President Coolidge signs Immigration Act of 1924

| President Calvin Coolidge First Presidential Speech (1924) - DeOldify
President Calvin Coolidge First Presidential Speech captured on film and with sound in 1924! The original film has been upscaled in resolution and colorized using AI/artificial intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20


Images:
1. President Calvin Coolidge - official photograph of President # 30.
2. Calvin Coolidge and his sons, Calvin Jr., left, 12, and John, 14, display an American flag outside their Northampton home on Notification Day, July 27, 1920.
3. Immigrants arriving to the United States. Ellis Island, May 27, 1920.
4. The following table shows the results of the INA’s current quotas on U.S. immigration in 2016

Backgrounds:
1. whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/calvin-coolidge
2. millercenter.org/president/calvin-coolidge/key-events

1. Background {[https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/calvin-coolidge//]}
THE WHITE HOUSE

CALVIN COOLIDGE
THE 30TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
As America’s 30th President (1923-1929), Calvin Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts of frugality amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era.
________________________________________
At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.
Coolidge was “distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement,” wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. “His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history … in a time of extravagance and waste….”
Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He was graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. Slowly, methodically, he went up the political ladder from councilman in Northampton to Governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. En route he became thoroughly conservative.
As President, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying. He refused to use Federal economic power to check the growing boom or to ameliorate the depressed condition of agriculture and certain industries. His first message to Congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers.
He rapidly became popular. In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as “Coolidge prosperity,” he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote.
In his Inaugural he asserted that the country had achieved “a state of contentment seldom before seen,” and pledged himself to maintain the status quo. In subsequent years he twice vetoed farm relief bills, and killed a plan to produce cheap Federal electric power on the Tennessee River.
The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: “This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone…. And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy….”
Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of Presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through interviews: “Well, Baruch, many times I say only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more.”
But no President was kinder in permitting himself to be photographed in Indian war bonnets or cowboy dress, and in greeting a variety of delegations to the White House.
Both his dry Yankee wit and his frugality with words became legendary. His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, recounted that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, “You lose.” And in 1928, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he issued the most famous of his laconic statements, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”
By the time the disaster of the Great Depression hit the country, Coolidge was in retirement. Before his death in January 1933, he confided to an old friend, “. . . I feel I no longer fit in with these times.”

2. Background from {[https://millercenter.org/president/calvin-coolidge/key-events]}
CALVIN COOLIDGE - KEY EVENTS

Background from {[https://millercenter.org/president/calvin-coolidge/key-events]}
CALVIN COOLIDGE - KEY EVENTS

August 3, 1923 Calvin Coolidge sworn in
At a 2:30 a.m. ceremony in Plymouth, Vermont, Calvin Coolidge is sworn in by his father as the thirtieth President of the United States.

September 15, 1923 Martial law and the KKK
Governor J. C. Walton places Oklahoma under martial law in order to suppress the increasing terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, which has reemerged in the South and Midwest in response to worsening economic conditions.

December 6, 1923 Coolidge's first State of the Union
In his first State of the Union address, Coolidge expresses his support for prohibition and U.S. involvement in the World Court. He also states his opposition to government interference with business and calls for lowering taxes, thereby extending Harding's policies. It is the first broadcast of an official presidential address, made possible by the more than 2.5 million radios in U.S. homes; in 1920 there had been less than 5,000.

March 18, 1924 Soldiers' Bonus Bill passes
Providing twenty-year annuities for veterans at an overall cost of $2 billion, the Soldiers' Bonus Bill is passed by the House. One month later, the Senate also passes the bill only to have Coolidge veto it; Congress will later override the veto.

May 3, 1924 Pact of Anapala Representatives from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador sign the Pact of Anapala with the United States, agreeing to cut off aid to the insurgent forces in neighboring Honduras threatening to overthrow President Rafael Gutierrez. This was one of many attempts by the United States, which had first sent Marines to Honduras as early as 1919, to keep Gutierrez in power. These efforts ultimately failed when insurgent leader Tiburcio Carias became dictator in 1933.

May 26, 1924 New immigration law
Congress passes a new immigration law with even more restrictive quotas than those established by a temporary act two years earlier. Japanese immigrants are barred completely while Canadians and Mexicans remain exempted from the quotas.

July 1, 1924 Parties nominate their candidates
The national political parties hold conventions to nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the upcoming elections. The Republican Party nominates Coolidge and Charles G. Dawes; the Democrats, John W. Davis and Charles W. Bryan; and the Progressives, Robert La Follette and Burton K. Wheeler.

August 30, 1924 Dawes Plan signed
The Dawes Plan is signed by the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Belgium to solve the German reparations problem and to end the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgium troops. Overseen by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, the plan was drawn up by Coolidge's running-mate, Charles G. Dawes, and based the reparations schedule on what Germany could pay rather than on what she could be forced to pay. For his part, Dawes would win the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

September 18, 1924 Marines withdraw from Dominican Republic
The last U.S. Marines, first sent to Santo Domingo in 1916 by Woodrow Wilson, withdraw from the Dominican Republic, finalizing a process begun three years earlier by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. During this period, the United States helped the country prepare for free elections and, ultimately, independence. The withdrawal reversed decades of U.S. involvement in the Dominican Republic under the auspices of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

November 4, 1924 Coolidge elected
Coolidge wins the election easily with 382 electoral votes (15,725,000 popular votes) to the Democrats' 136 (8,386,000 popular votes). La Follette wins a surprisingly large 4,823,000 popular votes, though only 13 electoral votes.

Coolidge Wins Election On November 4, 1924, Calvin Coolidge was elected President of the United States. Vice President Coolidge had assumed the office of the presidency the year before after President Warren Harding died. But Coolidge then had to convince the American public to elect him President in his own right.

Coolidge had little time to enjoy his new job as President before he had to begin campaigning to keep the position. Indeed, at the time of Harding's death in August 1923, the President was just nearing the end of his two-month trip across the country designed to repair his and his party's image before the 1924 presidential campaign. Initially, winning the election seemed a daunting task for Coolidge, who four years earlier had gained the Republican vice presidential nomination only after party delegates clashed over more favored candidates. Although a man of few words, Coolidge was an astute politician who by the time he became vice president in 1920 had served as an elected official for more than two decades from city councilman to governor of Massachusetts. More importantly, he remained extremely popular with the American public during this time. Coolidge epitomized the honest, hard-working, and business-minded attitude that promised to streamline government and rid Washington of the corruption and scandals bred during Harding's administration.

Coolidge's campaign differed little from the “Return to Normalcy” heralded by Harding four years earlier. On the two most controversial issues, Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, Coolidge said little. His platform of lower taxes and smaller government resonated with the American people. Coolidge also used the new medium of radio very effectively in what was an otherwise uneventful campaign. Virtually inventing the press conference, Coolidge held 520 during his five and a half years in office, cultivating a genial relationship with the press with his dry wit and wry humor. By November 1924, he was the favorite, and his easy victory - 382 electoral votes (15.7 million popular votes) to Democrat John Davis's 136 (8.4 million) and Progressive Robert La Follette's 13 (4.8 million) - surprised few. Four years later, weary of the office, Coolidge famously declined nomination for a second elected term by calling a press conference, but taking no questions from reporters. He simply handed out strips of paper to those present that read, in classic Coolidge style, “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight.”

March 4, 1925 Coolidge inaugurated
Coolidge is inaugurated President in his first elected term. The following day, Frank B. Kellogg is named Secretary of State, replacing Charles Evans Hughes, who had resigned two months earlier. A lawyer by training, Kellogg had previously served as a senator from Minnesota and ambassador to Great Britain.

March 23, 1925 Isle of Pines Treaty ratified
The Isle of Pines Treaty is finally ratified by the Senate. Pending since 1904, the treaty recognizes Cuban possession of the Isle of Pines.

Scopes trial John T. Scopes, a public school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, is arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. His trial in July captures national attention as William Jennings Bryan is called on behalf of the prosecution and Clarence Darrow, the skilled and nationally-renowned attorney, agrees to represent Scopes. Although Scopes ultimately loses and pays a $100 fine, the trial serves as a national debate between Darrow and Bryan, science and religion.

KKK demonstrates in Washington The Ku Klux Klan holds a massive political demonstration in Washington, D.C. Possibly the largest Klan parade in history, around 40,000 men and women march down Pennsylvania Avenue decked out in their white Klan robes, a scene which reflects the group's resurgence during the 1920s.

January 27, 1926 The U.S. and the World Court
The Senate adopts a resolution allowing the United States to join the World Court in the event that U.S. participation accord with five separate conditions. All but one are satisfied; failure to meet every condition leads the Senate to reject full U.S. participation. While America will work with the World Court and the League of Nations over the next decade, it never becomes a member of either.

February 26, 1926 Revenue Act becomes law
Coolidge signs the Revenue Act into law, as Harding's policy of “normalcy” morphs into keeping “cool with Coolidge.” With the goal of cutting the size of the Federal government, the Act reduces income taxes as well as other duties. While it helps the Republican Party weather the investigations of corruption under Harding, it further weakens the already deteriorating national economy.

April 29, 1926 Cancelling French debt
France and the United States sign an agreement that eventually cancels sixty percent of the French debt from the Great War.
May 9, 1926 First successful flight over North Pole
Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first successful flight over the North Pole.

May 10, 1926 Marines land in Nicaragua
The U.S. Marines land in Nicaragua to quiet a revolt. America military forces will maintain a presence in Nicaragua until 1933.
May 20, 1926 Air Commerce Act passed
The Air Commerce Act is passed by Congress. While the federal government already subsidized airmail, this act gave the Commerce Department regulatory powers over sectors of the aviation industry, such as the licensing of pilots and aircrafts.

July 2, 1926 Army Air Corps, Distinguished Flying Cross
Congress establishes the Army Air Corps and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
October 10, 1926 Naval depot explodes
A naval ammunition depot at Lake Denmark, New Jersey, explodes after it is struck by lightning. With explosions continuing for several days, 31 dead, and $93 million in damages, it is the worst such disaster in the history of the U.S. military.

