Teapot Dome Scandal Political Cartoon

The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s demonstrated to Americans that the oil industry could wield cracking power and influence authorities policy to the point of outright abuse. The scandal, which played out on newspaper front pages and in silent newsreel films, seemed to create a template for afterwards scandals.

Blatant corruption was discovered, denials were fabricated, hearings were held on Capitol Hill, and all the time reporters and photographers swarmed the scene. By the fourth dimension it was over, some of the characters stood trial and were convicted. However the system changed very niggling.

The story of Teapot Dome was essentially the tale of an unqualified and inept president, surrounded by larcenous underlings. An unusual bandage of characters took power in Washington following the turbulence of World War I, and Americans who thought they were returning to normal life instead establish themselves following a saga of thievery and deception.

Warren Harding'southward Surprise Nomination

Warren Harding posing with fellow musicians during 1920 entrada. Getty Images

Warren Harding had prospered every bit a newspaper publisher in Marion, Ohio. He was known as an outgoing personality who enthusiastically joined clubs and loved to speak in public.

After entering politics in 1899, he held a variety of offices in Ohio. In 1914 he was elected to the U.Due south. Senate. On Capitol Loma he was well-liked past his colleagues but did little of any real importance.

In late 1919, Harding, encouraged past others, began to call up of running for president. America was in a menstruation of turmoil post-obit the end of World War I., and many voters were tired of Woodrow Wilson's ideas of internationalism. Harding's political backers believed his small-town values, including quirks such as his founding of a local brass band, would restore America to a more than placid fourth dimension.

Harding'south odds of winning the presidential nomination of his political party were not great: His one reward was that no ane in the Republican Party disliked him. At the Republican National Convention in June 1920 he began to appear to be a viable compromise candidate.

Information technology is strongly suspected that lobbyists of the oil industry, sensing that enormous profits could be made by controlling a weak and pliable president, influenced balloting at the convention. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Volition Hays, was a prominent attorney who represented oil companies and also served on the board of directors of an oil visitor. A 2008 book, The Teapot Dome Scandal past veteran business announcer Laton McCartney, provided evidence that Harry Ford Sinclair, of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Company, funneled $3 1000000 to fund the convention, which was held in Chicago.

In an incident that would later become famous, Harding was asked, late one night in a backroom political meeting at the convention, if at that place was annihilation in his personal life that would disqualify him from serving as president.

Harding did, in fact, take a number of scandals in his personal life, including mistresses and at to the lowest degree ane illegitimate child. Merely after thinking for a few minutes, Harding claimed nothing in his past prevented him from existence president.

Election of 1920

Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Getty Images

Harding secured the 1920 Republican nomination. Later that summer the Democrats nominated some other pol from Ohio, James Cox. In a peculiar coincidence, both party nominees had been newspaper publishers. Both also had undistinguished political careers.

The vice-presidential candidates that yr were possibly more interesting, non to mention more capable. Harding's running mate was Calvin Coolidge, the governor of Massachusetts, who had get nationally famous by putting down a strike by Boston police the previous yr. The Democrat's vice-presidential candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a rising star who had served in Wilson's administration.

Harding barely campaigned, preferring to remain at home in Ohio and deliver bland speeches from his ain front porch. His telephone call for "normalcy" struck a chord with a nation recovering from its involvement in World War I and Wilson'due south campaign to form a League of Nations.

Harding easily won the November ballot.

Harding's Problems With His Friends

Warren Harding came into White House mostly pop with the American people and with a platform that was a departure from the Wilson years. He was photographed playing golf and attending sporting events. One pop news photo showed him shaking easily with some other very popular American, Babe Ruth.

Some of the people Harding appointed to his cabinet were worthy. Just some of the friends Harding brought into function became mired in scandal.

Harry Daugherty, a prominent Ohio lawyer and political logroller, had been instrumental in Harding's rise to power. Harding rewarded him by making him chaser general.

Albert Fall had been a senator from New Mexico earlier Harding appointed him as secretary of the interior. Fall was opposed to the conservation movement, and his actions apropos oil leases on government land would create a torrent of scandalous stories.

Harding reportedly said to a paper editor, "I have no trouble with my enemies. But my friends... they're the ones who go along me walking the flooring nights."

Rumors and Investigations

Teapot Rock in Wyoming. Getty Images

Equally the 1920s began, the U.S. Navy held 2 oil fields as a strategic reserve in the consequence of another war. With warships having converted from burning coal to oil, the Navy was the country's largest consumer of oil.

The extremely valuable oil reserves were located at Elk Hills in California and at a remote spot in Wyoming called Teapot Dome. Teapot Dome took its name from a natural rock formation which resembled the spout of a teapot.

Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall bundled for the Navy to transfer the oil reserves to the Department of the Interior. And he then arranged for friends of his, primarily Harry Sinclair (who controlled the Mammoth Oil Company) and Edward Doheny (of Pan-American Petroleum) to lease the sites for drilling.

Information technology was a archetype sweetheart deal in which Sinclair and Doheny would kick back what amounted to nigh a one-half-1000000 dollars to Fall.

President Harding may have been oblivious to the scam, which showtime became known to the public through paper reports in the summertime of 1922. In testimony before a Senate commission in October 1923, officials from the Department of the Interior claimed that Secretary Fall granted the oil leases without presidential authorisation.

Information technology was non hard to believe Harding had no idea what Autumn was doing, peculiarly as he frequently seemed overwhelmed. In a famous story told virtually him, Harding once turned to a White House aide and admitted, "I am not fit for this chore and should never accept been here."

Past early 1923 rumors of a broad-ranging blackmail scandal were circulating in Washington. Members of Congress were intent on beginning all-encompassing investigations of the Harding administration.

Harding's Expiry Shocked America

President Harding'southward casket in the Due east Room of the White House. Library of Congress

In the summer of 1923 Harding seemed to be under tremendous stress. He and his wife embarked on a tour of the American West in gild to get abroad from the various scandals festering in his administration.

After a tour of Alaska, Harding was returning to California past boat when he became ill. He took a hotel room in California, was tended by doctors, and the public was told he was recovering and would return to Washington soon.

On August 2, 1923, Harding died suddenly, most likely from a stroke. After, when tales of his extra-marital diplomacy became public, in that location was speculation that his wife had poisoned him. (Of course, that was never proven.)

Harding was still very popular with the public at the fourth dimension of his expiry, and he was mourned as a train carried his body dorsum to Washington. After lying in state in the White House, his body was taken to Ohio, where he was buried.

A New President

President Coolidge at his White House desk. Getty Images

Harding'south vice president, Calvin Coolidge, took the oath of function in the middle of the dark in a small Vermont farmhouse where he was vacationing. What the public knew nearly Coolidge is that he was a man of few words, dubbed "Silent Cal."

Coolidge operated with an air of New England frugality, and he seemed most the opposite of the fun-loving and gregarious Harding. That stern reputation would be helpful to him equally president, as the scandals which were about to get public did not attach to Coolidge, but to his dead predecessor.

Sensational Spectacle for the Newsreels

Newsreel cameras swarmed to cover Teapot Dome witnesses. Getty Images

Hearings on the Teapot Dome bribery scandal began on Capitol Hill in the fall of 1923. Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana led the investigations, which sought to detect out but how and why the Navy had transferred its oil reserves to the command of Albert Fall at the Interior Section.

The hearings captivated the public every bit wealthy oilmen and prominent political figures were called to show. News photographers captured images of men in suits entering and leaving the courthouse, and some figures stopped to address the press as silent newsreel cameras recorded the scene. The beliefs of the press seemed to create standards for how other scandals, upward to the modern era, would be covered by the media.

By early on 1924 the general outlines of Fall's scheme was being exposed to the public, with much of the blame falling on the late President Harding, rather than his severe replacement, President Calvin Coolidge.

Also helpful to Coolidge and the Republican Political party was that the fiscal schemes perpetrated by oilmen and Harding administration officials tended to exist complicated. The public naturally had trouble following every twist and turn in the saga.

The political fixer from Ohio who masterminded the Harding presidency, Harry Daugherty, was tangentially implicated in several scandals. Coolidge accepted his resignation, and scored points with the public by replacing him with capable successor, Harlan Fiske Stone (who was later on nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Legacy of the Scandal

Teapot Dome became an event in the ballot of 1924. Getty Images

The Teapot Dome scandal might take been expected to create political opportunity for the Democrats in the election of 1924. Simply Coolidge had kept his distance from Harding, and the steady stream of revelations of corruption during Harding'due south tenure had petty affect on his political fortunes. Coolidge ran for president in 1924 and was elected.

The schemes to defraud the public through the shady oil leases connected to be investigated. Eventually the onetime head of the Department of the Interior, Albert Fall, stood trial. He was bedevilled and sentenced to one year in prison.

Autumn made history by becoming the first one-time chiffonier secretarial assistant to serve prison time related to malfeasance in office. But others in the government who may have been part of the bribery scandal escaped prosecution.

Teapot Dome Scandal Political Cartoon,

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/teapot-dome-scandal-4158547

Posted by: harrisbegaing.blogspot.com

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