hosted this event. the former president's grand-nephew, richard harding, explains why his family insisted on keeping the letters sealed and how the family continues to deal with the fallout from the affair and its impact on warren harding's legacy. this is about two hours. >> my name is jim hudson, i'm the chief of the library's manuscript division. on the stage with me, we have james romanalt, a distinguished trial attorney, partner in the cleveland firm of thompson hein. the author of two being booooke about his grandfather -- great-grandfather who was -- he has a wonderful title. he seems to have also been a magician, wasn't he? >> he was. >> a real magician. not just a magician in politics. >> no, he did both. >> but he was the chairman of the ohio democratic party during the harding era. and then, of course, the book,

one of the books that brings us he here, warren harding, the harding affair, love and espionage during the great war, published in 2009. >> right. >> we also have dr. karen femia who's an archivist who prepared the papers, the harding papers. for reader use. on july 29. karen has a ph.d. from brown in musicology. but she's an excellent, excellent historian and really, really a first-rate person. we have dr. richard harding, the grand-nephew of president harding. he was -- he is a psychiatrist on the staff of the university of south carolina and was the president of the american psycho analytical association in 1981/'82. >> american psychiatric association. >> psychiatric. sorry. okay.

the -- i shouldn't make that mistake since we have sigmund freud's papers here. i need to apologize for that. a very brief description of the harding papers here which is probably unnecessary given the publicity they've received. but there are about 1,000 -- the collection, not the papers -- the major collection, the papers are in the ohio historical society. there are approximately 1,000 pages of correspondence between warren harding and carrie phillips who was the wife of one of warren harding's good friends in ohio. there was a love affair between the two from 1905 to 1920. the collection, however, only has letters correspondence between 1910 and 1920. most of the vast majority of the

letters, all of them, probably, i don't know if there are any carrie letters in there. >> there are a few. >> a few, maybe. okay. but the vast majority of the letters written by harding and retained obviously by carrie phillips. she said she had written him volumes -- a voluminous numbers of letters, quoting pages for lines, she once reminded him, but the very few of these letters are her letters survive. the phillips material in the collection is mainly notes, drafts and memoranda. the library -- how did the library of congress go et this collection? we got it in the following way. in 1963, a harding biographer, francis russell, whose biography is still probably the most widely read -- would you say, jim, or not? >> unfortunately, that's true. >> yeah.

published in "the shadow of blooming" in 1968. he turned up in ohio looking for some information. about harding. and he was steered to a local lawyer who had been the guardian of carrie phillips. she had been in 1956, had to be put in a nursing home. not -- she was not a ward of the state. we discovered that recently. thanks to the papers that i'll mention in a minute. she -- but the lawyer -- actually at carrie's death in 1960 kept the paper and was discovered, certainly unethically. was that illegally? how would you characterize that? >> she was the lawyer representing the estate. and i would say probably unethically, not illegally. they really -- he should have told the daughter of carrie phillips that he had the papers in his basement.

>> right, right. so he -- in any case, russell was put in contact with the lawyer and got limited access to him. i'm summarizing a very complicated story. and then russell spread the word, and it got into the press, got ahold of it. and in the summer of 1964, there was a front page article in "the new york times" about the harding letters. harding -- harding's nephew, the father brought a lawsuit right away for infringement of copyright. the papers certainly written by carrie phillips, the but the copyright interests were owned by the writer, warren harding. the suit went on and lasted for about seven years. until 1951 when a resolution was reached. the regardings brought the papers from carrie phillips's

heirs. and in 1970 they donated them to the library of congress. but an ohio court had sealed the letters, just more or less after "the new york times" article in 1964. they had sealed them on july 29, 1964. so we've had them since 1972, but it was a 50-year embargo on them, and that will expire a week from today. there's more to the story. russell, francis russell, entered into a kind of partnership or kind of a dulles bargain almost with an archivist at the ohio historical society. and kenneth duquette, duquette, along the way, made several microfilm copies of the letters. actually, we tried to track one of them down, karen did.

we don't -- the institution that was alleged to be holding it did not have it. i don't think we'll ever know how many -- it's not clear how many copies duquette made. >> he made about seven or eight copies. >> and it's not clear where any of them -- we know where one of them is. one of them turned up in his own personal papers which he donated to the western reserve historical society. and jim learned about this in 2004 and found this kind of irresistible trove of letters. and wrote the book. that you see so often quoted in the papers. he, at some point, mounted -- he transcribed all the letters which was a herculean effort, i think, and mounted them. and some of the images on a

website that he maintains. and these are the images you've seen in the newspapers or on late-night talk shows, even. our own collection here, the security of that collection has never been compromised. no one has ever seen anything except staff members who have had a chance to perhaps look at them. i never have. just a little bit. they're in our vault, in our manuscript division that also contains security classified material. so that's where we've kept them. the -- what we're going to do is on a week from now, we have scanned the papers, and we're going to put them up online. they are scanned at 400 dpi. so they'll be obviously a much better product than any kind of

microfilm that's still kicking around. and there are some material in there not in the microfilm. >> right. >> so these will be online. we've, as a bonus, we were fortunate enough to receive a collection, collateral collection in a way from members of four great-grandsons of carrie phillips. it's a collection of information about some of the litigation that went on. and it's some harding letters to the phillips family, to phillips' grand dear, isabel, carrie's daughter, isabel. and it's not a large collection, but there's some very interesting things in there. that also will be put online on the 29th. so i think we're very happy to

have the opportunity to do this. both of these collections. the library, as you know, you may not know, we are the presidential library in the united states. these other people are just third rate. we have the major collections of george washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, andrew jackson, abraham lincoln, theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson. we're not partisans. we've never tried to defend the reputations of people whose papers we have. and even though we don't have the major harding collection, we tried pretty hard to get it and didn't, we always want to make sure the factual information we dispense about papers are correct. so we've done some digging around about harding as well.