October 25, 1926 Court gives President right to remove
The Supreme Court rules that the President has the right to remove cabinet members at his own discretion. The ruling nullifies the 1868 Tenure of Office Act, which required consent of the Senate in order to restrict the powers of President Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction.

February 18, 1927 U.S. and Canadian relations
The United States and Canada establish diplomatic relations independent of Britain.

February 23, 1927 Federal Radio Commission created
Congress creates the Federal Radio Commission to regulate this burgeoning field of national and international communication. In doing so, lawmakers continue the trend of imposing increasing federal regulation on private sectors of the economy.

March 7, 1927 Voting restrictions unconstitutional
The Supreme Court rules that a Texas law prohibiting black people from voting in Democratic primaries is unconstitutional.

May 21, 1927
Lindbergh completes his flight
Charles A. Lindbergh completes the first transatlantic flight, traversing the distance from New York to Paris in his monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in less than thirty-four hours. A year later, Amelia Earhart will become the first woman to make the flight.

August 2, 1927 Coolidge chooses not to run
Concerned that four more years in office might appear to some observers as a third term as President, Coolidge ends any talk of his candidacy for the 1928 election stating, “I do not choose to run.”

August 23, 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti executed
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed in Massachusetts for their alleged 1920 murder of a factory guard, despite protests that the two men had been unfairly prosecuted for their radical beliefs.
October 6, 1927 The first “talkie"
The first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, is released.

December 25, 1927 Conflict in Mexico's Constitution
Reversing its 1917 Constitution, Mexico's Congress grants unlimited concessions to foreigners for lands on which they engaged in any “positive” acts prior to May 1917. Soon after, however, the government revokes all rights to oil-rich territories, generating fierce protest by American businessmen. The United States recognizes new president Alvaro Obregon on the condition that he grant American firms subsoil rights. Under such pressure, the Mexican Supreme Court rules the law unconstitutional, returning all rights back to American companies.

January 16, 1928 South America opposed Roosevelt Corollary
At the Sixth International Conference of American States in Havana, Cuba, South American countries introduce a resolution opposing U.S. invocation of the Roosevelt Corollary. By the end of the year, the State Department will issue a statement redefining the Monroe Doctrine as a policy which “does not concern itself with purely inter-American relations.” This redefinition brought an end to the Roosevelt Corollary in word, if not in deed.

June 29, 1928 Democrats nominate Alfred Smith
The Democratic Party nominates Alfred E. Smith for President and Joseph T. Robinson for vice president. A Catholic, Smith will have his loyalty questioned during the campaign as religious prejudice plays a key role in the election.

July 25, 1928 U.S. recognizes nationalist Chinese government
The United States recognizes Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist government of China and signs a tariff treaty with the Chinese.

August 25, 1928 Byrd flies south
Richard E. Byrd begins the first leg of his flight to the South Pole in Antarctica. Reaching the pole in November, Byrd explores and studies the continent for the next twenty years.

August 27, 1928 The Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, or the Pact of Paris, as it was also known, is signed by the United States and fifteen other nations. Named for its two principal authors, Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand, the pact outlaws war as a means to settle disputes, substituting diplomacy and world opinion for armed conflict. Ultimately signed by 62 nations, the pact is more symbolic than practical, though Kellogg would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts the following year.

November 6, 1928 Hoover elected
Hoover wins the presidential election in an apparent landslide, 444 electoral votes to Smith's 87. In fact, the popular vote shows a much closer race, with 21,392,000 for Hoover and 15,016,000 for Smith."

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Amity Shlaes on Coolidge's life, ideas, and success in bringing about low taxes and small government
Amity Shlaes sheds light on the life of Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States. The harsh conditions of Coolidge's childhood shaped his political ideas and led to his deep understanding of life and helping people succeed, especially in business. Believing in small government and low taxes, he thought government needed to get out of the way so individuals and businesses could prosper. His supply-side economics were a resounding success, with an unemployment rate of 5 percent or even 3 percent, as the economy grew and the government shrank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4MYatR8lcI

Images:
1. Grace & Calvin Coolidge newlyweds
2. Calvin Coolidge, age seven
3. Grace Anna Goodhue, a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf.
4. Calvin & Grace Coolidge post Presidential retirement

Background from {[https://millercenter.org/president/coolidge]}
1872 - 1933
CALVIN COOLIDGE
The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We cannot permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.
Inaugural Address

Overview
A quiet and somber man whose sour expression masked a dry wit, Calvin Coolidge was known as "Silent Cal." After learning of his ascendancy to the presidency following the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace, in the middle of the night and, displaying his famous "cool," promptly went back to bed.

Fast Facts
BIRTH DATE July 4, 1872
DEATH DATE January 5, 1933
BIRTH PLACE Plymouth Notch, Vermont
EDUCATION Amherst College (graduated 1895)
RELIGION Congregationalist
CAREER Lawyer
POLITICAL PARTY Republican
NICKNAME “Silent Cal”
MARRIAGE October 4, 1905, to Grace Anna Goodhue (1879–1957)
CHILDREN John (1906–2000), Calvin (1908–1924)
INAUGURATION DATE August 3, 1923
DATE ENDED March 4, 1929
PRESIDENT NUMBER30
BURIAL PLACE Plymouth Notch, Vermont

Table of contents
1. Calvin Coolidge: LIFE IN BRIEF
2. Calvin Coolidge: LIFE BEFORE THE PRESIDENCY
3. Calvin Coolidge: CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS
4. Calvin Coolidge: DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
5. Calvin Coolidge: FOREIGN AFFAIRS
6. Calvin Coolidge: LIFE AFTER THE PRESIDENCY
7. Calvin Coolidge: FAMILY LIFE
8. Calvin Coolidge: IMPACT AND LEGACY


