William Estabrook Chancellor - Evaluation

Evaluation

According to Harding biographer John Wesley Dean, Chancellor's theories were partly based upon a rumor spread by Amos Kling, Harding's father-in-law, who opposed him politically. Dean, who lived in Marion as a teenager, claimed that Kling spread the rumor as retribution for positions taken by Harding in his newspaper The Marion Star. Dean characterized Chancellor as racist.

Following Chancellor's death, the author Francis Russell attempted to research the theory that Harding was of mixed race. His book, The Shadow of Blooming Grove noted he was unable to substantiate Chancellor's conclusions beyond circumstantial evidence. Further discussion of Chancellor's claims appears in the book The Strange Deaths of President Harding by Robert H. Ferrell, published in 1998. (This work should not to be confused with the book by Gaston Means's The Strange Death of President Harding, which uses the singular "Death"). Russell wrote, "To anyone who tracks it down today, Chancellor’s book comes across as a laughable partisan screed, an amalgam of bizarre racial theories, outlandish stereotypes and cheap political insults. But it also contains a remarkable trove of social knowledge — the kind of community gossip and oral tradition that rarely appears in official records but often provides clues to richer truths."

The objective significance of Chancellor's attempts at research into Harding's racial background weighs far less heavily than does their perceived significance in the context of Harding's times. At a period when widespread prejudice existed about racial issues even in 'polite' society, Chancellor's weak and speculative claims may have seemed more relevant than they would have in later decades.