and i didn't know much about harding when this started. i knew one thing about him. i was trained as a diplomatic historian and knew a lot about the 1921 washington conference, limited armaments in the pacific. but other than that, i said well, you know, harding, i'd like to -- went with the flow and thought the guy was sort of a -- alice roosevelt longworth whose papers we have here called him a slob. the kind of columny that existed. in attempting to working on this collection, it's astonishing, the amount of misinformation about harding. and indeed everybody even connected with him. his wife, carrie phillips. it's unbelievable. and the question arises how -- what's wrong here? what's wrong with the picture? why didn't historians or somebody correct some of this stuff? and we've been trying a little

bit. and we have a nice collection out on the table of some of the things we've found from our own collections about harding. so i want to let -- i think some of this is really important. and i'm going to let karen femia who found most of this stuff briefly describe it. and then we'll go on. yeah. >> good. >> hi. welcome. yeah, jim hudson asked me to say a few words about the display that's just outside there. i hope you've had a chance to look at it. or if you haven't, maybe afterwards you'll have i achance. there's also a handout with an essay and an item list on it. so please take some time to look at that. after hearing about the custodial history of the letters, i'd like you to contemplate the original home of the harding-phillips correspondence hidden in a box at the back of a closet for 35

years while the recipient of those letters grew older, more isolated and increasingly impoverished. but carrie phillips never sold the letters, never published a book, and as far as we know, she never showed the letters to anyone. she's been accused of blackmail, but it's really unclear if she ever cashed in on those letters or made any blackmail money. so the letters remained hidden. it's like so much about harding, so many things hidden away. harding died unexpectedly, only 2 1/2 years into his presidency. his wife, florence, died only 16 months after that. they had no children. shortly after his death, the teapot dome scandal put a cloud over the entire administration. basically there was no one to speak for harding. all of his papers had been left to the harding memorial association in his hometown in marion, ohio, where they were closed. it took 40 years for those papers to open for research. harding's legacy was like an empty room. an echo chamber for rumor,

gossip and even fabrication. without the materials that historians used, the harding story was built on hearsay. this is the organizing principle of the harding display out there. there are so many persistent rumors about harding that we decided to search our collections for items that related to some of these. the best example of an absolute fabrication is the supposedly mysterious death of warren harding. a death rumored to have been suicide or maybe a murderous poisoning by his wife. notions of a suspicious death were cemented into the public mind by con man gaston means whose 1930 book "the strange death of president harding" created the story of florence poisoning her husband, although within a year, the book was revealed to be a hoax, it is still to this day in print. on display are items from the manuscript divisions joel boone papers. boone was a white house physician to harding, coolidge

and hoover and was one of the doctors in attendance when harding died. harding for years had lived with extremely high blood pressure and heart disease. there is no doubt that he died of natural causes. there's a small section in the display dedicated to the popular belief that harding was a poor writer and mangled the english language. the agnes meyer diary criticizes a harding speech in his ohio accent. but of course, one person's trash is someone else's treasure. harding was actually a very popular public speaker. and he did not invent the word "normalcy." another section deals with the rumor that harding was part african-americ african-american. the rumor behind these so-called whispering campaign of 1920, harding's presidential campaign. we've included two presidential campaign posters, one printed by an african-american political activist from cleveland, supporting harding and quoting from one of his speeches that

favored civil rights. the other, a republican party poster with a harding family tree intended to silence the whispers and demonstrate the likeness of the harding mind. while searching for harding-related material, allen tykro, the head of the man yew ñg out a strange manuscript in the evelyn maclaine walsh papers and asked me to try to figure out what it was and why was it in he have walsh maclaine's papers. she came from a very wealthy family and married the wealthy ned maclaine who owned "the washington post." they had aan estate called friendship where maclaine gardens is today. evelyn was at the top of the washington social world, good friends with alice rose veld and florence harding. i pulled out the maclaine box of warren harding material, and i found that strange manuscript, its pages pulled from the slanderous and racist 1922 book by william estebrook.

the professor claimed that harding had black ancestry. the ripp edripped-out pages arey edited and with extra pages inserted. who was editing this book? and then i found a klan publication in a justice department envelope in 1922 general correspondence file. why would such things be in evelyn walsh maclaine's papers? i contacted the archivist at the college of worcester. the handwriting on those pages belongs to chancellor. the pieces began to fall in place, and the old rumors about this book appear to be true. government confiscation of books, manuscripts and printer's plates in ohio transported back to d.c. for destruction at the maclaine estate. obviously evelyn kept some things. even though there are few extent copies of this book, it is the original print source for many of the rumors about harding. and also the only print source

before 1964 that mentions the affair with carrie phillips. the first part of the display is devoted to carrie fulton phillips. although many published sources claim that harding had multiple affairs, there is only one verified relationship, the 15-year relationship with carrie phillips. a lengthy and complicated affair. the items displayed are either part of a recently acquired gift from the matay family, the great-grandsons of carrie phillips, or documents found at the national archives. from the phillips matayczdi collection, we finally have good photographs of carrie as well as her daughter, isabel. also from that collection is a set of letters from harding to isabel's husband, william matay, that demonstrates the cordial relationship between the hardings and phillipss in the early 1920s. the 1964 personal account written by isabel describes a difficult relationship with her mother and her shock upon learning in 1964 of her mother's affair with harding.

just to review, carrie phillips and her daughter lived in germany from 1911 to 1914. carrie phillips held a pro-german anti-british viewpoint in foreign affairs. she was opposed to u.s. entry in world war i and stridently expressed her opinions. some of you may have already read james's book "the harding affair." which he will be talking about soon. we discovered that it weaves together a story of romance, politics and world war i. in the end, he concluded that carrie phillips may have been an actual paid spy for the german government during world war i. it was this question that led jim hudson to look through german language sources and world war i espionage and then asked me to visit national archives. richard pizer at national archives suggested the military intelligence division files, copies of some of the documents i found are on the display also. and they filled in a few of the missing puzzle pieces to the story.

we now know why carrie and isabel spent august of 1917 at the naval base at port jefferson, long island, isabel's fiance, adolf, was stationed there. we know that a mr. lambson was so offended by carrie phillips' pro-german talk that he reported on her in september of 1917 to the justice department. and that report went out to military and naval intelligence. for me the most astonishing documents is the 1917 exchange between the head of military intelligence with then-senator harding. carrie phillips had reportedly called senator harding her friend, so the spotlight was on harding. how well did he know these women, and could he testify to their loyalty? kind of creepy. harding responded with a three-page handwritten letter, isabel is golden. but carrie, she's intelligent, proud, imprudent in the expression of her opinions. and in his words, quote, the very openness of it would seem to establish its innocuous

character, end quote. in other words, if she were a spy, why would she talk this way? even though this relationship would seem to have been a dangerous liability for a u.s. senator, he never backed away from her. but now it's time for me to back away. >> all right. kñ >> i've got two more important tasks before we begin a conversation. we have a statement from the matay family. the donors of this excellent collection that both karen and i have talked about. and they have asked me to read it. and then dr. richard harding will make also a presentation. here's a statement from the matay family regarding the public release of the harding-phillips collection by the library of congress. carrie fulton phillips is our direct ancestor, and it is our

endeavor to have history judge her on fact, not theory or untruth. with that, we ask historical scholars of this era to be cognizant of the extent of misinformation, distortion and speculation paraded as facts surrounding this woman and this subject. a prime example of this is a theory that not only care but her daughter, isabel, was involved in espionage under the direction of the german government. to our knowledge, there is no roof of this. further, this subject was investigated and researched by two united states government agencies finding no evidence of collusion, merely two women vocal in expressing their pro-german sentiment. another popular held false notion is that there are no living descendants of carrie phillips. remember, these are four great-grandchildren. great-grandsons.

