John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His conduct during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th Vice President in 1920 and succeeded to the Presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, and also as a man who said very little.
Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity.[1] As a Coolidge biographer put it, "He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength."[2] Some later criticized Coolidge as part of a general criticism of laissez-faire government.[3] His reputation underwent a renaissance during the Ronald Reagan Administration, but the ultimate assessment of his presidency is still divided between those who approve of his reduction of the size of government programs and those who believe the federal government should be more involved in regulating and controlling the economy.[4]
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[show]Birth and family history[edit]
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr., was born in Plymouth Notch, Windsor County, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, the only U.S. President to be born on Independence Day. He was the elder of the two children of John Calvin Coolidge, Sr. (1845–1926) and Victoria Josephine Moor (1846–85). Coolidge Senior engaged in many occupations, and ultimately enjoyed a statewide reputation as a prosperous farmer, storekeeper and public servant; he farmed, taught school, ran a local store, served in the Vermont House of Representatives and the Vermont Senate, and held various local offices including justice of the peace and tax collector.[5] Coolidge's mother was the daughter of a Plymouth Notch farmer. Coolidge's chronically ill mother died, perhaps from tuberculosis, when he was twelve years old. His sister, Abigail Grace Coolidge (1875–90), died at the age of fifteen, when Coolidge was eighteen. Coolidge's father remarried in 1891, to a schoolteacher, and lived to the age of eighty.[6]
Coolidge's family had deep roots in New England. His earliest American ancestor, John Coolidge, emigrated from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, England, around 1630 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts.[7] Another ancestor, Edmund Rice, arrived at Watertown in 1638. Coolidge's great-great-grandfather, also named John Coolidge, was an American military officer in the Revolutionary War and one of the first selectmen of the town of Plymouth Notch.[8] His grandfather, Calvin Galusha Coolidge, served in the Vermont House of Representatives.[9] Most of Coolidge's ancestors were farmers. Other prominent Coolidges, architect Charles Allerton Coolidge, General Charles Austin Coolidge, and diplomat Archibald Cary Coolidge among them, were descended from branches of the family that had remained in Massachusetts.[7] Coolidge's grandmother Sarah Almeda Brewer had two famous first cousins: Arthur Brown, a United States Senator from Utah, and Olympia Brown, a women's suffragist. It is through Sarah Brewer that Coolidge believed that he inherited American Indian blood, but this descent has never been established by modern genealogists.[10] Fellow Massachusetts politicians, U.S. Senator Marcus A. Coolidgeand Lieutenant Governor Arthur W. Coolidge, were also distant relatives.
Early career and marriage[edit]
Western Massachusetts lawyer[edit]
Coolidge attended Black River Academy and then Amherst College, where he joined the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta.[11] At his father's urging, Coolidge moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, after graduating to take up the practice of law. Avoiding the costly alternative of attending a law school, Coolidge followed the more common practice of the time, apprenticing with a local law firm, Hammond & Field, and reading law with them. John C. Hammond and Henry P. Field, both Amherst graduates, introduced Coolidge to the law practice in the county seat of Hampshire County. In 1897, Coolidge was admitted to the bar, becoming a country lawyer.[12] With his savings and a small inheritance from his grandfather, Coolidge was able to open his own law office in Northampton in 1898. He practiced transactional law, believing that he served his clients best by staying out of court. As his reputation as a hard-working and diligent attorney grew, local banks and other businesses began to retain his services.[13]
Marriage and family[edit]
In 1905, Coolidge met and married Grace Anna Goodhue, a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf. While Grace was watering flowers outside the school one day in 1903, she happened to look up at the open window of Robert N. Weir's boardinghouse and caught a glimpse of Calvin Coolidge shaving in front of a mirror with nothing on but long underwear and a hat.[14] Coolidge later explained that he wore the hat to keep his unruly red hair out of his eyes while shaving.[14] After a more formal introduction sometime later, the two were quickly attracted to each other.[14] They were married on October 4, 1905, in the parlor of her parents' home in Burlington, Vermont.[15]