CALVIN COOLIDGE: LIFE IN BRIEF
By David Greenberg
Aquiet and somber man whose sour expression masked a dry wit, Calvin Coolidge was known as "Silent Cal." After learning of his ascendancy to the presidency following the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace, in the middle of the night and, displaying his famous "cool," promptly went back to bed.
Calvin Coolidge was born on Independence Day, 1872, and raised in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. His father was a pillar of the community, holding a variety of local offices from tax collector to constable. From him, Coolidge inherited his taciturn nature, his frugality, and his commitment to public service. The early death of his mother and sister contributed to his stoical personality.
Climbing the Political Ladder
While practicing law in Northampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge began to climb the ladder of state politics. From a spot on the City Council in 1900, he became chairman of the Northampton Republican Committee in 1904 and joined the state legislature in 1907. His term as governor of Massachusetts placed him in the national arena just in time to benefit from the return to power of the Republicans at the end of World War I. As governor, he called in the state guard to break a strike by city police in Boston, claiming that "there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." This bold action won him public acclaim and swept him onto the Republican ticket as the vice presidential nominee with Warren Harding. As vice president, Coolidge kept a low profile, sitting silently during cabinet meetings and seldom speaking in his constitutional position as presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.
After Harding's death in 1923, Coolidge became President. Intent on running for reelection in 1924, he dispatched his potential Republican rivals with relative ease. He had emerged unscathed from the scandals that plagued the Harding administration, earning a reputation for being honest, direct, and hardworking. The Democrats were split in 1924, finally settling on a compromise candidate, John W. Davis of West Virginia. With a rebounding economy to help him, Coolidge won handily with the slogan "Keep Cool With Coolidge."
A Visible Yet Passive Presidency
In contrast to his disdain for small talk, Coolidge was a highly visible leader, holding press conferences, speaking on the radio, and emerging as the leader among what one survey called "the most photographed persons on earth." Reveling in what would become known as the "photo op," he posed before the cameras dressed in farmer overalls, a cowboy hat and chaps, and an Indian headdress. But his prominent profile was not matched by a commitment to activism. He believed in small government, especially at the federal level, and practiced a passive style of leadership. He saw little need to intervene in issues that Congress or the states could handle without him.
Nonetheless, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had changed the presidency into an activist institution, and public opinion fairly demanded a modicum of leadership from the White House. Coolidge did have an agenda. His chief concern was economics, where he favored low taxes, reduced regulation of business, and a balanced budget. Alongside his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist who advocated "trickle-down" economics, as critics called it, Coolidge secured reductions in rates for wealthy Americans (most citizens at the time paid little federal tax). Although many observers at the time gave the President and Secretary Mellon credit for the so-called "Coolidge Prosperity" that characterized the seven years of his presidency, in retrospect he came under criticism for having failed to try to stop the feverish stock-market speculation toward the end of his term that contributed to the stock market crash of 1929. Coolidge also fought against farm-relief legislation that might have shored up the depressed farm economy.
Like Harding, Coolidge allowed his cabinet a free hand in foreign affairs, delegating authority to Treasury Secretary Mellon, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, all holdovers from Harding's cabinet. The President believed that the United States should seek out foreign markets and refrain from entangling alliances and participation in the League of Nations. He supported the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as a means of settling international differences, a largely symbolic pact that nonetheless became an important precedent in fostering reliance on international law. In Latin America, Coolidge's administration tended to support the interests of U.S. businesses, although the President made steps toward a less adversarial posture than his predecessors had typically maintained. Coolidge chose not to run for a second term because his republican political philosophy led him to value highly the unwritten two-term precedent (toward which he counted the balance of Harding's term that he served). Moreover, the death of his teenage son in 1924 had taken much of the joy out of his work. True to his simple tastes, he imagined he would be happier in retirement in Northampton, Massachusetts.
First Lady Grace Coolidge was as sunny and sociable as her husband was taciturn and sardonic. The press photographed her at every opportunity, and she once joked that she was the "national hugger." Having been trained as an instructor for the deaf, Grace Coolidge brought national attention to the plight of the nation's hearing-impaired and became a close personal friend of the author and activist, Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind.
Although the public admired Coolidge during his time in office, the Great Depression turned public opinion against him. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's policy decisions. He vetoed the problematic McNary-Haugen bill to aid the depressed agricultural sector while thousands of rural banks in the Midwest and South were shutting their doors and farmers were losing their land. His tax cuts worsened the maldistribution of wealth and overproduction of goods, which destabilized the economy. Although in the 1980s, conservatives, led by Ronald Reagan--who hung Coolidge's portrait in the White House--revived something of a cult of Coolidge, most historians look upon the Coolidge presidency with skepticism, considering him to have offered little in the way of a positive vision, however strong his personal integrity.
CALVIN COOLIDGE: LIFE BEFORE THE PRESIDENCY
By David Greenberg
He was born John Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He grew up helping his storekeeper father tend accounts, selling apples, and doing other chores around the store and at home on the family farm. As a boy, Coolidge had little ambition in life beyond hoping to follow his father as a good, honest small-town merchant.A fair to average student in the Plymouth elementary school, he eventually managed to obtain entry to the prestigious Amherst College in nearby Amherst, Massachusetts, where he blossomed over his four years. He graduated with honors in 1895, racking up good to excellent grades in his last two years and graduating cum laude. A member of the Republican Club and the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, Coolidge won a reputation on campus for his wit and his public speaking skills. He shared the junior prize for oratory, and in his senior year his classmates elected him to deliver the Grove Oration, a humorous send-up of the senior class at graduation. He also took first prize in a national contest for his senior essay, "The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution." A loyal Amherst alumnus, he relied throughout his political career on men who were classmates or fellow alumni, including Boston businessman Frank Stearns, advertising guru Bruce Barton, financier Dwight Morrow, and Harlan Fiske Stone, whom he appointed Attorney General and later as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
After college, Coolidge read law in a law firm in Northampton, Massachusetts, passing the bar in the summer of 1897. He then opened a law office and began participating in local Republican politics in Northampton.
Political Legacy and Involvement
Both Coolidge's mother, Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge, a sentimental and poetic woman, and younger sister, Abigail Gratia Coolidge, died while he was a teenager. He was close to both of them, and their deaths contributed to what was already a fatalistic and taciturn temperament. His father, John Calvin Coolidge, Sr., then married Carrie A. Brown, a local schoolteacher in 1891. She grew very close to Calvin over the years. The senior Coolidge, a man of stern appearance and a pillar of the community, served six years in the Vermont House of Representatives and a term in the Vermont Senate. He also held a variety of local offices from tax collector to peace officer. Known in the county and state as a prosperous and thrifty farmer and storekeeper, the elder Coolidge's quiet nature and commitment to public service greatly influenced his son. So too did his prudence with money.
Coolidge's rise in politics was methodical and steady. Beginning around 1900, his work in the local Republican Club in Northampton won him a spot on the City Council, appointment as city solicitor in 1900, election as county clerk in 1903, and the chairmanship of the local Republican Party organization in 1904. He ran for and lost a bid for a seat on the Northampton School Board in 1905--the only loss he ever experienced at the polls. Two years later, he was elected to the state legislature. In 1910, the citizens of Northampton selected him as their mayor, and then he won a statewide race for the Massachusetts Senate in 1912, serving as Senate President in 1914. Moving up the ladder of state politics, Coolidge became the lieutenant governor in 1916, serving until 1918, when he moved into the executive's chair.
Governor Coolidge
His narrow victory for Massachusetts governor over Democrat Richard H. Long placed Coolidge in the national arena just in time to benefit from the Republican Party's return to national power at the end of World War I. As governor, he won national attention when he called out the state's National Guard to break a strike by Boston city police, exclaiming to the American Federation of Labor union leader Samuel Gompers, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." Although later seen as a reactionary move, the action was widely popular in the wake of the lawlessness brought on by the strike, and overall as governor, Coolidge pursued a fairly progressive agenda. He supported a cost-of-living pay increase for public employees, limited the workweek for women and children to 48 hours, and placed limits on outdoor advertising, measures largely welcomed by reformers in both parties. His most important feat, restructuring and consolidating the state government, married progressivism's efficiency to conservatism's taste for small government.
While advancing in local politics, Coolidge married Grace Anna Goodhue on October 4, 1905. The two were wed at her parent's home in Burlington, Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, she was a teacher at the Clarke Institute for the Deaf in Northampton. Coolidge first caught her eye one morning when she saw him through the open window of his boardinghouse in Northampton, standing in his underwear and wearing a hat while shaving. She thought that he looked ridiculous, laughed loud enough for him to notice her, and then turned away. He later said that he was wearing the hat to keep his uncombed hair out of his eyes while shaving. His marriage proposal in the summer of 1905 came in the form of a romantic prophecy: "I am going to be married to you." Grace loved the silent but blunt young lawyer and immediately consented. A son, John, was born in 1906; Calvin, Jr. followed in 1908.
Ascending to the White House
Coolidge came to the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, as his state's favorite-son candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, but he received only 34 votes on the first ballot at the convention. In the backroom deal among party leaders that helped ensure Warren G. Harding's nomination, Coolidge's was not among the names discussed for the second spot, and party leaders hoped to nominate Senator Irving Lenroot of Wisconsin. When Coolidge's name was entered into nomination, however, a stampede of support by rebellious delegates swept him onto the ticket. In the ensuing campaign, Harding waged a "front porch" campaign from his native Marion, Ohio, while Coolidge did a modest amount of stumping, notably in the South, in a vain effort to sway that loyally Democratic region. In contrast, the Democratic Party candidate, James M. Cox, traveled 22,000 miles while speaking to two million people, while his running-mate, former assistant navy secretary Franklin Roosevelt, spoke out frequently. The election, a referendum on the Wilson administration, the Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations, gave the Republicans 61 percent of the vote. As vice president, Coolidge played little role in the Harding administration, although he attended cabinet meetings. He kept a low profile as President of the Senate—in those days the vice president's chief duty--and mainly devoted himself to making public speeches.
On August 2, 1923, John Coolidge woke his vacationing son and daughter-in-law at the family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, to tell them of President Harding's death from a heart attack. Coolidge knelt, prayed, and went downstairs. Although the old house had no phone, it was soon abuzz with reporters. At 2:24 a.m., with the newspaper men settled and a copy of the Constitution retrieved, the elder Coolidge, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office to his son by the light of a kerosene lamp. Soon after, Calvin Coolidge went back to bed as the 30th President of the United States.
CALVIN COOLIDGE: CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS
By David Greenberg
The Campaign and Election of 1924:
After a year in the office he inherited from Harding, Coolidge was ready to assume the presidency in his own right. Historically, vice presidents who had finished out their predecessors' terms did not seek the presidency in their own right; only Theodore Roosevelt, in 1904, had done so successfully. But Coolidge ably muscled out potential challengers, including automaker Henry Ford, for the 1924 Republican nomination. He had emerged unscathed from the Teapot Dome scandals that plagued the Harding administration; indeed, his investigations of the corruption, although faulted by some as half-hearted, bolstered his reputation as a man of simplicity and rectitude--precisely what the country seemed to be craving in the economically and culturally dynamic 1920s. Coolidge's team carefully stage-managed the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio, that summer, and it was a veritable coronation, presaging the frictionless affairs of the late 20th century. "Silent Cal," as Coolidge was becoming known because of his disdain for making small talk at social affairs, hoped to balance the ticket with Senator William E. Borah of Ohio as his running mate. Borah was a firm isolationist from the Midwest and a strong progressive on the domestic front. When Borah declined the offer, the party turned to the colorful and charismatic Charles G. Dawes of Illinois--former aide to William McKinley, director of the newly created Bureau of the Budget under Harding, and the author of the Dawes Plan to ease Europe's post-World War I credit problems. Their Republican platform emphasized reducing taxes, collecting foreign debts, passing the protective tariff, opposing farm subsidies for crop prices, enacting the eight-hour workday, banning child labor, and passing a federal anti-lynching law. Compared to the smooth Republican convention, which looked forward to the media-age spectacles, the Democrats' strife-ridden gathering in New York was a throwback to the heyday of party politics. Former Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo of California--President Wilson's son-in-law--fought Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York for more than 100 ballots. McAdoo represented the interests of the West, the rural South, and "Drys," those who supported Prohibition. The aging William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and still politically powerful, delivered a powerful convention speech voicing his support for McAdoo. On the other side, the New York political machine Tammany Hall, representatives from Eastern cities, and the "Wets"--those opposed to Prohibition--cheered with great enthusiasm when the young Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was attempting a comeback after being stricken with polio, electrified the convention in a lively nomination speech depicting Smith as the "Happy Warrior." Adding to the drama, the convention was suspended in respect for the death of Coolidge's son, Calvin, Jr., who had developed a blood blister playing tennis a week before and, in a time just before the discovery of penicillin, died precipitously of an infection.
For the next 100 ballots, the longest deadlock at any major party convention in U.S. history, neither McAdoo nor Smith could gain the necessary two-thirds majority. Finally, on the 103rd ballot, the convention nominated a compromise candidate, Wall Street lawyer John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis had served as solicitor general and as ambassador to Britain under President Woodrow Wilson. In a nod to Bryan, the Democrats selected his brother, Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska, as their vice presidential candidate. The Democratic platform favored a reduction in the tariff, a graduated income tax, farm relief with easier credit and farm subsidies for crop prices, independence for the Philippines, a national referendum on the League of Nations, strict enforcement of antitrust laws, and public works projects to reduce unemployment.
Given the general conservatism of both nominees, a number of discontented politicians reconstituted Theodore Roosevelt's old Progressive Party, the breakaway vehicle he had established in 1912, but it drew nowhere near the support TR had. With Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin and Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana on their ticket, they offered what was becoming an old-fashioned Progressive reform agenda, including action against industrial monopolies, public ownership of water resources and the national railroads, a substantial increase in the inheritance tax, an excess-profits tax debt relief for farmers, and government subsidies to support crop prices.
In the election campaign, the Republicans urged the nation to "Keep Cool with Coolidge," a popular slogan that reflected the public's sense of optimism, based on the strong economy and prospects of the endurance of peace in Europe. President Coolidge took advantage of the new medium of radio to reach millions with his campaign speeches, while the advertising executive Bruce Barton helped promote an appealing, homespun image of the President through interviews, magazine profiles, and the publication of his speeches. Davis waged an aggressive campaign, attacking the Republicans as the party of corruption and bravely denouncing the Ku Klux Klan where Coolidge would not, but he fared poorly outside the South. In the end, Coolidge won 54 percent of the vote compared to 28.8 percent for Davis and a healthy 16.6 percent for LaFollette. He compiled 382 electoral votes in 35 states.