this is a further area of concern to us is the portrayal of how carrie handled these letters during her lifetime. even well after the death of president warren harding who there was no alleged payoffs being made, carrie kept her collection of letters concealed, protecting the legacy of this president. it was only after she lost control of these letters due to old age and infirmity that they came to light while correspondence might have shown a certain willingness to cast him in a negative light, in fact, this less-than-perfect woman never did, intending sthed to ta instead to take the letters to her grave. perhaps this stands in testimony to her feelings to this man. while we were not acquainted with carrie, in our youth we certainly knew her daughter, our grandmother, isabel. and can assure any and all that she was a woman of grace and honor. isabel spent her life married to a man she adored and fully

supported. she claimed no knowledge of her mother's affair until confronted with the existence of the misappropriated letters from her mother's estate which are being discussed today. to her warren harding was a close family friend, and the revolution of this adulterous affair was crushing. when this burst into the national attention in the 1960s, she was ill with a respiratory condition, emphysema, that would soon cut her life short. and through this, she persevered with dignity and determination. isabel in coordination with the harding family sought to establish ownership and gain possession of her mother's assemblage of documents to prevent their untimely publication, and so that the originals could be transferred to the hardings with the understanding that they would be sealed until well after the death of all involved. if the decision was isabel's alone, she would have burned the letters. one might then ask what motivation -- what the motivation for her action was. despite, quote, common knowledge to the contrary, the tie between

warren harding and the phillips family was strong until his death in 1923 as documented in the correspondence we offer here today. a letter alluded to by karen which states -- which says that carrie phillips, her husband and her mother, visited, took a trip from marion, ohio, to the white house in 1922. and visited harding. if the decision -- she honored his memory by working with his family on the disposition of these documents so they might do the most good and the least harm. knowing that this body of papers would eventually be made public, isabel passed on to her heirs, correspondence, documents and permanent notes related to the subject. we as a family have remained silence until the unsealing of the harding-phillips collection. upon this milestone, we feel it is appropriate to share these documents passed down to us to be known as the phillips-matay collection so that a more

accurate historical record can be achieved. we would like to thank the team of professionals at the manuscript division of the library of congress for their work on this collection of important correspondence and for their efforts to provide access to accurate, complete and balanced information. the research and investigation into this subject has been extremely thorough and has brought more clarity this story for any and all to understand. respectfully, the matay family. so that is the statement from the four great-grandsons. and now, dr. richard harding will have the podium for as long as he wishes. >> it will be 45 minutes. and then time's up. >> i wish we could all leave after ten minutes. >> i'm richard harding, grand-nephew of warren harding.

and grandson of george harding, the only brother of the president who survived into adulthood. george's oldest son was my father, george iii, and george was in the middle of the heart of the 1964 harding affair papers controversy. joining me today are my two brothers, george and warren, and other family members. we are delighted to be here. it is with some ambivalence that with a sense of history that we are present, 50 years ago my father, along with his siblings, acquired the papers, had them sealed and entrusted them to the library of congress. the current generations of hardings have honored that

trust. to our collective knowledge, no individual has seen or had access to the original letters except for staff members as was mentioned earlier. i was asked to talk just a little bit about the family background. so if you'll indulge me just for a minute. warren harding's parents were ohio frontier farmers. as the country came out of the civil war in 1865. his father's claim to fame that as a soldier for the army of the potomac, he went to the white house and shook the hand of abraham lincoln. 55 years later, he would return as the father of the 29th president. he and his wife, phoebe dickerson, were successful farmers, but they wanted more for their growing family. and so both -- both went to cleveland homeopathic medical

school and graduated in cleveland, ohio, and began a career in medicine. their younger son, george, my grandfather, went to the university of michigan medical school and followed in their footsteps. warren, however, finished college, taught for a year, and then got into the newspaper business and took on "the marion star" and made a great success out of it in prosperous marion, ohio. my father and his siblings, warren ii, ruth, charles and mary, had a special relationship with uncle warren. and that's what he was always referred to. i don't think i ever heard anything but uncle warren and aunt florence. he filled a void because of the chronic cardiac illness of my grandfather. who had rheumatic fever as a young person and had mitral valve problems, for those of you

who remember back in those days, that was common. he taught his nephews and nieces to ride bikes, throw baseballs and do all the things that kids do. and he was present and supportive when their father was very ill, which he was frequently. now, at his death, president harding left $10,000 to each niece and nephew. to figure out how much that would be now, but it would be quite a bit. and they used that for their education, not a model "t" ford as was happening probably now, a lot of kids getting that money. four of the five of those nieces and nephews graduated from medical school. and the fifth from nursing school. this gift and its careful use enabled the family to continue its professional direction for the next several generations.

let me make one point clear. we are not here to deny facts. what happened between two consenting adults over 15-career period 100 years ago is not for our family to judge. clearly the negative ripple effects of their relationship has been keenly felt. but processed along with the many positive attributes of our ancestor. why did my father seal the records for 50 years? well, there are times like now that sometimes i wish he had sealed them for 75 years. but with only an educated guess, let me surmise my father and his siblings did not carefully study the letters. it is likely they felt they were protecting their uncle, their beloved uncle, and the close family members who knew him.

and as you can remember, it had been a rough time for the last couple decades before that, for harding, as was mentioned in the presentation. it goes without saying that the harding family has always considered the letters private documents. with long a tradition of medical practice and public service, we firmly believe that private matters, even for the rich and famous, should remain private. however, as a person interested in history, i've -- i have some understanding of the uniqueness of high-level governmental leaders' correspondence and its possible significance to historical scholars. especially when the correspondence includes discussion with a close confidante, of the issues of the day and the important decisions that resulted. in 1963, president kennedy was assassinated. with the help of the brother and

attorney general, the kennedy papers were collected, retained, sealed and placed in the kennedy library for a 50-year period. much of that material remains sealed still. my father used this precedent in 1964, and finally in '72 as mr. hudson was saying, and chose the library of congress. and felt that this was the proper place for presidential material where it could best be housed and preserved. now, my father was a devout no-nonsense person. he understood that a president's personal letters are different than those of the regular citizen. he had hoped -- now, think of this, 1964 -- he had hoped that in the calm, cool political air

of 2014, that there could be a careful review of the letters by historical scholars. he, of course, in 1964, had no idea, could not even imagine that the internet was coming. he would not have believed that in 2014, any person in the world would be able to read the letters at their leisure in their office or at home. family has some frustration that now most articles and inquiries so far have focused more on the titillating phrases rather than the meaningful historical content of these letters. so we are proudly here. the symposium will focus on a small part of warren harding's life. and we were pleased to have some of the positive things corrected that were brought up just a few minutes ago.

