Warren Harding

The United States presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I and the hostile reaction to Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president. The wartime boom had collapsed. Politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. Overseas there were wars and revolutions; at home, 1919 was marked by major strikes in meatpacking and steel, and large race riots in Chicago and other cities. Terrorist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of radicals and terrorists.

Outgoing President Wilson was increasingly unpopular, and as an invalid could no longer speak on his own behalf. The economy was in a recession, the Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at his policies, and his sponsorship of the League of Nations produced an isolationist reaction.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but his health had collapsed in 1918 and he died in January 1919, leaving no obvious heir to his Progressive legacy.

Both major parties turned to dark horse candidates from the elector-rich state of Ohio. The Democrats nominated newspaper publisher and Governor James M. Cox to take on Senator Warren G. Harding. Calling for "normalcy", Harding essentially campaigned against Wilson, and, with an almost 4-to-1 spending advantage, beat Cox in a landslide, and remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin (26.2%) in presidential history, 60.3% to 34.1%.

The President's Daughter (1928) is a book written by Nan Britton, a native of Marion County, Ohio, who claimed in the book that during a six year relationship, she and then Senator Warren G. Harding (later the 29th President of the United States) conceived a child together in 1919. The book is considered the first popular best-selling kiss-and-tell American political autobiography published in the United States and caused a sensation when it was released.

It is believed that Britton's mentor in the project, Richard Wightman, head of the Bible Corporation of America (New York City) where Britton was employed as a secretary had substantial input into the book. In his book, The Strange Deaths of President Harding, Indiana University professor of History Robert H. Ferrell PhD. states that the there are similarities between phrases in The President's Daughter and Wightman's other writings, leading Ferrell to conclude that Wightman had substantial, if not complete input into the content of the book. (Britton was also named in Patricia Wightman's divorce suit against Richard Wightman in 1928.)

Unable to find a publisher who was willing to publish and distribute the book, the book was published by the Elizabeth Ann Guild, an organization that Britton founded to take up the cause of children born out of wedlock. Prior to its release, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (the same organization once headed by the late Anthony Comstock) arranged for the New York City Police to seize both the unbound printed sheets and the zinc printing plates; all materials were returned to the Elizabeth Ann Guild. Prior to publication, Congressman John Tillman (D-Arkansas) introduced a bill into the United States House of Representatives attempting to ban the sale of the book stating that the work was "a blast from Hell". Tillman also cited his belief that book was written by a man, not Britton. The measure failed.

While the contents of the book were never challenged in court by members of the Harding family, Britton's claimed relationship with Harding did become the subject of a lawsuit filed by Britton in 1928 against Charles Klunk, who had funded the printing of the book The Answer, in which Ms. Britton's claims were denounced. In court (Britton v. Klunk, 1931, Toledo, Ohio), Britton failed to produce evidence of the relationship that she attested to in the book, and the paternity of Elizabeth Ann by Harding was never established in a court of law.

Britton died in 1991, resolute that Warren Harding had fathered her child. Elizabeth Ann Christian (Elizabeth Ann Blaesing) died on November 17, 2005; her son told the Cleveland Plain Dealer the following May that she never had an interest in proving her paternity.