CALVIN COOLIDGE: DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
By David Greenberg
Calvin Coolidge brought a unique style to the White House. Although known for his public discomfort with chitchat and for his philosophical dislike of excessive leadership, Coolidge was a highly visible president. During his 67 months as President, he held 520 press conferences or an average of nearly eight each month, "bringing himself almost daily," wrote a reporter in 1927, "into the American home." He spoke on the radio at least monthly to national audiences. Coolidge also enjoyed having himself photographed. To the delight of cameramen, the President posed in old-fashioned overalls (when working on his father's farm), full Indian headdress (speaking to a crowd of ten thousand Sioux), and cowboy chaps and hat (on vacation in South Dakota). He was the first President to appear in a talking film--a recording of one of his speeches. He liked to make people laugh, and he used his dry, lean wit to punctuate his silence with pithy slogans. In formal addresses, in contrast, he was high-minded, serious, and dignified.
Although mocked for his afternoon naps, Coolidge was hardly slothful. He worked diligently, relying heavily on his Cabinet, but devoting serious attention to issues that crossed his desk. But his view of the presidency, like that of Harding immediately before him, marked a departure from the activism of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Coolidge's political philosophy and personal temperament conveniently aligned in his belief that the President should not undertake sweeping new reforms to address the challenges of the modern, industrial age. He favored instead a hands-off leadership style and a restrained view of the executive, delegating tasks to his Cabinet, leaving most issues to the states to resolve, and even on federal matters frequently deeming restraint to be the wiser course than bold action.
Yet Coolidge was no reactionary. He is better understood as a transitional figure between the 19th century and the 20th. He embodied the small-town values of thrift and industry and a philosophy of minimal government, but at the same time he celebrated the economic boom over which he presided, and he embraced the new media of the modern culture.
Coolidge's domestic legacy can generally be described as conservative. His main concern was to sustain the economic prosperity that was returning when he took office. He favored a light hand in regulating business, strove hard to balance the budget (even managing to run a surplus), and cut the national debt. His fiscal restraint led him to veto two bills, both popular in Congress, that would have given bonuses to veterans--only to see them passed with a two-thirds majority.
The centerpiece of Coolidge's domestic agenda was his tax cutting. He championed the Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926, a pet issue of his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist whose "trickle-down economics" would later fall into disrepute. The Revenue Acts sharply reduced income taxes, especially surtaxes on the wealthy (taxes on most Americans were already very low). They also cut gift, excise, and inheritance taxes. At the time, many observers credited the cuts for what was widely called the "Coolidge Prosperity": robust growth, rising wages, declining unemployment and inflation, and a bull market. In fact, such propitious conditions probably had more to do with the effects of wartime spending and economic mobilization several years before.
It would be unfair to blame Coolidge for sharing the prevalent optimism of his time. In retrospect, however, it became apparent that his policies contributed to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. His fiscal policy encouraged speculation and ignored inequality, as the flow of dollars into the pockets of the wealthy helped tip the healthy investment of the mid-1920s into the gambling that followed. His hands-off regulatory policy took its toll especially in the financial arena, where the dangerous practice of margin trading was allowed to flourish unrestrained. And for all the heady growth of the 1920s, Coolidge's policies exacerbated the uneven distribution of income and buying power, which led to the overproduction of goods for which there were not enough affluent consumers.
Making matters worse, Coolidge failed to address the worsening economic plight of farmers. Many farm-state progressives embraced a panacea known as McNary-Haugenism, based on a proposal dating back to 1921 that would have established a government corporation to buy surplus crops at artificially set prices (to be held or sold abroad when market prices rose). Although the scheme might have shored up the depressed farm economy, it would have encouraged overproduction, hurt consumers, and posed dangers to the international system. Congress passed versions of the McNary-Haugen bill twice, but Coolidge vetoed them. Still he failed to champion any alternative legislation, thus worsening the farm crisis when the Great Depression struck.
Coolidge was not always doctrinaire. He put aside his political conservatism on several issues, particularly when prodded by his Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who ironically was considered at the time to be fairly activist and progressive in his views. Coolidge thought Hoover boastful and derided him as "Wonder Boy." "That man," he said, "has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad." But he allowed Hoover to establish a new regulatory regime for the emerging industry of radio by signing the Radio Act, which declared the airwaves to be public property and subject to governmental control by the new Federal Radio Commission (later the Federal Communications Commission). He also reluctantly sent Hoover to the Midwest to undertake a massive rescue, relief, and reconstruction effort after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, the worst natural disaster in the United States until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. When Congress sought federal legislation, Coolidge balked, believing cities and states should bear the costs, but ultimately acquiesced in a compromise that spared the localities that burden.
On cultural matters, Coolidge tried to walk a fine line between the gaudy, freewheeling, new culture of the Jazz Age--many aspects of which he despised--and the resurgent fundamentalism represented by Prohibition, anti-evolutionists, and the Ku Klux Klan. He came under criticism for condemning the Klan only tepidly when it marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in 1925. He signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which set strict quotas on the number of eastern and southern Europeans allowed into America and excluded the Japanese altogether. On controversies that set the nation abuzz such as the Scopes Trial and the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, he kept a low profile.

CALVIN COOLIDGE: FOREIGN AFFAIRS
By David Greenberg
Coolidge himself was not versed or deeply interested in world affairs. To handle international issues, Coolidge looked to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, and his Secretaries of State, Charles Evans Hughes and, in the second term, Frank B. Kellogg. Neither a Wilsonian internationalist nor an isolationist, Coolidge believed in expanding America's commercial interactions with other nations, policing the Western Hemisphere in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine, and refraining from entangling alliances and participation in the League of Nations. But he favored joining the World Court (although he could not get Congress to agree), and he authorized American representatives--first Charles Dawes, then Owen Young--to help settle continuing European financial issues stemming from World War I. The Dawes Plan introduced mechanisms to balance the German budget, reorganize the Reichsbank, and stabilize the currency. It was later replaced by the Young Plan during the Hoover administration.
Coolidge also signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as a means of solving conflicts. Named for the U.S. Secretary of State and for French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, the proclamation carried with it no means of enforcement. Coolidge recognized the essentially symbolic nature of the pact and had doubts that it would actually prevent war. But the pact, which won the signatures of fourteen countries, nonetheless represented a step toward the creation of global protocols that would serve as norms for international behavior in later years, and it brought a Nobel Peace Prize to Kellogg--the second Coolidge administration official, after Charles Dawes for the Dawes Plan, to be so honored.
During Coolidge's term in office, the United States continued to maintain a strong presence and assert influence in Latin America. Direct investments, which rose from $1.26 billion in 1920 to $3.52 billion in 1928, inextricably tied the economies of those countries to America. For example, the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies controlled most of the revenue of Honduras, and U.S. firms dominated Venezuelan oil production. Control of the Panama Canal and a policy of using troops, when necessary, to safeguard U.S. interests also worked to give the United States the upper hand in the region. In a direct show of influence, U.S. troops trained and maintained a pro-American National Guard in the Dominican Republic and occupied Nicaragua and Haiti with a peacekeeping force of U.S. soldiers throughout the decade. Americans also controlled Cuban politics and the Cuban economy, and the United States nearly came to blows with Mexico over the ownership of Mexican oil fields by American companies.
So embittered were most Latin American leaders over America's policies that the republics of the Western Hemisphere assembled for their triennial conference in Havana, Cuba, in 1928 eager to demand changes in American conduct. In a rare trip overseas, President Coolidge personally traveled to Havana to address the conference and extend an olive branch. Former Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, serving as a special envoy, gave a tour de force of a speech that persuaded the delegates to refrain from passing a strong anti-U.S. resolution. Afterward, Kellogg had his legal adviser draft a white paper that argued against direct military intervention in Latin America. Although not a change in policy, it reflected a dawning awareness of the need for change, which would finally come when President Franklin Roosevelt announced a "Good Neighbor Policy" of nonintervention in 1933.
CALVIN COOLIDGE: LIFE AFTER THE PRESIDENCY
By David Greenberg
Coolidge announced his decision not to seek reelection in a sharp and typically playful statement: "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." He delivered the statement on handwritten strips of paper to reporters traveling with him on his summer vacation in 1927. The announcement took many people by surprise. On the day of the decision, Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, who was present when Coolidge informed the reporters, asked Grace Coolidge what she thought of the announcement. "What announcement?" she replied.
Laconic to the end, Coolidge never explained his decision at length. But because he remained extremely popular and almost certainly would have won another term, pundits and historians had fun speculating about his motives, sometimes offering elaborate theories. In fact, as he wrote in his autobiography, he was never one who loved power or fame and was ready to be "relieved of the pretensions and delusions of public life." In keeping with his republican outlook, he wanted to honor the unwritten custom that Presidents should serve only two terms and looked forward to a simple retirement in his old hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts. He also had been devastated by the death of his 16-year-old son, Calvin Jr., in 1924. Calvin Jr. had contracted an infection after developing a blister while playing tennis. With penicillin yet to be discovered, he died within a week. Upon his death, Coolidge said, "the power and the glory of the presidency went with him."In his retirement, Coolidge returned to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he spent the next four years writing his autobiography and articles for national magazines. His nationally syndicated column for the McClure Newspaper chain, "Thinking Things over with Calvin Coolidge," ran for a year in 1931. On January 5, 1933, just after lunch, Coolidge collapsed in his bedroom where he had gone to take his usual two-hour nap. His wife found him dead from coronary thrombosis (heart failure). Characteristically, Coolidge's last will was brief and to the point: "Not unmindful of my son John, I give all my estate, both real and personal, to my wife, Grace Coolidge, in fee simple." It amounted to about $700,000. Poignantly, his passing came just before the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt and the start of both a new view of economics and a new presidential activism that would consign Coolidge's policies to a bygone era.