the accomplishments in his life, the washington naval disarmament conference, the fact that harding was an early leader in civil rights, that he proposed anti-lynching laws. the only president to do that for generations. because it was poison for politics to get in fight with southern democrats in something like that. the fact that he was -- he was -- he re-established the premicy of the first amendment where it had been trampled badly. and he created the budget bureau and balanced the budget. pretty impressive. now, he made the hard choices that all presidents must make, and we feel that instead, we're talking about oftentimes or reading about in newspaper articles the good man's mistakes. which seem all too common in

20th century political leaders. we as a family feel we did the right thing, having fulfilled the trust set up 50 years ago. but history will tell us if we were wise to do so. now, i challenge you. i see there are a number of scholars and historians in the audience. a collection of private letters from a key senator and a future president to his confidante during a critical period in american history does not come along often. it is our hope and your responsibility to not be distracted by the sexually explicit prose that fills parts of these letters but instead to use all the information in them to reassess the measure of the man. warren harding doesn't need protection. he needs honest, hardworking and

fair historians to tell us the story as they see it. thank you. >> i'm going to read an appraisal of president harding by his physician while he was in the white house, admiral joel boone, and then we'll have the conversati conversati conversation. boone was a man who won the medal of honor as a marine corps physician in france. and he was then the official presidential doctor, so to speak, for harding, coolidge, hoover and fdr. and this letter was written in 1959 about harding. he says, i wonder how well or how intimately you knew late

president harding. he's writing a friend. "i did not know him until his second year in office was some months old. from then on, i had the opportunity to know him intimately as one of his physicians. i saw him frequently, lived in the white house for four months, september to december 22 during the very serious illness of mrs. harding. accompanied the hardings to florida during her con vol essence, was a member of the presidential party during the transcontinental tour. was in attendance as one of the physicians when president harding was desperately ill in san francisco up until the time of his death. his regular physicians were a reserve naval medical officer and i, his career -- reserve army officer and i his career naval medical officer. no one gets to know a person as well as his or her physician does. nor does anyone come in and have

personal contact with him as his physician. from personal acquaintance, i observe no sordid side of president harding. i do know the gracious gentlemanly, courteous, kindly, industrious, conscientious, patriotic and hear the language just a little bit, maybe hardingesque, informed on government, he had been a state senator and lieutenant governor of ohio. a united states senator before the election to the presidency. one who loved his fellow men and not one who found any satisfaction of thinking or saying ill of him. surely a great attribute. these are but a few of his cashingistics. i've never had a more cooperative or appreciative patient in my long practice of medicine which is now approaching its 50th year. so i want to ask jim and then karen who i believe karen is the

only person who's ever actually read every word of these documents. you don't think so? >> he's probably read every word. >> i've read every word. >> but he didn't have the whole collection. >> i didn't have the whole collection. >> you know, not worry about it. >> all right. but i want to ask them not about harding's political career, which was, as you just heard, had some very attractive features. really, what was the man's character? what sort of character was he? okay. >> well, good afternoon, everyone. this is one of the great stories of the 20th century that's now, you know, coming to light. and my hope is that people will look differently at warren harding. we've seen all the titillating things on the internet and john oliver reading some of these letters. quite frankly, it's astonishing, younger people are saying he's their hero now, you know. that he had written this way.

we don't write letters this way anymore. but these letters truly are. over 20 years -- or over 10 years, and you really do get a sense of his character. this woman appears to me to have been the love of his life. and they had both good times and bad times. they fought over the first world war. and that's very significant. and i'll tell you why later. but let me give you one example of get an idea for his character. when florence harding was very sick in 1913 in the fall of 1913, carrie phillips was in berlin. and he was writing her about what was going on in his daily life. and he was taking care of his wife, florence, eating dinner by himself downstairs, if any of you have ever been to the harding home, it's still in pristine condition. and this dog showed up at the back door who had been, you know, hit by a car twice, he said, was partially blind, had three legs only.

and he took pity on this little dog and asked him in. to have dinner with him. and so the dog would come in. and he would share some stuff with him. and he eventually then, after doing that for several days, found out the dog showed up every day at that time right on the spot, he said. he fed the dog. and then later the dog stopped coming, and he found out from a neighbor that he had died. he said it really is a pity because i really -- i really grew to like this little guy. and what he was and what he was about. you compare warren harding's love for animals, for example. he did not hunt. he was not a hunter. compare that to teddy roosevelt who liked to go to africa and slaughter everything in his path. and it gives you -- you know, these are the sorts of details that give you a feeling for the person and some idea of what their character is beyond this great love affair and beyond this fantastic event of the first world war brewing in the background.

these little intimate details really describe him. and richard, that may be something that you see as similar trait in your family, just a love of animals and so forth. yeah. go ahead. >> well, i would just expand on his love for his nieces and nephews, that he and florence were childless, and he took them on. and their father was very ill, would go into congestive failure and nearly died multiple times, turned blue all of a sudden in those days, and there was no treatment, of course. and he would come, and one night he stayed up all night with his younger brother who was dying, they thought, and kept saying every time he would wake up enough to be -- get a little bit to drink or something, he kept saying to him, deacon, because

he called him deacon. he had nicknames for just about everybody including florence. that he kept saying deacon. i'll take care of the children. don't worry about the children. i'll take care of them. and he was that kind of a supportive person. and was uncle warren to the family. and i guess that's all i'd have to say. >> what's your impression? >> well, thinking of -- yeah, thinking about it, it was something that comes out based on the relationship with carrie phillips, and you've seen the letters, is loyalty, extreme loyalty. it really was a political danger for him to continue the relationship with her. she was pushing him away often, especially after 1914, off and on. and during this time period when he got this letter, you know, trying to ask him about the loyalty, she wasn't being very

friendly to him, but he continued to want -- he was very loyal. and i guess that's a characteristic that some people consider to have caused him problems in his administration, too much loyalty to some of his administration officials. so you can see how sometimes a quality that's very good can also trip you up if you're in a difficult job of the presidency. >> let me read to you one passage here on this. his brother being ill. he writes this to carrie phillips. and this is in january of 1917. just before the war breaks out. he says to her, you must not wear yourself out. you must save your nerves. so must i. he had a desperately narrow escape. he is better and i am so relieved. it has taken a load off my mind. i knew his merits, his usefulness and that family of four children in mind. he must live for them. of course, i'd have been a real

