page_title: Harry M. Daugherty
section_title: The "Ohio Gang"
hierarchical_section_title: Harry M. Daugherty / Biography / The "Ohio Gang"
caption_attribution_description: English: "N-nothin to it, I tell you!" Cartoon depicting the controversies of Harry M. Daugherty
context_page_description: Harry Micajah Daugherty was an American politician. A key Ohio Republican political insider, Daugherty is best remembered for his service as Attorney General of the United States under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, as well as for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal during Harding's presidency.
  Despite his status as a key political leader of the Ohio Republican Party from the 1880s through the first decade of the 20th Century, Daugherty was himself only briefly a statewide elected politician, serving just two terms in the Ohio General Assembly, working closely during the last two years with Governor William McKinley. Although he sought national office several times, Daugherty was thwarted in his effort to obtain the nomination of his party and was never elected to office again.
  Daugherty remained an influential figure behind the election of several Congressmen and U.S. Senators. In 1920 he was the campaign manager for Warren G. Harding for President of the United States at the Republican National Convention. Following Harding's successful election Daugherty was named Attorney General of the United States.
context_section_description: Having achieved power Warren Harding gathered around him a group of political cronies, including factional friends from the Ohio Republican establishment like Daugherty and others of like mind from other states, a group known colloquially as the "Ohio Gang." Critics such as Harding's Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover viewed the clique with thinly disguised disgust:
  [Harding] had another side which was not good. His political associates had been men of the type of Albert B. Fall, whom he appointed Secretary of the Interior; Daugherty, whom he appointed Attorney General; Forbes, whom he appointed Director of the Veterans' Bureau; Thomas W. Miller, whom he appointed Alien Property Custodian, and Jesse Smith who had office room in the Department of Justice.
  
  He enjoyed the company of these men and his old Ohio associates in and out of the government. Weekly White House poker parties were his greatest relaxation. The stakes were not large, but the play lasted most of the night.... I had lived too long on the frontiers of the world to have strong emotions against people playing poker for money if they liked it, but it irked me to see it in the White House.
  Several of Harding's Ohio Gang associates lost no time enriching themselves at the public expense. Soon rumblings began to be heard over possible malfeasance in various government departments, including Daugherty's Department of Justice.
  Then on April 14, 1922, The Wall Street Journal broke a sensational story about a secret bribery scheme involving oil company kickbacks to government officials in exchange for the granting of extraordinarily favorable oil extraction leases via single-bid contracts. The next day Wyoming Democratic Senator John B. Kendrick introduced a resolution which set in motion the Senate investigation that would ultimately expose this so-called Teapot Dome scandal, involving an illegal financial relationship between Fall, Harding's Secretary of the Interior, and a subsidiary of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation.
  Daugherty was accused by opponents of the administration of having been complicit in the Teapot Dome affair by failing to intervene after he had learned of the malfeasance. A pair of special prosecutors – Republican Assistant Attorney General Owen J. Roberts and former Democratic Senator Atlee Pomerene – were appointed to conduct a more thorough investigation of the matter.
  After taking testimony on the matter the pair cleared Daugherty of wrongdoing, their final report indicating that the Attorney General had neither been aware of the fraudulent oil contracts nor had he taken any bribes related to the affair. This very specific absolution did not mean that all was on the level at the Justice Department, however. In July 1923, just as Harding was preparing to leave on a working cruise to Alaska, Daugherty's personal assistant, Jess Smith, suddenly committed suicide. Although as a pious Quaker, Hoover was never part of the President's inner circle, he was abruptly added to the traveling party on this cruise by a "nervous and distraught" Harding, who apparently sought his counsel.
  Hoover later recalled:
  One day after lunch when we were a few days out, Harding asked me to come to his cabin. He plumped at me the question: "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?" My natural reply was "Publish it, and at least get credit for integrity on your side." He remarked that this method might be politically dangerous. I asked for more particulars. He said that he had received some rumors of irregularities, centering around Smith, in connection with cases in the Department of Justice. He had followed the matter up and finally sent for Smith. After a painful session he told Smith that he would be arrested in the morning. Smith went home, burned all his papers, and committed suicide. Harding gave me no information about what Smith had been up to. I asked what Daugherty's relations to the affair were. He abruptly dried up and never raised the quest
caption: "N-nothin to it, I tell you!" - 1922 cartoon by C. H. Sykes
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