CALVIN COOLIDGE: FAMILY LIFE
By David Greenberg
When Coolidge moved into the White House, he installed a rocking chair on the front porch, in which he enjoyed sitting in the early evening and smoking his cigars. Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, liked to remark that Coolidge looked as if he had been “weaned on a pickle.” When he smiled, someone once said, it was "like ice breaking up in a New England river." But much of his reputation for silence was deliberately cultivated; in speech, as in so many areas, Coolidge deemed discretion not only the better part of valor but also an instrument of sound leadership.
Despite his sharp wit, Coolidge was not a natural at socializing in small circles. At White House dinners, he said little and often looked bored. One oft-told story about Coolidge's dour behavior concerns an enthusiastic female dinner companion who said to him, "You must talk to me, Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." Coolidge replied: "You lose." Yet for all of his reported quietness, Coolidge loved company and never dined alone or seldom spent an evening alone with his wife. He and Grace Coolidge entertained more than any previous family in the White House.
The President's typical day followed a set routine: breakfasting early, working until noon, having lunch followed by a walk and a long nap, some more business, evening social affairs, a little reading before bed, and then to sleep for at least seven or eight hours. For recreation, he enjoyed the presidential yacht, vacationing in the mountains or at home in Plymouth Notch, horseback riding, golf, and long walks. The stationary mechanical horse that President Coolidge had installed in the White House amused his wife and others who observed him riding the machine. In his first year in the White House, Coolidge had the company of Calvin, Jr. but after his death, the White House was childless. The Coolidges' older son, John, was seventeen and a trainee at a citizen's military camp at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, when Coolidge became President. He spent the presidential years as a student at Amherst College.
CALVIN COOLIDGE: IMPACT AND LEGACY
By David Greenberg
Although the public liked and admired Calvin Coolidge during his tenure, the Great Depression that began in 1929 seriously eroded his reputation and changed public opinion about his policies. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's policy decisions. His failure to aid the depressed agricultural sector seems shortsighted, as nearly five thousand rural banks in the Midwest and South shut their doors in bankruptcy while many thousands of farmers lost their lands. His tax cuts contributed to an uneven distribution of wealth and the overproduction of goods. Many Americans were deeply in debt for having purchased consumer goods on easy installment credit terms.
Coolidge's foreign policy also fell into some disrepute when it became clear that his signature achievements, including the Dawes Plan and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, did little to prevent the rise of Nazism in Germany or the resurgence of international hostilities. The peace of the 1920s faded almost as quickly as the prosperity. But Coolidge also led the nation, if passively, into the modern era. He was a bridge between two epochs.
In the conservative 1980s, Coolidge regained some of his stature, at least in conservative circles. President Ronald Reagan returned his portrait to the Oval Office. Reagan also praised Coolidge's political style and hands-off leadership for producing seven years of prosperity, peace, and balanced budgets. Nevertheless, scholarly opinion looks upon the Coolidge presidency with skepticism, ranking him relatively low among American chief executives in terms of his administration's positive impact and legacy. Despite his personal integrity, he offered no sweeping vision or program of action that the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had led the public to associate with presidential greatness."

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Life Portrait Calvin Coolidge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCsx81IyXms

Images:
1. Calvin Coolidge 'No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
2. The crowd at Allen Field at Smith College, where Calvin Coolidge addressed the hometown crowd on Notification Day, July 27, 1920.
3. Plymouth, Vermont Calvin Coolidge Grave and Tombstone next to his son's burial place vintage postcard.
4. Calvin Coolidge with his wife, Grace, and two sons, John and Calvin standing behind them

Background from {[https://coolidgefoundation.org/presidency/a-biographical-sketch-of-calvin-coolidge/]}
A Biographical Sketch of Calvin Coolidge
Recalling Calvin Coolidge: A Man of Noble Character by Jerry L. Wallace
Beginnings
John Calvin Coolidge was born in 1872 on the Fourth of July and in the 96th year of American Independence. The child was named for his father, but the family dropped the John, calling him Calvin or Cal.
His birthplace was Plymouth Notch, a small hamlet tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont. His ancestors were among the earliest settlers in the area. The Notch was a place he would always hold dear and to which he would frequently return for renewal. As president, he became closely associated with it. And, after his death, Coolidge’s friends decided that the Plymouth Notch homestead and environs should be preserved as his memorial.[i]
Coolidge’s father was a man of ability and high character. Coolidge would always admire and respect him and ever sought to please him through his achievements in life. Interestingly, through his father’s line, Coolidge inherited a few drops of Indian blood, something he liked to note. As president, Coolidge would sign legislation granting all Native Americans U.S. citizenship. While not rich, his father was a man of substance for that time and place. He engaged in farming and various business pursuits, including operating the local store and serving as postmaster. His fellow citizens respected and trusted him. Over many years, he played a prominent part in community affairs, serving in local and state offices. As a result of serving on Governor Stickney’s military staff, the title of “Colonel” was bestowed upon him in 1900, and thereafter, he was addressed as such.
His mother was Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge, a beautiful lady, we are told, bearing the name of two empresses. She and her husband John grew up together in the Notch and were married there on May 6, 1868. She was a frail individual, having, Coolidge wrote, “a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars.”[ii]
Coolidge’s boyhood in Plymouth Notch was an ordinary one. He wrote of it, “Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth. It is neither artificial nor superficial, but is kept close to the realities.”[iii Beginning in September of 1877, he went to school up the road from the Coolidge homestead. His grades were good but unexceptional. There was nothing to set him apart, other than, perhaps, his shyness and frailty. He did performed chores faithfully; the wood box was always full. He worked on the farm, helping with haying, bringing in the grain, and husking the corn. He also hunted and fished and liked to ride. He attended dances in the room over the country store, but he himself did not take to the floor. One of his favorite times of the year was the maple sugar season. Cal, his father said, could get more sap out of a tree than anyone else.
Tragedy came early into Coolidge’s life. In March of 1885, when he was but 12 years old, death took his mother away. His father and grandmother Coolidge did their best to make up for the loss. He lamented, “The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me. Life was never to seem the same again.”[iv] As with many nineteenth century men, he was devoted to the memory of his mother. His deep and abiding love for her is revealed in his Autobiography. He would carry with him a locket containing her portrait until he went to join her. Five years after his mother’s passing, he would suffer another heavy blow with the death of beloved sister, Abigail, or Abbie as he called her. Something of her personality comes through in her favorite quotation: “Count the day lost / Whose low descending sun / Sees from they hand / No worthy action done.”[v]
In September of 1891, Coolidge’s father would marry a neighboring woman, a school teacher, Caroline Athelia Brown. Coolidge had known Carrie, as she was called, all his life. She was a good, caring woman who treated him as if he were her own son. “For thirty years,” he wrote in his Autobiography, “she watched over me and loved me…” [vi]

Black River Academy
In February of 1886, at 13 years, Calvin Coolidge broke with the past when he entered the Black River Academy—an institution similar to a high school—at Ludlow. It was, he said, his first great adventure. “I was perfectly certain,” he later wrote, “that I was traveling out of the darkness into the light.”[vii] The academy, with a Baptist affiliation, had a student body of around 125 students and had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Coolidge’s father, mother, and grandmother had attended the school for a few terms.
To prepare for future college work, Coolidge took the classical course, with its focus on Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. Such course work, he would later observe, provided the ideals necessary to give direction to a person’s life. During his first term, he began his lifelong study of the Constitution of the United States. Years later he would praise that great charter, writing that “no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity.”[viii] His tuition was about $7.00 a term, and his room and board ran no more than $3.00 per week.
Coolidge graduated from the Black River Academy on the 23rd of May 1890. His class consisted of five boys and four girls. At the ceremony in Hammon Hall, he spoke on “Oratory in History,” in which he assessed the degree to which public speaking had influenced the course of world history. This presentation was Coolidge’s first noted public address.[ix] He had intended to enter Amherst that fall but following an illness, decided instead to take preparatory work during the spring term at St. Johnsbury Academy.
In August of 1891, Coolidge beheld his first president, Benjamin Harrison, when he attended with his father the dedication of the Bennington Battle Monument. “As I looked on him and realized that he personally represented the glory and dignity of the United States,” he wrote, “I wondered how it felt to bear so much responsibility and little thought I should ever know.”[x]