brother as best i could, but i could not take his place. oh, it is so good that he is getting better. i could go and it would little matter. so you really get into this deep love that he had for his family that comes out in these letters, too. >> i, of course, read jim's book. i'd like to ask a character question. did harding -- he was from a very religious family, wasn't he. his sister was a missionary. >> right. >> burma. >> right. >> and the family was rather devout, i suppose. >> right. >> i didn't detect much kind of moral -- him being bothered personally by the morality of some of these actions. how would you assess -- i won't ask you to assess his soul, but is there any kind of -- it seemed like it didn't -- i mean,

there were no kind of dark nights of the soul or hand wringing or woe is me or how did i do? is that president at all? or what's your take on that? >> you know, it's interesting, it is. the families here can speak to this, but his mother became a seventh day adventist when two of her children died suddenly. and this is the way it was back then. two kids get some fever, and the next day they're gone. and she became very religious and adventist which is one of the reasons all these people are in medicine. they're very medicine, health oriented. the most famous adventist institution is the battle creek sanitarium where dr. kellogg was up there and developed cereals and so forth. so they have a real strain of adventism in their family that comes from the mother. warren, however, was old enough that he had been really raised a baptist, which his father was and really didn't himself become an adventist. everyone else in the family did. one of the sisters -- think about this -- in 1905 went to burma as a missionary, medical missionary.

so very interesting. but what's interesting is when he gets to the war and you read these letters around the decision to go to war or not, and he is under enormous strain. his lover does not want to go to war. he knows that if he votes for war, that ohio is filled with german-americans who are mostly republicans. and it could be his political suicide. he decides to do so anyway. but he also at one point in these letters talks about how he silently goes over to pray before the senate is open. they always have the chaplain of the senate come out and pray. and he during that time went over to try to get guidance. he did pray but he did not wear religion on his sleeve, but he clearly felt it very deeply. >> so you don't detect any great sense of guilt in these letters. >> oh, there's a sense of guilt. >> well disguised. >> no. you know, he was good friends with -- this is one of the odd things of this.

this is a very complex story. jim phillips was a good friend of his, carrie's husband. and he did have pangs of guilt. he wrote about it. jim at some point, i'm convinced, found out about it, as did florence. and they remained friends in an odd way. but it's one of these stories that, you know, you really -- you look at these people and you see both of the marriage seem to have had their difficulties. warren harding's difficulty was that his wife, florence, was so sick that he writes that they were not intimate. so clearly, carrie was a sexual outlet, and you will see that in spades in these letters. that's what's on the internet right now. and that's fine. i mean, people should look at that and look at him as a real human being. i've said before, if our ancestors did not have sexual fantasies, none of us would be here today. to me, that's great. richard, you should tell this story. he just met patrick kennedy. ted kennedy's son, last week after all this came out. what did he say to you, richard? >> well --

>> by the way, kennedy and harding are the two senators to go straight from the senate to the presidency, the latest being barack obama, but it was an >> it's a public statement. in so many words, we were having dinner in a group setting for a meeting that we were at. i just leans over and said, patrick, we have a lot in common. and he said, why is that? he looked at me and said, warren harding? and i said, yeah. and he said, he is my hero. and i looked at him like, okay -- he's pulling my leg or is he -- he's my hero. he said, he has passion. he said, most people don't have passion. he said, that's so important to me. and so he was bringing that up as being better than the

passionless that he was comparing people to. >> there's a letter in this collection dated 1916 written by a lawyer. it's very vague and obtuse. it appears both couples went to the lawyer. i think that two couples did confront this situation. he was too far along in politics to get divorced. i don't think he wanted to get divorced at that point. it was a truly complex and very nuanced relationship. >> the matter of passion though, that was one of the -- in a way charged some of his political critics made, that he seemed not to have any great vision or any great cause. >> right. i was just about -- asked about that this morning on abc. i did a program.

the fact is -- >> didn't see it. >> the fact is, he had his own opinions about what we should be doing. let me tell you one thing that he thought about as we went to war. think about what happened during the first world war. it was very different than the second world war. everybody had blood on their hands, british, germans, russians. we were staying neutral. wilson at the last minute tries to get peace. it doesn't work. unrestricted submarine warfare starts up. we're being drawn into this war. harding -- wilson decides -- he doesn't decide this in the czar abdicated. we will tell the german government to have a democratic form of government. why? it's more stable.

that was his conceit. he said this when he asked to go to war, as i say, after the czar dropped out and had abdicated and there was a fledgling democracy in russia, which wilson supported. well, both of those democracies, as you know, the german and russian democracies led into chaos and disaster. in germany, it gives rise to hitler. in russia, it gives rise to the bowl sha vehicles. harding says, i am voting for war. it is not for us to tell another sovereign people what form of government they should have. he writes a letter to roosevelt. roosevelt was with him on this. we should not force democracy on the world, especially places where they are not ready for it. does that sound like something that's a modern theme? here is my point. we get so lost in the myths of

harding and in the exhibit lasc things. we miss this. the real issue is, do we have the right to force other people to become a democracy? he said no. he said, that's not our business. we should defend ourselves vigorously. america first. and we should be an example to the world. but we should not change them by force. that played out in vietnam. it played out in iraq. we are having a similar problem in afghanistan. this is a big theme that comes out of these letters. it's something for people to really focus on and is extremely relevant today. >> you take the position that had it not been for carrie, that harding might have been elected president in 1916 and we would not have had any extravaganza of

wilso wilsonian idealism. >> my great grandfather helped fdr become president. growing up, we had basement pictures of fdr autographs and wilson. the more i studded and saw that as i got into this -- i had the myths of harding in my head when i looked at this. that had harding become president in 1916, and he had a good chance to do so, the world would have been very different, i think. it's dangerous to do what ifs. what if somebody had done this. but the fact of the matter is, he would have gone and -- he had tried, won the nomination instead of hughes, what was very lackluster. brilliant man. supreme court justice, governor of new york. harding's secretary of state who did the washington naval conference. wilson almost did not beat him.

