[74]

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.

Warren G. Harding, speech before the Home Market Club, Boston, May 14, 1920[75]

There were only 16 presidential primary states in 1920, of which Ohio was the most crucial to Harding. He needed loyalists at the convention to have any chance of nomination, and the Wood campaign hoped to knock Harding out of the race by taking Ohio. Wood campaigned in the state, and his supporter, Procter, spent large sums. Harding spoke in the non-confrontational style he had adopted in 1914. He and Daugherty were so confident of sweeping Ohio's 48 delegates, that the candidate went on to the next state, Indiana, before the April 27 Ohio primary.[76] Harding carried Ohio by only 15,000 votes over Wood, taking less than half the total vote, and won only 39 of 48 delegates. In Indiana, Harding finished fourth, with less than ten percent of the vote, and failed to win a single delegate. 