Amherst College
On September 17, 1891, the 19-year-old Coolidge entered Amherst College. His years there were critical to his intellectual, personal, and career development. Later in life, philosophizing on the purpose of education, he would say, “Education is to teach men not what to think but how to think.”[i] He studied under several fine professors, who, he found, were more than simply teachers but were “men of character,” whose words had an especially profound and lasting impact upon him.[ii] Notably, this was true of Charles E. Garman, who taught philosophy. Garman re-enforced in Coolidge his beliefs in the common man and in the value of work and gave him a broader outlook on life, one that would allow him to grow as a person over time. Most importantly, Coolidge learned from Garman “the law of service, under which men are not so solicitous about what they shall get as they are about what they shall give.”[iii] Coolidge would follow its dictates all his life. It would form the basis for his long career of public service.[iv]
Coolidge enjoyed the social life of the college, although, because of his shyness, he remained in the background. Yet he made acquaintances, men such as Dwight Morrow, a future financier. These men, along with other Amherst alumni, such as Frank W. Stearns, a wealthy Boston merchant, would later play a significant role in urging and cheering him on in his political career. Stearns, in particular, would become his friend and principal backer.
He joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, in which he would take a lifelong interest. Recognizing his oratorical skills, at commencement time, his classmates honored him by choosing him to be Grove Orator. In this role, he was charged with making his audience laugh, and laugh they did. On the 26th day of June 1895, Calvin Coolidge graduated A.B., cum laude.
While at Amherst, Coolidge entered an essay contest on “The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution,” sponsored by the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. The contest was opened to all seniors at American colleges and universities. His paper won the silver medal at Amherst and then went on to be awarded first prize—a gold medal (about 7.5 ozs)—from among all the papers submitted nationally. This was quite an academic honor for the young Coolidge. It demonstrated his scholarly abilities and writing skills, which would later reappear in his public papers. Coolidge’s pride in his essay was such that years later, he included it in The Price of Freedom (1924), a volume of his addresses and writings.
After graduation, Coolidge returned to Plymouth Notch to work on his father’s farm for the summer. Coolidge had decided upon a career in law and wished to attend law school. His father, however, thought it best that he read the law at an established law firm—an old-fashion but practical and inexpensive way of learning the law.[v] Fortune smiled on Coolidge: He secured a place in the offices of John C. Hammond and Henry P. Field, both Amherst graduates, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, a city then of about 15,000 souls. In a sense, Coolidge was returning to his ancestral home, for his ancestors had lived in Massachusetts for 150 years before migrating to Vermont.
While still in college, in thinking of his future home, Coolidge had written his father in a Garman-like fashion, “I should like to live where I can be of some use to the world and not simply where I should get a few dollars together.”[vi] His wish was granted: His new hometown and state would welcome him and lay before him numerous opportunities for public service in the years ahead.
On His Own
It was on September 23, 1895, that Coolidge began his lawyer apprenticeship. Hammond and Field, both fine attorneys, took the young man under their wing. As always with Coolidge, he applied himself fully and in time, became proficient at his new profession. Just two days before his 25th birthday in 1897, Coolidge was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. The following year, on February 1, 1898, he opened his own law office on the second floor of the Masonic block on Main Street. Inspiring confidence and trust, he built a solid reputation for himself and slowly his practice grew. Over time, he would become an attorney for the Springfield Brewery and counsel for the Nonotuck Savings Bank, the largest savings institution in Northampton. He was noted for settling his clients’ cases out of court, if possible, saving them time and money. He willingly helped all, including the poor, who came to him for assistance. His fees were so low that his colleagues in the law upbraided him for not charging more.

Marriage
By the turn of the century, Coolidge had become an established lawyer and was active in civic affairs. All that was missing from his life was a wife. This problem was remedied when he met the beautiful and charming, Grace Anna Goodhue, a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf. Love bloomed at first sight. His wooing of her was successful, and overcoming his future mother-in-law’s objections, they were married on the 4th of October 1905, at Grace’s parents’ home in Burlington, Vermont.
Grace was truly the love of his life. “A man,” Coolidge wrote, “who has the companionship of a lovely and gracious woman enjoys the supreme blessing that life can give. And no citizen of the United States knows the truth of this statement more than I.”[vii] He would always want Grace by his side. As a companion, with her friendly, outgoing personality, she compensated for his silent reserve. “We thought we were made for each other,” he observed. “For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces.”[viii] The family made their home in a rented duplex at 21 Massasoit Street.
Their first child, who they called John, arrived on September 7, 1906. He would live a long and productive life, dying in May of 2000. A second child, Calvin, Jr., came on April 13, 1908. This child, who resembled his father both in looks and in his ways, would die tragically in July of 1924 at the beginning of the presidential election campaign. His death, as only a child’s death can, took a heavy toll on Coolidge, and for a time, Melancholy marked him for her own. “When he went,” he sadly wrote, “the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.”[ix] Less than two years later, he lost his elderly father as well.


Politics and Office Holding
Calvin Coolidge was born into politics. Indeed, his father was first elected to the Vermont legislature a month after Coolidge’s birth. As a young child, Coolidge would visit him at the Capitol at Montpelier and while there, he sat in the Governor’s chair. Later, he would attend town meetings with his father and observe how he handled himself and dealt with issues facing the community. When Coolidge became president, he wrote his father, “I am sure I came to it [i.e., the presidency] largely by your bringing up and your example.”[i] He also experienced democracy at first hand, and in doing so, he gain a lasting respect for the average citizen and the electoral process. He would later say, “There is something in every town meeting, in every election, that approaches very near to the sublime.”[ii] For Coolidge, local government and local responsibility were at the heart of the American democracy. His faith in the people was absolute. “In time of crisis,” Coolidge wrote in his Autobiography, “my belief that people can know the truth, that when it is presented to them they must accept it, has saved me from many of the counsels of expediency.”[iii]
The importance of elections was brought home to Coolidge in the Garfield-Hancock presidential campaign of 1880, when he was eight years old. He asked his father for a penny to buy a stick of horehound candy. His father replied that it was best to wait, for an election was underway and if the Democrat Hancock was successful at the polls, hard times were sure to follow. Garfield triumphed, however, and Coolidge got his candy.
In the fall of 1888, while at the Black River Academy, Coolidge experienced his first presidential campaign. It was between Cleveland and Harrison, and he joined in celebrating the latter’s victory for two nights. He was 16 at the time. In the presidential election of 1892, he joined the Amherst Republican Club and participated in torchlight parades. This time, however, his candidate failed and he learned the sorrow of political defeat. In 1893, at the request of his Plymouth neighbors, the budding politician gave his first of what would be many Fourth of July speeches. “While that flag floats,” he exclaimed, pointing to the Stars-and-Strips, “our rights shall be preserved.”[iv]
When Coolidge left Amherst, he commented to a friend, “I’m only sure of one thing—that I’m a Republican.”[v]
His Republicanism was based firmly in a belief in the party’s ideals and in the correctness of its fundamental policies on the great issues of the day, such as the protective tariff that was designed to nurture American manufacturing. Coolidge would be a consistent and an unwavering party man till the end, but never was he an extreme partisan.[vi] He had many friends among his opponents; indeed, at his death, Al Smith, the 1928 Democrat presidential candidate, would compose one of the more insightful Coolidge obituaries, entitled “A Shining Public Example.”[vii] As for parties themselves, he believed that by providing a point of responsibility, they were essential to the functioning of the American political system.
Hammond and Field encouraged Coolidge to involve himself in Northampton politics. Although reserved, he had a genuine common touch and enjoyed talking politics with average citizens, such as James Lucey, a cobbler and active Democrat, with whom Coolidge had become acquainted while in college. Lucey liked the young man, becoming his friend and advisor and helping him in local politics. There is some irony in that the Republican Coolidge’s first letter from the White House was to the Democrat Lucey. Coolidge wrote him, “…I want you to know that, if it were not for you, I should not be here…”[viii] Like a true politician, Coolidge never forgot his friends who helped him along the way.
Coolidge began his involvement in Northampton politics in the fall of 1895 when he helped Henry P. Field in his race for mayor. The following year, 1896, Coolidge participated in one of the most exciting and important presidential election in our history: the great battle between Bryan and McKinley. Coolidge, who was able to vote for the first time in this election, did his part by writing an article for a local newspaper attacking Bryan. While vacationing at Plymouth Notch that summer, he defended the gold standard in debate, which pleased his father. It was also at this time that he received his first political assignment, serving as an alternative delegate to a local party convention to nominate a state senator. He was finding his calling in life; he was becoming a politician.
Up the Political Ladder
Coolidge was once asked if he had hobby. He replied, “Holding office.”[ix] Over the years, Calvin Coolidge would run for public office 17 times (excluding primaries). This number is high because in Coolidge’s day, elections in Massachusetts were held annually. Coolidge probably put himself before the people’s judgment more than any of our other presidents.
He was a first rate politician and a consistent vote getter, especially good at attracting Irish Democrat voters, many of whom were enthusiastic for him. He managed all his early campaigns on his own, and he won each race but one, a seat on the Northampton school committee in 1905. He always ran positive campaigns focusing on the issues.
Voters came to see Coolidge as a man of character who knew his business and could be trusted to do the day’s work. Moreover, there was never a hint of scandal, personal or political, attached to his name. Having the people’s confidence served Coolidge well as a public figure when, for instance, he had to resolve the messy scandals left him by the Harding Administration after assuming the presidency. His great success as a politician was due to his listening to the people and doing what they wanted done. For example, as president, coming into office after the Great War, this would involve restoring the United States to a peacetime basis or, as Warren G. Harding so well put it, returning country to “normalcy.”[x]
His grounding in politics, legislating, and public administration was thorough. He started at the bottom of the political ladder and worked his way to the top. He held both legislative and administrative positions—excelling at both, a rare combination in a politician. In his 23 years in elective office, the following are the eight positions he held by gift of the people, along with his dates of service.
• Northampton City Councilman, 1899 (one term)
• Representative to the General Court, 1907-08 (two terms)
• Mayor of Northampton, 1910-11 (two terms)
• State Senator, 1912-15 (four terms), serving as President of the Senate, 1914-15
• Lieutenant Governor, 1916-18 (three terms)
• Governor of the Commonwealth, 1919-20 (two terms)
• Vice President of the United States, Mar. 4, 1921, to Aug. 2, 1923, when he was called to the presidency upon the death of President Warren Gamaliel Harding. Partial term: 2 years and 5 months.
• President of the United States, Aug. 2, 1923 to Mar. 4, 1929, elected in his own right on Nov. 4, 1924. Partial and one full term: 5 years and 7 months.
Coolidge also held other positions during these years. They included:
• Northampton City Solicitor, 1900-01. Two appointments. Chosen by the City Council. Passed over for a third appointment.
• Clerk of the Court of Hampshire County pro tempore, 1903. Appointed by the Court. Served out the term of the deceased incumbent; declined to run for election to the post.