one of the big differences was ohio. ohio went for wilson. by 90,000 votes. that was 24 electoral votes at that time. it would have been a landslide the other way for harding had he won easily as did he in 1920 when he beat a fellow ohioan, also a newspaper man. running in 1920. i think had harding been president in 1916 that you would have had a different question about whether we got involved in the war and if so, what the versailles peace treaty would have looked look and what a peace negotiated among different nations would have looked like. it's a good what if question. i do think carrie -- >> do you they she had something to do with his decision not to run? >> yes. he wrote that, i think she threatened him. she wanted him out of public life. she threatened him. he writes that he went over to baltimore and made the thing

that made it impossible for him going after what she called his mad pursuit of honors. and so i think she threatened him, if you do this, you know -- i don't know what. perhaps she would disclose the letters. he backed away from that. and he was thought of as a real potential candidate because ohio had had president after president since after the civil war. we had eight of them almost in a row, all republicans. so he was definitely a presidential timber at that point and of course four years later won by a landslide. i think world changed because of this relationship. it was a world changing relationship. >> the relationship between harding and phillips? >> exactly. >> that's a rather striking point. >> it's in the letters. the thing that you all find when you look at the letters is, they're difficult to read. it's handwriting. number two, you will have a hard

time dating them. he writes easter. well, what easter? march 12. which march 12? it took me five years to date these things, to be able to write my book. it makes a big difference what year. it takes a lot of work. you have parallel correspondence that he's involved in that helped me do it. i think i got most of the dates right and almost dated everything. but it's an incredible trove for american history and for people to be looking at and studying and so forth. >> let's talk a little bit about florence harding. how does one reviewer of a book i recently read called her one of the most vilified first ladies in american history. how does she emerge? what does she look like in this correspondence? >> i can answer that. i think richard, why don't you start with that, with your family's recollections of florence and what your thoughts are about her. >> i'm not an authority at all

on aunt florence. the family felt very positively and lovingly about aunt florence. she was a good aunt. she cared about the nieces and nephews. my father one time was in washington and had a picture taken standing on the parade platform on the front page of the ""washington post" and ther was a girl next to him. he was the nephew of the president. he got to stand up in front. of course, the next morning there they were on the front page. f&ñ said, george harding, who is this woman you were with? and her question was, will she go as far as you are going? and just she had that kind of -- she wanted to know what was

going on, and she was a wonderfully warm person at times, but she could also be short at times and quick. when somebody asked her if she had done something to the letters after the death, she just kind of flippant, i burned them all. but she hadn't. she would back hand those questions being irritated with the question. but overall, she was felt to be a very warm and loving aunt by the family. >> karen, do you have any reactions at all about florence? >> thinking about the display and the rumors of harding that's out there, you could have done one on florence. you have a rumor that are florence poisoned her husband. you know her public relations weren't the best. not true in case you are wondering. not true, not true. there's wonderful biography in

2009 if anybody is interested in florence. it corrects a lot of misunderstanding about her and how she was really quite a path breaker for a first lady. in the letters themselves, there seems to be an agreement between the two of them that warren harding rarely mentions her because it just makes carrie very angry. so they don't talk about her very much. the sense of loyalty i mentioned before, too, might also extend to florence. he was always aware of her illness. she had kidney disease and every once in a while went through severe illness. i don't think he could have left her. i think carrie phillips in the course of a 15-year relationship, it's almost like at the end it's like watching a bad divorce. you can tell from the letters -- we don't have the first five years where you get dropped in

it's five years along. there was some talk at one point about them leaving their spouses and going out west. but that never happens. as time goes along, she knows he's not going to leave florence. he's not going to quit politics. she's left alone. she gets increasingly angry. florence has -- she doesn't want to hear about florence. >> she is a very interesting study of a woman. she was five years older than harding. her father was one of the big businessmen in town. and harding really did not like him. he writes about him when he dies in 1913 that he never felt anything for him except unhappiness. she was a strong-willed woman. she was really a business partner with marion star. she helped marion star get off -- she had been married and divorced before she married warren harding. she had a son.

her first husband was an alcohol. the son was also. the two of them had to take care of that son. she had a very complicated relationship with warren harding. i would say it is in a sense more of a business-type relationship in some sense that they really did -- he pros speaker -- he prospered in terms of business and political career. she was a very strong woman. richard and i talked about this. why was warren harding drawn so such strong women? his mother was a very strong woman and a very dominant person in that family, too. very complicated story. >> let's talk a little bit about carrie phillips. i was very impressed with harding's assessment of her with the letter we found in the military -- karen found in the

military intelligence folks. she's a brilliant woman of intellectual superiority. and then goes on to say, i thought a bit patronizingly, i have thought most of it -- that's the pro-german diatribes, was due to an ego tictism. women weren't supposed to do this. >> you want to see a picture of carrie phillips? >> maybe it's not patronizing because he's trying to call the dogs off. he doesn't want military intelligence investigating her any more. it might lead to him as well. >> what we are showing you here are things that i got from the microfilm. the letters were discovered in 1960. 900 pages. we talked about that.

the lawsuit, this is a picture of that, we also talked about that. this is the difficult handwriting you will see and the problems with dating. but this relationship started in 1905. that picture, by the way, is the very first thing on the collection in the microfilm. it's a picture of warren harding from 1910. on the back side of this he wrote a love note to her. my darling, you know, my love, etc. fills the entire back of the portrait of him. and then this is a picture that i think is from the matte collection. you can see it out front. this is carrie when she was in germa germany. she goes to berlin from 1911 to 1914 and becomes very enamored with the city. this is what it would have looked like. think about an independent woman. this is a letter that harding

wrote to her. you can see it's in berlin. you see the words today there. they had a code that they came up with to correspond in public letters so if he said a word like matrix and under lined it, it meant that he loved her more than all the world, that sort of thing. she put the code in this and kept it. that's berlin. she was there. and then he runs for senator in 1914. thinking that he had lost her. he believes that their relationship was at an end. she teases him with some jealousy of german people he might be running around with. these are the first time senators are elected by the people of the state. before that they were appointed by legislatures. he won that going away. he would then have this decision to vote for war. this is harding with wilson. wilson having had his stroke. you can see it there. this is another good picture.

this is carrie phillips in 1913 when she's in berlin. that is her daughter who also is a character in all of these things. the love relationship is, you know, dominant in these letters. as i say, they even had a date that they celebrated an anniversary, august 23. it was 1905, well before the war started. the hardings and phillips traveled to europe together in 1909 on some of these grand liners like this. this is the interior of that. they went to europe and went around europe for a couple mo h months together. this is the back of that. in 1910 he ran for governor and lost badly. this is the back of that photograph. you see christmas eve, 1910, my darling, no words at my command sufficient to say the full extent much my love for you, a mad, tender, devoted -- this is quoted in "the new york times." that gives you a bit of a feel

for carrie phillips, independent minded. i believe she became so pro german that she did get involved in espionage as to some of the people watching her. it's not a sealed case. i will be glad to give you some specifics on that if you are interested. that's a quick answer. >> so carrie -- what did you think of her? >> very bright. she leaves -- the stuff that's in there that she wrote is mostly notes and when she's about to write a letter and they are harder to read than the harding letters because like you and i, if we were writing notes and write the letter, that's kind of a bad scrawl. she writes when she's angry and upset. you get the feeling that she's always angry and upset because -- when she wasn't angry

and upset she didn't write draft. as time progresses, i think she does get more angry. you imagine an affair that lasts that long and you have to have this hidden part of your life for this many years. then you realize he's never going to leave. you can see where you might start getting a little angry and upset. obviously, very bright. and quite knowledgeable. you read her objections to world war i and that's a good point. very outspoken and from other sources you can see that she was recklessly outspoken, knowing the espionage laws that for what the things she was saying, you could say that that would interfere with military recruitment. it was enough to put you in jail.

