Scope and Content Note
In 1956, under the direction of her lawyer and guardian, Carrie Fulton Phillips moved into a nursing home. It was left to her guardian, Don Williamson, to pick through Phillips's possessions in her Marion, Ohio, home. While clearing a closet, Williamson found a cardboard box full of letters dating from 1910 to about 1924. Most of the letters were from Warren G. Harding to Phillips, but also there were some drafts and notes by her as well a few other related items. Not knowing what to do with the box of papers, he brought them home for safekeeping. This collection is comprised solely of the material that was in that box.
The correspondence of Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) and Carrie Fulton Phillips (1873-1960) spans the years 1910-1924. The material is organized alphabetically by type of material, but the correspondence and drafts of correspondence comprise most of the collection. Other material includes envelopes without letters, printed matter, a receipt, congressional passes, and an inauguration ticket. The material primarily dates from before and during Harding's service as United States senator from Ohio.
A file of correspondence and drafts of correspondence is organized chronologically with various correspondents interfiled. By far, most of the letters were written by Harding for Phillips. Many of the letters are dated, but many are either partially dated or not dated at all. Dates or approximate dates have been assigned to almost all of the undated letters and drafts using the content of the letters either with reference to outside events or to other letters. Sometimes both a bracketed date and a parenthetical date appear on the item and the dates may be years apart. The bracketed dates were written in 1963-1964 at the Ohio Historical Society. The parenthetical dates were created in 2014 while the papers were processed at the Library of Congress and are the result of research by Manuscript Division staff and the research of James David Robenalt in The Harding Affair (2009). Some letters are fragments with incomplete page numbering. In addition to her name or common terms of endearment, Carrie Phillips is often addressed as "Sis." Harding uses a number of ways to sign his letters. WGH and "Gov" were used for public letters that might be read by others. "Constant," "Jerry," "JVH," and "FHK" indicate a letter that was intended for Carrie Phillips alone. In personal letters he sometimes uses the name "Pouterson" to refer to the two of them.
That Harding and Phillips had a romantic relationship dating from 1905 to at least 1920 is clear from these letters. Although the first letter in these papers dates from 1910, other letters refer to 1905 as the beginning of the relationship. The letters are at times deeply passionate, but there is more to the collection than love notes and sentimental poetry. The letters give travel and speaking engagement information on Harding. They wrote to each other when at least one of them was not in Marion, Ohio, and both of them traveled frequently. Intricate plans had to be made to meet or even to direct where the next letter should be sent. Harding often described his activities and colleagues. After living in Germany for several years, Carrie Phillips was strongly pro-German both before and during World War I. She writes that it would be a betrayal of America to commit it to the interests of Britain. There are substantive exchanges in the letters and drafts concerning the war and Harding's role as senator. Before U.S. entry in the war, Harding acknowledged in a letter to Phillips that he had constituents writing him in support of Germany. On March 25, 1917 he wrote: "How unthinking and unfair you are when you accuse me of playing politics! I represent a state with hundreds of thousands of German Republicans. Nobody knows better than I do that I seal my political fate by displeasing them." Even after the United States entered the war, Phillips, against the advice of Harding, publicly expressed her opinions about the war. In a letter of February 17, 1918, Harding, who as president would commute the sentences of scores of political prisioners who had opposed the war, including Eugene V. Debs, tried to impress upon her the limits of free speech during the war: "I beg you, be prudent in talking to others. . . Remember your country is in war, and things are not normal, and toleration is not universal, and justice is not always discriminating." Before the Senate vote on the war resolution, there were oblique references in the correspondence regarding Carrie Phillips's power to expose Harding's marital infidelities (he voted in favor regardless). What Carrie Phillips wrote in her letters often has to be inferred from how Harding responds, however, there are some extended drafts by Phillips. See in particular drafts and notes from May, June, July 7, and Autumn of 1917, and March and December 5 of 1918. Phillips's notes and drafts reflect those times when she is most agitated, either over the war or concerning the perceived broken promises of Harding.
The box of letters found in Carrie Fulton Phillips's closet in 1956 remained in the home of her guardian until 1963, when they were first shown to historian Frances Russell and then brought to the Ohio Historical Society. Once there, archivist Kenneth W. Duckett feared the letters would be transferred to the Harding Memorial Association where they faced possible destruction. Believing that the papers deserved preservation, he secretly microfilmed them; only a handful of items were omitted from the film. Eventually, word of the letters leaked out. In the end, after various legal proceedings, the Harding family, who controlled copyright for most of the collection, purchased possessory rights from the family of Carrie Phillips with the understanding that the letters would go to the Library of Congress where they would remain sealed until July 29, 2014. The microfilm copies were sent to the Ohio Historical Society with the same restriction: closed until 2014. One microfilm copy, however, had escaped the notice of the families and the judge. Duckett had retained a copy and when he donated his papers to the Western Reserve Historical Society, the microfilm that was not part of the lawsuit ended up at the historical society. This is the copy used by James Robenalt while writing his book The Harding Affair.