?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
"WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING IS NOT A WHITE MAN" (PRESIDENTS--1920 CAMPAIGN.) William E. Chancellor. To the Men and Women of America: An Open Letter. Letterpress broadsheet, 2 pages on one sheet, 19 x 4 1/2 inches, with author's printed facsimile signature; folds, minor wear and foxing. Wooster, OH, October 1920
This leaflet, attributed to college professor William Estabrook Chancellor, questioned Warren G. Harding's ancestry shortly before the 1920 election, and caused a national scandal. It insists that Harding, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather "were never accepted as white" and asks "Are we ready to make the experiment of entrusting the Presidency of this Republic to this hybrid man? . . . Let us have neither Hayti nor Russia here! May God save America from international shame and from domestic ruin!" Printed on the verso of Chancellor's statement are 4 affidavits from Ohio men concerning rumors about the Harding family ancestry. Harding survived the scandal and was elected to the presidency, after which Chancellor denied writing the leaflet and then fled to Canada.
Supposedly, hundreds of thousands of these leaflets were distributed to voters across the country in an effort to prevent Harding's election. Chancellor's 1922 book "Warren Gamaliel Harding . . . Facts Collected from Anthropological, Historical, and Political Researches" is well represented in library collections and has appeared at auction. However, we have failed to trace any of these "Open Letter" campaign leaflets in OCLC or in auction records.
Provenance: found among Charles C. Fisher's Harding-related ephemera in the next lot.