but she was reckless in what she said. obviously, thought she -- maybe she thought they had protection or she didn't care. luckily, they were rounds up mostly socialists. so she didn't have to go to jail. it may have affected hardings's thoughts about free speech. once he wasn't in the presidency, he's the one who commuted the sentence of eugene debbs and commuted sentences of a lot of -- there may be that affect, too, that carrie phillips relationship had on the presidency. >> jim has suggested to me that he may have a better sense of the audience. do a little more -- you have been in the public eye more than

i have, obviously. it's probably time to ask -- we hope there will be questions from you audience. my colleagues will try to answer them. . >> if you raise your hand and speak -- >> we have a mobile mike back here. wireless mike, actually. >> all the way in the back. >> two in the back, yeah. >> where was mr. phillips when carrie and her daughter were in germany. >> he was in marion. he stayed there. he went to visit them over the summer of 1913. then came back with harding said a nice little mustache. he came over and helped him unpack and come back. he was -- in some of the letters where we have the military

authorities following carrie as they traveled around thinking they were involved in espionage, he is referred to as he is a tool of his wife. tool. i thought, well, who isn't? but he is a guy -- it's unfortunate that we don't know more about this family. carrie in particular. we see her in reflection as he writes about her. jim we know very little about other than he remained friends with warren harding and was a good businessman in town. she traveled a lot during the war. she was rarely home. >> i would like to add something about what florence and jim knew. i'm not clear -- they probably knew some. it's not clear. anyone who wants to look into it, i think that's kind of an open question. it seems so strange. if they knew, maybe they knew a little something but not everything. if they knew everything, i can't figure out how such cordial

relationships would have continued. he is sending him -- harding is sending jim a box of cigars. it seems too weird to me that if they knew it all how could they still be that friendly with one another? we just -- it's one of those mysteries. we don't know exactly. >> in the back. >> come up here. go ahead. you have a question? >> i'm a historian. i'm taken about the argument about the forces of the u.s. government knowing the united states senator supposedly was affiliated with a person who is supposedly a highly potential spy for the germans ended up not

being prosecuted, not being investigated to the extent that something actually came to pass. that was a hell of a time. there was a lot of stuff going on. people were being rolled up that were not necessarily eugene debbs. i'm curious about the evidence you can bring to bear on that. >> i will tell you the evidence. the evidence is -- you can find this. there's a memo written to the attorney general of the united states. wilson's attorney general. saying that senator harding appears to be having an affair with mrs. phillips and that there are all these allegations about her being a spy. it goes all the way to the attorney general. the head of what was called the bureau of investigation -- this is pre-j. edgar hoover. he says we think we can get jim phillips based on what he said to under cover agents that was

pro-german and we are in the wrong war, the germans are going to beat us, etc. wilson bit off more than he could chew. he spoke to undercover agents. we believe we can get him once we pass this act which prohibited speaking against the war in any form. you talk about free speech. a memo goes to the attorney general. the authorities know about it from the local people who have told them about it. they even talk about senator harding being caught in a compromising position with mrs. phillips in a local town. they very much know about it. they walked very gingerly. my question was when i wrote my book and i write at the end of it, why didn't they use it in the 1920 campaign when they knew about it? the democrats clearly knew about it. they didn't use it. you can read my book and find out what my answer is on that. a memo went to the attorney general. this was not something that was

way low down. >> i would point out that there's a difference between being guilty of this and being a paid spy. there were a lot of people -- if we had to live under those laws today we would all object. >> let me read you one thing. this is february 14, 1918. there was a group that arose after we got involved in the war called the american protective league. it was 250,000 businessmen across the country in every city being essentially depp advertised by the attorney general of the united states, given badges that said apl. these people really spied on their neighbors. were people violating the neutrality act? were they pro this or that? there was a chief and a lieutenant in ohio. so tells you how pervasive this was. he wrote a letter february 14,

1918 to the chief of the american protective league here in washington, d.c. he says the captain of the merchants division within marion -- some merchant. in our organization was detailed on the case and we are now convinced that these parties are german spies and they they are receiving money from the german government. we believe this to be a serious case and one that demands the services of the strongest secret service detective you have to wind it up. that's february of 1918. the war ends. carrie subsides after harding warns her, you are being followed. they know about what's going on. i don't believe you are a spy but whatever you are doing, stop it. you are about to be arrested. he calls it the great embarrassment. he is so desperate he writes jim phillips a separate letter saying, i have written her a letter. people are through with wanting

to worry about spies and so forth. it goes away. i'm telling you, the records are there that these people thought that. there were affidavits they got from women where carrie said i'm being paid by the german government and i don't care who knows about it. is that true? take a look. >> i respectfully disagree. as you may have seen in the "new york times" article, i've been reading some of the german language sources, a book by dorias who is an expert on german intelligence during the first world war. he wrote a book about the german ambassador and points out th that -- he was reading the dispatches of his subordinates. surely -- i didn't.

there's no mention whatsoever of carrie phillips. if the germans had placed a spy in warren harding's bedroom, would they not have been congratulating themselves and writing this and informing berlin of this? to me it's simply -- we don't know. there may be some place now in an archive in some obscure place in germany that survived the second world war where you might have a list of people getting money. but until that list is discovered, i'm a skeptic. secondly, these people in the bureau of investigation in the american protective league were wretched. they were the worst -- not -- they were simply inept, ill-informed. we have a guy -- i don't flow whether he's in the audience.