Reflections on a Politician and Statesman
In his political thinking, Coolidge was at heart a conservative. This is seen in his focus on preserving individual liberty and freedom, his defense of property rights, his support of religion, his encouragement of tolerance by personal example in a time of intolerance, and his Burkean respect for the law and the time-honored institutions and customs of society. When it came to new legislation, he was concerned that it not only be constitutional but also met a genuine need in a practical fashion. He was never quick to legislate. He was, in fact, more concerned with stopping bad legislation than passing good. Yet he was not afraid to use the powers of government, when necessary, to address exceptional public needs, as demonstrated during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, when government agencies and the Red Cross combined efforts to meet the crisis.
Coolidge was attuned to the public mood, and he did support progressive or liberal measures during his days in Massachusetts politics. Indeed, early on, he was considered a liberal. He was sympathetic to the causes of woman and labor and worked on their behalf. And throughout his career, he was a staunch supporter of education, raising teachers’ salaries as mayor and proposing a Department of Education and Relief as president. It must be understood that Coolidge was proud of Massachusetts—then an example to the nation of an enlightened, progressive state—and what it had accomplished for the well being of its citizens through its institutions, public and private.
It was while governor of the Commonwealth that Coolidge faced the greatest challenge of his political career: the Boston Police Strike of 1919, one of those sad, tragic happenings that should never have been. Here he was faced with a challenge that could either make him politically or destroy his career.[i] Standing firmly for the right as he saw it, he navigated the storm successfully.
At the end of it all, he clearly and definitively expressed the issue at the heart of the crisis: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”[ii] In these few words, he summed up the nation’s mood. The Democrat President Woodrow Wilson congratulated him on his firm stand against this “crime against civilization.”[iii] On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Charles S. Thomas, a Democrat of Colorado, remarked, “It is to such men [as Coolidge] that we must look for the preservation of American institutions.”[iv] That fall the voters of the Commonwealth returned Calvin Coolidge to office in historic landslide victory. —Vox Populi, Vox Dei!
As a consequence of the police strike, Coolidge reaped praise and gained a national fame that would propel him to the top of the political ladder. At the Republican national convention in June of 1920, the delegates, tired of being bossed by the bosses, rejected the bosses’ candidate for vice president and instead, enthusiastically chose Calvin Coolidge as Warren G. Harding’s running mate.
At Harding’s sudden passing on August 2, 1923, Calvin Coolidge was called to the presidency. Asked what thought first came to mind on receiving the news of his elevation, he replied, “I thought I could swing it.”[v] He was famously sworn into office by his father, a notary public, in the parlor of the family homestead at Plymouth Notch by the light of a kerosene lamp. This simple event captured then as it still captures today the imagination of a nation.
With his belief in local and state government as the true engine of democracy, Coolidge necessarily held a narrow Jeffersonian view regarding the functions of the national government. Indeed, his views on the subject were much more in keeping with those of Grover Cleveland, the president of his youth, than with those of Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. As president, he respected and honored states’ rights. He often spoke of the essential, basic role of state and local governments in our political system. “What we need,” he preached, “is not more Federal Government but better local government.”[vi] Frankly, few of his contemporaries paid him much heed, for they had learned to love, even in those pre-New Deal days, the dollars following into their communities from Washington for such popular projects as highway construction.[vii]
As president, Coolidge made himself into the nation’s chief administrator, de-emphasizing his role as a political leader, like Dwight Eisenhower would later do. His primary concern was on reducing the deficit, cutting taxes, maintaining tariff stability, and making the government run efficiently and effectively In these tasks, he excelled. Particularly notable was Coolidge’s skillful use of the newly created Bureau of the Budget in bringing order and direction to the budgeting process and thereby achieving the savings and efficiencies he sought.
On his watch, the national debt was reduced from $22.3 billion to $16.9 billion and tax rates were slashed significantly with most Americans eventually paying no Federal taxes at all. The economy boomed with industrial production increasing 70%, real earnings for wage earners growing 22%, and unemployment averaging 3.3%. Truly, Calvin Coolidge was the right man, at the place, at the right time. It should be noted that the passage of the Revenue Act of 1926, which embodied his tax policies, was the culmination of his presidency.
To build public support for his program of “constructive economy,” as he referred to it, he cleverly made pioneering use of the new medium of radio, reporting semi-annually to the public on the budget and tax matters.[viii] The radio permitted him to speak directly to the American people over the heads of politicians and newspaper editors. It helped him to block or lessen raids on the Treasury, such as those attempted by Congress in connection with Mississippi River improvements. To improve his effectiveness over the air, he brought in an expert to work with him on his radio presence. Through his extensive use of airwaves—he made over 50 major radio addresses—Coolidge became America’s first radio president.
Coolidge, of course, did not neglect the print media, it being a great source of free publicity. As president, he went out of his way to accommodate the needs of the White House press corps. For instance, he provided them with stories on slow news days and, most notably, he became the first president to hold regular, twice-weekly press conferences. He thus got along well with most newsmen, and in turn, he received generally favorable coverage in the pages of nation’s newspapers.
He also willingly satisfied the demands of camera and newsreel men, who had only recently gained access to the White House. All he asked of them was not to take his picture while he was savoring one of his favorite cigars. It is worth noting that during the 1924 campaign, he became the first president to appear in a talking newsreel. Lee de Forest produced the film in which Coolidge read excerpts from his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination.[ix]
Coolidge was no isolationist.[x] He understood early on the new heightened status of the United States among the nations of the world. Speaking at Tremont Temple on November 2, 1918, only a few days before the Armistice, Governor Coolidge said this: “We have taken a new place among the nations. The Revolution made us a nation; the Spanish[-American] War made us a world power; the present war has given us recognition as a world power. We shall not again be considered provincial. Whether we desired it or not this position has come to us with its duties and its responsibilities.”[xi]
On the international front, the Coolidge administration supported the Dawes plan for German reparations and established accommodative payment schedules for the Allied war debt to the United States. This, along with American private loans and governmental support, gradually led the major nations of the world to restore the international gold standards, thereby spurring world trade. The administration also secured the ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawing war. It failed, however, because of the opposition of isolationists Senators, to secure U.S. membership on the World Court, although a revived attempt at joining it was underway at the end of the Coolidge presidency. Also, its efforts to build upon the success of the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22, were unproductive. Notably, the administration through the good work of Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow did succeed in restoring our strained relations with Mexico at a time when some were pressing for intervention in that unhappy country. As President, Coolidge did venture outside of the United States on one occasion. This was in January of 1928, when he journeyed to Havana, Cuba, to speak to the Sixth International Conference of American States.
Coolidge’s interest in military affairs dated from 1899 when, as a city councilman, he proposed to secure an armory for Northampton. It was revived again during the Great War at the time he was serving in state government. Indeed, his first act as governor was to approve funding for a welcoming celebration for the men of Yankee Division. As president, Coolidge sought to maintain a modest military force one sufficient to meet peacetime needs. His guiding principles were, as he described them, “preparation, limitation, and renunciation.”[xii] This policy, it is worth recalling, was well suited for a time when anti-war sentiment was strong.
Not all was peaceful within the military itself: Controversy raged around Colonel William “Billy” Mitchell, a proponent of what were then advanced but controversial ideas about military aviation. Lacking restraint, Mitchell attacked the military establishment for being hidebound, going so far as to accuse its leaders of an “almost treasonable administration of the nation’s defense.”[xiii] This could not go on. Eventually, at the direct order of President Coolidge, Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination. Having been found guilty, he resigned from the Army.
Coolidge was the last president never to have flown in an airplane, yet he well understood the value of aviation and supported its development. The greatest public moment of Coolidge presidency, as well as the high water mark of the 1920s, was the welcoming home ceremony at Washington for Charles Augustus Lindbergh on June 11, 1927. It took place following the Lone Eagle’s solo flight in Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in which the young, brave pilot had triumphed over Death. Thanks to radio, Americans in the cities and towns and on the farm were able to participate in this wonderful, national celebration.
With the backing of the Coolidge Administration, Lindbergh, who the President raised to rank of colonel, went on to tour the nation to build public support for aviation. Later, as America’s winged-ambassador, he made a good-will tour of Latin America, being greeted along the way by large enthusiastic crowds. Lindbergh and Coolidge developed a lasting relationship.
Military training was encouraged. Coolidge’s son John was attending a Citizens Military Training Camp when his father became president. It was Coolidge’s thinking that the national debt was the weakest link in the nation’s defense, because it reduced the funds available to meet military needs in a crisis. Thus, his debt reduction program was fundamental to strengthening the nation’s military footing. He understood, moreover, that the great strength of the country rested ultimately not on its implements of war, but on its people, its agriculture and industrial resources, and its wealth. This led him to focus primarily on issues relating to the mobilization of manpower and industry. In this matter, he called for advice upon Bernard M. Baruch, who had headed the War Industries Board during the Great War. To address the problems of war profiteering and war fortunes that had so angered the public, he urged the drafting not just men but also wealth and resources in the event of a future war. Sacrifice would be required of all and no war profits would be allowed.
Coolidge did not forget the veterans and their families. As governor and president, he supported programs for veterans, especially those aimed at the disabled. The one notable exception was his opposition to the World War soldiers’ bonus bill, which was finally passed over his veto in 1924. Besides threatening the country’s finances at a critical point, he believed this bill, with its money handouts, would diminish the value of the veterans’ service to their nation. “No person,” he firmly noted, “was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”[xiv]
As president, he and Mrs. Coolidge held receptions on the White House lawn at which they welcomed and entertained wounded veterans from area hospitals. Coolidge famously summed up his feelings for veterans in these words, “The nation that forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.”[xv] He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the American Legion, which he viewed as a unifying, patriotic force in American life, speaking before its national convention as vice president in 1921 and as president in 1925. One of the highlights of his presidency was his dedication of the World War I Liberty Memorial in Kansas City on Armistice Day 1926, an event that was broadcast nationally.
The Coolidge presidency, 1923-29, was a most successful one. That was certainly the overwhelming judgment of most of Coolidge’s contemporaries. The President was fortunate to preside over what was probably the most exciting, vital, and creative decade of the twentith Century. It was a decade of youth. It was a decade when modern America came alive. Not all was perfect by any means: There were pockets of unemployment; some farmers were hard pressed; and most disturbing, intolerance manifested itself in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, it was overall an era marked by peace and unprecedented prosperity. Most Americans had never had it so good. And some would later argue that it was the last time the American people were truly free.
As president, Coolidge achieved his principal objectives of debt reduction and tax reform, along with downsizing the government to reflect post-war needs. When he left office, he did so knowing that he had been a good and faithful servant; his stewardship well done.
Although the Coolidge administration was focused on catching up with existing legislation rather than enacting new, there was notable legislation passed and signed. Four measures that stand out are these:
• the Revenue Act of 1926, which embodied the Coolidge-Mellon tax policies that were at the heart of the administration’s program of fiscal reform;
• the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which regulated civil aviation and made possible the development of this new industry;
• the Public Buildings Act of 1926, which authorized the start of construction on the magnificent Federal Triangle complex of buildings in the nation’s capital; and
• the Federal Radio Act of 1927, which put in place a regulatory framework for the new media under which it would thrive.

