from lore and legend, and

from North­South reconciliation—

which (rather than emancipation)

would be the dominant theme of the

Lincoln Memorial, still under con­

struction. The Star’s Sunday magazine

made a serious revival of the Ku Klux

Klan in Virginia and Georgia seem

part of a colorful pageant being staged

by reënactors: “The Old Klan, Its Mys­

terious Rites, the Blazing Cross and

the Fantastic Costumes.”

Harding declared, in his speech ac­

cepting the nomination, “I believe the

federal government should stamp out

lynching,” but his party’s platform was

more evasive: “We urge Congress to

consider the most effective means to

end lynching in this country.” The cra­