one of our staff members have written an article about the treatment of men innights. can you talk about that? i mean, these people were totally unreliable. >> in brief, they were pacifists and connected -- german language and lived in the midwest, ohio and further west. there were all kinds of reasons to be suspicious of them. the point of the article was that, bureau of investigation reports were based -- they sound very much like the kinds of reports that i have seen that karen found at the national archives about the phillips. they pick up on comments from neighbors. it was not uncommon at all just generally for -- in small towns

for people to be suspicious of the woman next to them who was wrapping bandages. if she was german-american she may be putting glass in the bandage. the point was that there was tremendous misinformation in terms of menninites as being dissented from missionaries, bolshevik movement and becoming soviet union. kidnapping chinese missionaries in china. it was mistakes. it's an accumulation of inept information leading to dire results in some cases. i'm very suspicious in this case also, like you. >> the they were 16th century dissenters who have had these people -- somebody following

them around believing they were converted by scottish missionaries in the 19th century is staggering. >> and a dire threat. that's a mild case. if one was a socialist at that point, the circumstances would have been much worse. >> the point is that the information these people were reporting, i think, respectfully disagreeing, most of it is based on local gossip and rumor. certainly, we know that people -- the people many marion thought carrie was a german spy. >> this is a picture -- a card. organized with the approval and operating under the direction of the united states department of justice, bureau of investigation. they had this -- i agree with you. they were very dangerous. they ran roughshod over a lot of people. let me tell you one other fact

important to them in their thoughts about why they thought that carrie was involved with -- this is not going to go all the way back. a lieutenant was the guy who iz saturday bell was engaged to. they discovered that engagement. his first cousin was a woman named iona who became a german bare ron he is. a month after harding is confronted about carrie, this woman is caught in a bed with an officer half her age down in georgia outside camp ogelthorp. she has in her purse a code telling her when ships were going to leave. the germans were interested in how quickly the united states was going to get into the war. that relationship led to the cleveland dealer writing an article love tricks of women

spies. it names iona by name. guy there says, i know that name, because i have been looking at letters between the lieutenant and isabelle. she's engaged to him. it's the same family. so that's what caused them to conclude that there were some relationship here. the baroness was arrested, charged with espionage. she went to a hearing before a magistrate. he found probable cause that she should be tried. she was never tried. which is one of the mysteries of this book. why did that happen? i have some theories about that. that's what really set them on fire and made them focus closely on carrie and isabelle. she was engaged to the lieutenant and this guy's first cousin had been arrested outside of camp. so that's where some of that comes from. >> this discussion is probably

going nowhere, the disagreement. how about some other questions? marvin. the handsome man that will be standing up has an interesting story. this is one our former very good specialists. >> this is a story that's a little bit lighter than what you have been hearing about spies and so forth. at a time when many of you remember a president left some s semen on a blue dress, i had a reporter come in and ask me, did we have any examples of other presidents having affairs of one sort or another. i might have mentioned president wilson and his love affair during the middle of the war in which he married his second wife and the letters in that collection is pretty racy.

that's been published. i said, do you know about the relationship between miss phillips and warren harding? well, what's that all about? i said, there are letters with warren harding's mistress in our collection. can i see them? i'm sorry. you have to wait until 2014. so he went back to the times with that story. and about a week later i got a call from somebody at "the new york times." she said, i know we can't read the letters. can we photograph them? so i said, not really, because that's the same thing. i said -- she said, can we see the containers that they are in? i said, sure. we made an appointment for nine days later, ten days later.

we set up our conference room. three photographers came down to washington. they were staying at the mayflower hotel. they came in and i went into our safe, vault. and i got the two or three boxes of the phillips/harding correspondence down. i took the correspondence out and put it back on the shelf and i brought out these empty boxes. the photographers took these boxes and they sat around and they spent three hours photographing empty containers that had the correspondence in them. nothing came of it. i thought it was a wonderful story when we talk about government waste. >> take a few more and wrap up. a few more. >> in the middle.

>> i have read all of the material that's been published, which, of course, if you go to a library on harding, it's this big. compared to the washington and lincoln material. i probably misguided on a lot of things. one of the things that i recall is reading about is the promise that some authors have said harding made to nan britain that she won't last long. was that ever a theme in the letters that there is an expectation that florence would pass on because of her continuing illnesses, that this was a promise that -- for carrie to continue to think that there's a possibility of something in the future because of the ill health of florence?

>> there is suggestion in the letter that she is not going to last multiple times. there are multiple times where she is on her death bed. i don't see a direct -- we have to wait for her to die and th k things will work out, i don't see that. the opposite. who could leave someone in this shape? i would never do that. it's more that sort of discussion than any -- last question here. >> one more. >> i find these letters fascinating because in the day of internet, we no longer have correspondence. it vanishes into thin air. i'm curious how many letters were there? i know there's lots of papers and each letter might have contained ten pages or 20 pages or more. up to 40. i know people sneak around texting and kind of -- how did they get these letters -- do you

have the envelopes? how did they address them to each other or get them to each other? >> we also have a lot of endevele envelopes where we don't have letter. we have extra envelopes. >> they are about -- i would say 106 letters all together, some are 40 pages long, some on senate stationary. he wrote what he called a public letter. the first five pages would be breezy, what's going on. he would mail that. she could show that letter to jim. the last 15 minutes were the love letter. i did a lot of that and a lot of envelopes within envelopes. they went back and forth on all of this. >> one more over here. very impatient.

>> if we knew our grandparents at all, know them from photographs in strange clothing. i wanted to ask dr. harding what it says to all of us that here is someone who was capable of tender, devoted eager passion. what does that offer to us? is that -- >> i missed the quote. i got you to the quote. >> the quote is from the letter on the screen he is writing about his love. from someone who we know from photographs of a politician. what does that say for all of us? are we all disseescended from pe like this. >> you are a psychologist. only us lucky ones. i think one of the things that

you have to keep in mind is that this is a newspaper man who wrote for a living. people always say that he was a crummy writer and he was a crummy talker and he was a -- all of this stuff that has been handed down. but he was articulate. and he wrote well. sometimes, you know, love letters generally tend to be immature, adolescent even. but that would be typical of almost everybody in writing a love letter. it's not easy to write a mature love letter. so he was articulate. a little bit -- i would have preferred he not write quite so many. i have lots of feelings about things. i think that it's what i would expect from someone who was passionately in love. and he was. it was probably the love of his life.

and it's sad to me as a family member. through my father, i love my aunt florence who was a wonderful person. but their relationship was different. it was more of a -- it was mentioned earlier, kind of a business relationship between warren and florence, that they understood each other. they probably knew about what was going on. they worked together and their love held. he wouldn't have left her for nothing. in my opinion. >> i agree. >> this other person had a different relationship. i wish that it could have been one person that got both ends of that. but that's not the way it worked out. i'm sure in your family it has been that one person. congratulations. >> that's a great way to end. thank you. [ applause ]

you are looking at footage released by the kennedy library this summer of president kennedy vacationing at his family home in massachusetts. we are joined here on american history tv by lawrence knutson, author of "away from the white house: presidential escapes, retreats, and vacations." you covered the white house and washington for many years. is a president ever really away from his job? >> caller: never really. they certainly try and i have since the first president, george washington, broke off from