Attached to this essay is a listing of important legislation of the Coolidge era.
Coolidge also successfully blocked many of those initiatives he opposed, most notably the McNary-Haugen farm relief bill, which he rejected mainly on constitutional grounds and twice vetoed. In the case of the Mississippi River Flood Control Act of 1928, the President worked with Congress to turn a flawed and fiscally irresponsible measure into a responsible bill that he could sign. He was not, however, always successful, as in his attempt to remove the Japanese exclusion provision from the Immigration Act of 1924, a bipartisan measure having overwhelming public and Congressional support. And it must be recorded that there were also several instances of Coolidge supported initiatives that went nowhere in the Congress; these included legislation addressing railroad consolidation, government reorganization, and an anti-lynching measure.
In all, Coolidge vetoed 20 bills and pocket vetoed another 30. Only four of his regular vetoes were overridden, but among them was the popular and costly Soldiers’ Bonus Bill. Here, Coolidge put himself in opposition to the Congress and their constituents, especially veterans—and he lost. But the people seemed to admire him for having the courage of his convictions, and to lessen criticism, he acted promptly to implement the legislation.
Coolidge enjoyed a widespread popularity and could easily have won re-election in 1928. Instead, he chose not to run again. Personal Factors played a role in his decision, as well as the realization that his work was done and that the public was ready for a new man with a new approach. He remarked to a Cabinet member, “I know how to save money. All my training has been in that direction. The country is in a sound financial condition. Perhaps the time has come when we ought to spend money. I do not feel that I am qualified to do that.”[xvi] Moreover, as he wisely observed, “It is pretty good idea to get out when they still want you.”[xvii]

Retirement and Death

On March 4, 1929, Calvin Coolidge departed Washington to the plaudits of the public for a job well done. When a reporter asked him what he considered his most important accomplishment, he replied simply, “minding my own business.”[xviii] He returned to Northampton, there to live out the time remaining to him. He took up the pen, writing his Autobiography, contributing to periodicals, and doing a syndicated newspaper column, “Calvin Coolidge Says.” He became a director of the New York Life Insurance Co. and at President Hoover’s request, served on the National Transportation Committee, both transportation and insurance being subjects that had long interested him. He and Mrs. Coolidge travelled about the county: He dined with Huey Long, Governor of Louisiana; he dedicated an Arizona dam named in his honor; and even visited Hollywood and stayed at Hearst’s San Simeon estate. He withdrew from active politics, limiting himself to a few political addresses on behalf of the beleaguered Hoover administration. His health was not good, and worries over the ever-deepening Depression definitely preyed upon him. Death, in the form of heart attack, came for him on the 5th of January 1933, at the age of 60 years. He never lived to see the coming of the New Deal. He rests today among his ancestors in the cemetery at Plymouth Notch. [xix]
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[i] Channing H. Cox, a friend of Coolidge and former Governor of Massachusetts, was one of the first to call for this in his eulogy on Coolidge, delivered to the General Court on March 1, 1933, about two months after Coolidge’s death. “At such a shrine,” Cox said, “love for American traditions will be kindled anew and faith in American institutions will be deepened”; see Memorial Address By Channing H. Cox In connection with the Memorial Services Held by the General Court in Joint Session In Memory of Calvin Coolidge, March 1, 1933, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Senate No. 360, pp. 26-27.
[ii] Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1929), p. 13.
[iii] Ibid., p. 33.
[iv] Ibid., p. 13.
[v] Hendrik Booraem, The Provincial: Calvin Coolidge and His World, 1885-1895 (Lewisburg: Bucknell university Press, 1994), p. 97.
[vi] Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 52.
[vii] Ibid., p. 33.
[viii] Ibid., p. 40.
[ix] A copy of this speech is available on the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation website. An article, “Calvin Coolidge’s First Speech,” by Dr. Robert H. Ferrell , which includes a copy of the speech, is found in The Real Calvin Coolidge #14, pp. 28-32.
[x] Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 49.
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[i] Calvin Coolidge, Have Faith in Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), p. 155.
[ii] Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 70.
[iii] Ibid., p. 67.
[iv] When Coolidge came into the presidency in 1923, his net worth was estimated at a modest $10,000, which would be the equivalent today of $125,000 adjusted for inflation; see They Told Barron, ed. by Arthur Pound and Samuel T. Moore (New York: Harper, 1930), p. 351. He was 48 years old at the time, with a wife and two children, who had to educate. He owned no home and had no retirement plan.
[v] If you wish, you can still read the law in Vermont.
[vi] Claude M. Fuess, The Man From Vermont: Calvin Coolidge (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1940), p. 67.
[vii] Peter Hannaford, The Quotable Calvin Coolidge: Sensible Words for a New Century (Bennington, VT: Images from the Past, 2001), p. 51.
[viii] Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 93.
[ix] Ibid., p. 190.
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[i] Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, ed. by Edward Connery Lathem (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1968), p. 211.
[ii] Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), p. 67.
[iii] Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 67.
[iv] Booraem, The Provincial, p. 147.
[v] Fuess, Coolidge, p. 67.
[vi] In November of 1905, Coolidge suffered his only electoral defeat at the hand of Democrat John J. Kennedy in a race for school board. Three years later, when Kennedy ran for re-election, Coolidge supported him. When asked why, he replied that Kennedy had a good record—also his wife and her friends thought highly of Kennedy. See Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1998), p. 59.
[vii] Smith’s obit is reprinted in Edward Connery Lathem’s Meet Calvin Coolidge: the Man Behind the Myth (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Green Press, 1960), pp. 219-220.
[viii] Fuess, Coolidge., p. 315.
[ix] New York Times, Jan. 6, 1933.
[x] Speaking to the Home Market Club in Boston in May of 1920, Harding rhapsodized, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration…not surgery but serenity.” See Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding And His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), p. 70.
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[i] In his Autobiography, Coolidge wondered if the strike might not have been “a design to injure me politically”; see Coolidge, Autobiography, p. 141. No doubt but that his opposition would have liked to damage his reputation with labor, and the strike did offer such an opportunity.
[ii] Calvin Coolidge, Have Faith In Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), p. 223.
[iii] New York Times, Sept. 12, 1919.
[iv] Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York: Macmillan Co., 1967), p. 93.
[v] Fuess, Coolidge, p. 311.
[vi] Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), p. 228.
[vii] In one of his last newspaper columns, dated June 20, 1931, Coolidge bemoaned, “The centralization of power in Washington, which nearly all members of Congress deplore in their speech and then support by their votes, steadily increases…Individual self-reliance is disappearing and local self-government is being undermined”; see Calvin Coolidge Says, ed. by Edward Connery Lathem (Plymouth, VT: Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 1972).
[viii] President Coolidge made these reports in January and June of each year before the Government Organization of Businessmen, a group of high level bureaucrats set up to assist in the implementation of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. He made a total of 10 such reports between June 1924 and January 1929, all but one of which was broadcast nationally.
[ix] De Forest made three talking newsreel films featuring the three 1924 presidential candidates, Coolidge, Davis, and La Follette. They could be shown in only especially equipped theatres.
[x] One of Coolidge more critical biographers, William Allen White, made a point of this; see his A Puritan In Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938), p. 143. It must be remembered that initially Coolidge was a supporter of the League of Nation; note his welcome home address to Wilson upon the latter’s arrival in Boston from Paris on February 24, 1919.
[xi] Coolidge, Have Faith In Massachusetts, p. 153.
[xii] Ibid., p. 446.
[xiii] Billy Mitchell, retrieved 4-12-2012 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(general)
[xiv] Coolidge, Have Faith in Massachusetts, p. 173.
[xv] Hannaford, The Quotable Calvin Coolidge, p. 160.
[xvi] Lawrence E. Wikander, “Calvin Coolidge” in, The Northampton Book (Northampton: Tercentenary History Commission, 1954), p. 302.
[xvii] Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1998), p. 373.
[xviii] Howard H. Quint and Robert H. Ferrell, The Talkative President: The Off-The-Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964), p. 19. This statement was made at his last press conference on March 1, 1929, three days before he left office. The full quote is: “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”
[xix] It was Coolidge’s official biographer, Claude M. Fuess who described the former president as “a man of noble character”; see his Coolidge, p. 299….Coolidge had this to say about character: “Character is what a person is; it represents the aggregate of distinctive mental and moral qualities belonging to an individual or race. Good character means a mental and moral fiber of a high order, one which may be woven into the fabric of the community and State, going to make a great nation…”; see Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic, p. 393.
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Jerry L. Wallace is a Coolidge scholar, whose interest in Calvin Coolidge and the 1920s dates back over half a century. He has been a member of the Coolidge Foundation since 1972 and has served as a Trustee and is now a member of the National Advisory Board. He has written extensively on Coolidge, with his latest publication being Calvin Coolidge: Our First Radio President. By profession, he is an historian and archivist, formerly with the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. Now retired and living in Oxford, KS, he spends his time researching and writing on Coolidge and local Kansas history.
FYI LTC Greg Henning LTC Bill Koski LTC David Brown
SP5 Jeannie CarleSGM Gerald FifeCPT (Join to see)
SGM Bill FrazerSP5 Dennis LobergerCWO3 (Join to see)SSgt Marian MitchellSSG Robert Mark OdomLTC Stephan PorterSSG Robert PrattTSgt George RodriguezCSM Bruce TregoSFC Richard WilliamsonMSG (Join to see)1SG Mark Rudoplh LTC Ken Connolly

Amity Shlaes is a fantastic author! Collidge is the last of the Republican Constitutionalist that viewed the Federal government as limited to the original intent. He thought the Federal deficit was a moral outrage at $16 Billion after WWI.

Well, Maybe Woodrow Wilson beats him by a hair