By MICHAEL F. DWYER
August 2, 2023 marks the centennial of a unique presidential swearing-in. Vice President of the United States Calvin Coolidge was home visiting his father, John Coolidge, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Upon hearing the official notification that President Warren G. Harding had died in San Francisco, the elder Coolidge, with quivering voice, awoke his sleeping son and daughter-in-law and conveyed the monumental news to his son—now the 30th President of the United States. Calvin and his wife Grace quickly dressed. With a copy of the Constitution as a template, the President typed the oath of office and asked his father, the local notary, to administer the solemn charge. And there, in a small parlor by light of a kerosene lamp with his hand on a family Bible, Calvin Coolidge recited the familiar words to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”
This historical anniversary has prompted me to reflect anew on the life and legacy of Calvin Coolidge. When I began teaching United States history forty years ago, I easily succumbed to the one-dimensional caricatures of Coolidge. One Vanity Fair cartoon comes to mind of sour-looking Coolidge seated next to the aloof film star Greta Garbo with the caption, “Impossible Interview.”
Calvin Coolidge, however, was no one’s fool. What has drawn me to a deeper understanding of the man? For one thing, I have already lived longer than he did. Moreover, the acrimony of current American presidential politics belongs to a world he would not recognize. Let us consider this Vermont farm boy’s steady rise in public service. After matriculating at Black River Academy in Ludlow, Coolidge spent a semester at St. Johnsbury Academy before enrolling at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Two years after college graduation, having read for the law, he passed the bar exam and established a practice in Northampton, Massachusetts. Elected to the Massachusetts House at 34, Coolidge soon won other offices: Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts Senate, and by 1918, Governor of Massachusetts. His stance on the Boston Police Strike propelled him to national attention.
Grace Goodhue Coolidge, an alumna of The University of Vermont, made a perfect foil to her husband. While he may have worn thin his suits and shoes, he enjoyed seeing his lovely wife dressed in elegant style. As Coolidge later wrote, “We thought we were made for each other. For almost a quarter of a century, she has borne my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces.”
What contributed to Coolidge’s enormous popularity that resulted in an easy win for him to be elected to the Presidency in his own right in 1924? Certainly, he rode the crest of the country’s thin veneer of prosperity. His adherence to laissez-faire economics fit the moment. By comparison to some of the scandals of the Harding presidency, Coolidge stood for an unfeigned code of morality and dignity.
One understands more fully Coolidge’s humanity through reading his autobiography, first published in 1929. His son, Calvin Coolidge Jr., died on July 7, 1924, age 16, from septicemia, the result of a blood blister he incurred while playing tennis on the south lawn of the White House. The President never fully recovered from this blow as this passage attests:
“When he went, the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him. The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do. I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House. Sustained by the great outpouring of sympathy from all over the nation, my wife and I bowed to the Supreme Will and with such courage as we had, went on in the discharge of our duties.”
When asked to consider running again for President in 1928, Coolidge, perhaps reveling in his legendary taciturnity, stated, “I do not choose to run.” He and Grace returned to their two-family home in Northampton. The persistence of gawking tourists eventually prompted the Coolidges to buy a 12-room house on nine acres.
On January 5, 1933, Coolidge died suddenly, age 60, suffering a heart attack at his desk. I speculate that as someone who internalized many of his emotions, he anguished over the Stock Market Crash, the depths to which the country sank in the Great Depression as well as the seismic political shift that occurred in the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Remembering the remarkable beginning of Coolidge’s presidency also brings to mind this memorable speech he made from the back of a train in Bennington on September 21, 1928, after seeing first-hand the flood-ravaged Vermont landscape. These words continue to strike a chord with us today as we recover from continued weather disasters:
“Vermont is a state I love. I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride; here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills.
I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all, because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should vanish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”
