She Refused the Autopsy. She Burned His Papers. She Tore One Letter in HALF Florence Harding

She Refused the Autopsy. She Burned His Papers. She Tore One Letter in HALF: Florence Harding On August 2, 1923, President Warren Harding died in a San Francisco hotel room while his wife read to him from the Saturday Evening Post. The official cause was his heart. But within an hour, Florence Harding had made two decisions America still argues about. She would not allow an autopsy. And in the weeks that followed, crates of her husband's papers went into a fireplace at Friendship, the Washington estate of her friend Evalyn Walsh McLean. She had given up her own son to protect a family name. She stayed through her husband's affair with the wife of his close friend. She helped build the presidency that the Ohio Gang turned into a marketplace of permits, pardons and oil leases. Two of those men went to prison. One went home and was never convicted. And one carbon copy of a letter survived, torn in half by her own hand. Chapters: 00:00 — The Palace Hotel 02:38 — ACT I — THE RISE 06:22 — ACT II — THE FACADE 10:44 — ACT III — THE CRACK 16:06 — ACT IV — THE RECKONING 20:36 — ACT V — THE AFTERMATH Source Material Visual material used in this production is obtained from publicly accessible archives, including Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress. Copyright & Fair Use Notice This channel incorporates copyrighted material under the principles of Fair Use as recognized by U.S. law. Under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, certain uses of copyrighted works such as for analysis, commentary, educational purposes, research, and reporting are permitted without prior authorization from the copyright holder. Sources Smithsonian Magazine, Why President Warren G. Harding's Sudden Death Sparked Rumors — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor... American Heritage, How Some Were Burned (1965) — https://www.americanheritage.com/how-... Library of Congress, President Warren Harding's Love Letters Open to the Public — https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-14-129/ Harding Presidential Sites, Florence Harding — https://hardingpresidentialsites.org/... Britannica, Albert Bacon Fall — https://www.britannica.com/biography/... #documentary #history #firstlady #scandal