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Harding sought to calm race relations during the 1921 [[Tulsa Race Riot]].<ref>see [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_199911/ai_n8854233 online]</ref>
=== Economics ===
Harding cut federal spending, lowered taxes, and began paying off the wartime national debt. He restored prosperity by 1921, opening a decade of rapid growth known as the ''Roaring 20s''.
Rader (1971) challenges the view that the tax policies of Harding's Treasury Secretary [[Andrew Mellon]] reversed the progressive policies of the Wilson years and allowed the wealthy to become wealthier. A congressional coalition of Democrats and insurgent Republicans shared responsibilities with Mellon for the tax legislation of that period, which was written by civil servants in the Treasury. The new rates were very low for most people, and yet were high enough to retire the war debt and generate a budget surplus. The net effect of this legislation, Rader argues, was to "impose more progressivity on the federal income tax structure than has existed in any other peace-time period of American history."
Winters (1990) examines Harding's farm policies and those of Henry Cantwell Wallace, the Secretary of Agriculture (1921-241921–24). Wallace's handling of the postwar collapse of land values and the weakening of the farm economy was inconsistent and largely ineffective because of conflicting views of the value of agriculture in society. On one hand, he saw farming as a business that needed to improve its efficiency; on the other hand, he saw farmers as "yeoman," a special group, embodying republican virtues of independence, which deserved to be subsidized. Programs based on one view often negated those based on the other. Hoover meanwhile argued that the long-term solution lay in modernizing agricultural machinery, seeds, animal breeding and, especially, business practices.
===Foreign and military affairs===
Grant (1995) shows that during World War I, the U.S. loaned over $4 billion to Britain. This British war debt was not part of the agenda of the Paris Peace Conference or the 1921 settlement of the Reparation Commission. In response to an appeal by President Harding in his 1921 state of the union address, Congress passed the World War Foreign Debt Commission Act in 1922. The commission was mandated to determine each European nation's debt and negotiate payment over a period up to 25 years. In 1923 the British government agreed to pay $4.6 billion, with an initial payment of $4.1 million, the remainder to be paid over 62 years at 3% interest for the first ten years, 3.5% thereafter. Britain was able to pay because it received large war reparations annually from Germany. Germany in turn borrowed the money from the U.S. During the [[Great Depression]] President [[Herbert Hoover]] suspended all payments, and they were never resumed.
After Harding’s death, the reputation of his administration was ruined by revelations of scandal, primarily the Teapot Dome scandal and a scandal in the [[Veteran’s Administration]] which was particularly distasteful in that post World War I period. The scandals were pushed forward by congressional hearings, but were greeted by the public with what historian Frederick Lewis Allen concedes was brief resentment at both scandals and scandalmongers, followed by apathy.<ref>see [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ALLEN/ch6.html Allen, ''Only Yesterday'']</ref>
In 1926, author [[Samuel Hopkins Adams]] published the novel “Revelry”, with characters which appeared to be thinly disguised members of the Harding administration. The president in the novel, “Willis Markham” poisons himself by accident, but does not take an available antidote, because he realizes that his death “will wipe out the whole score” of soon to be revealed scandals involving oil and the Veteran’s Administration. The novel was later dramatized .<ref>Ferrell, ''The Strange Deaths of President Harding,'' p.33</ref>.
In 1928, Nan Britton published a book entitled "The President's Daughter" claiming that she and Harding had been lovers and had conceived a child in 1919. According to her, the affair continued for six years, and the lovers' meeting places included a coat closet in the executive offices of the White House. Historians generally agree she was indeed his lover.
