Background
After receiving a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1881, he returned to his hometown and started a legal practice. Before moving to the state capital, Columbus, in 1893, he was elected to local offices and to the state legislature. In Columbus Daugherty developed a flourishing law practice by representing large corporations. Although his own frequent attempts to get elected to high public offices in Ohio failed, he was more successful in promoting the political fortunes of his friend, Warren G. Harding. As early as 1904 he was managing Harding's victorious campaign to become lieutenant governor of Ohio. Daugherty's greatest achievement was the planning and execution of the strategy which won the Republican presidential nomination for Harding in 1920. His correct prediction, made months before, that a small group of Republican leaders would meet in a hotel room after the convention became deadlocked and agree on Harding as the nominee gave rise to the term "smoke-filled room" in politics.
A grateful President Harding appointed him attorney general. He served in this office from Mar. 4, 1921, to Mar. 28, 1924, but his accomplishments were overshadowed by frequent accusations of malfeasance, improper financial practices, and deliberate failure to enforce the law. In 1922 there was an attempt to impeach him. After Harding's death, President Calvin Coolidge forced Daugherty to resign when he refused to allow a congressional investigating committee to see files in the Department of Justice. Later he was tried twice for conspiracy to defraud the government in actions involving the Alien Property Custodian's office, but both trials ended with the jury in disagreement. Daugherty was never convicted in court of any wrongdoing. His most significant attempt to restore his own reputation and Harding's before the bar of public opinion was a book, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy, which he wrote in 1932 with the help of Thomas Dixon. He died in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 12, 1941.