They were opposites in personality: she was talkative and fun-loving, while he was quiet and serious.[16] Not long after their marriage, Coolidge handed her a bag with fifty-two pairs of socks in it, all of them full of holes. Grace's reply was "Did you marry me to darn your socks?" Without cracking a smile and with his usual seriousness, Calvin answered, "No, but I find it mighty handy."[17] They had two sons: John, born in 1906, and Calvin, Jr., born in 1908.[18] The marriage was, by most accounts, a happy one.[19][a] As Coolidge wrote in his Autobiography, "We thought we were made for each other. For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces."[21]
Local political office[edit]
City offices[edit]
The Republican Party was dominant in New England in Coolidge's time, and he followed Hammond's and Field's example by becoming active in local politics.[22] Coolidge campaigned locally for Republican presidential candidate William McKinley in 1896, and the next year he was selected to be a member of the Republican City Committee.[22] In 1898, he won election to the City Council of Northampton, placing second in a ward where the top three candidates were elected.[22] The position offered no salary, but it gave Coolidge experience in the political world.[23] In 1899, he declined renomination, running instead for City Solicitor, a position elected by the City Council. He was elected for a one-year term in 1900, and reelected in 1901.[24] This position gave Coolidge more experience as a lawyer, and paid a salary of $600.[24] In 1902, the city council selected a Democrat for city solicitor, and Coolidge returned to an exclusively private practice.[25] Soon thereafter, however, the clerk of courts for the county died, and Coolidge was chosen to replace him. The position paid well, but it barred him from practicing law, so he remained at the job for only one year.[25] The next year, 1904, Coolidge met with his only defeat before the voters, losing an election to the Northampton school board. When told that some of his neighbors voted against him because he had no children in the schools he would govern, Coolidge replied "Might give me time!"[25]
State legislator and mayor[edit]
In 1906, the local Republican committee nominated Coolidge for election to the state House of Representatives. He won a close victory over the incumbent Democrat, and reported to Bostonfor the 1907 session of the Massachusetts General Court.[26] In his freshman term, Coolidge served on minor committees and, although he usually voted with the party, was known as aProgressive Republican, voting in favor of such measures as women's suffrage and the direct election of Senators.[27] Throughout his time in Boston, Coolidge found himself allied primarily with the western Winthrop Murray Crane faction of the state Republican Party, as against the Henry Cabot Lodge-dominated eastern faction.[28] In 1907, he was elected to a second term. In the 1908 session, Coolidge was more outspoken, but he was still not one of the leaders in the legislature.[29]
Instead of vying for another term in the State House, Coolidge returned home to his growing family and ran for mayor of Northampton when the incumbent Democrat retired. He was well liked in the town, and defeated his challenger by a vote of 1,597 to 1,409.[30] During his first term (1910 to 1911), he increased teachers' salaries and retired some of the city's debt while still managing to effect a slight tax decrease.[31] He was renominated in 1911, and defeated the same opponent by a slightly larger margin.[32]
In 1911, the State Senator for the Hampshire County area retired and encouraged Coolidge to run for his seat for the 1912 session. He defeated his Democratic opponent by a large margin.[33]At the start of that term, Coolidge was selected to be chairman of a committee to arbitrate the "Bread and Roses" strike by the workers of the American Woolen Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts.[b] After two tense months, the company agreed to the workers' demands in a settlement the committee proposed.[34] The other major issue for Massachusetts Republicans that year was the party split between the progressive wing, which favored Theodore Roosevelt, and the conservative wing, which favored William Howard Taft. Although he favored some progressive measures, Coolidge refused to leave the Republican party.[35] When the new Progressive Party declined to run a candidate in his state senate district, Coolidge won reelection against his Democratic opponent by an increased margin.[35]
The 1913 session was less eventful, and Coolidge's time was mostly spent on the railroad committee, of which he was the chairman.[36] Coolidge intended to retire after the 1913 session, as two terms were the norm, but when the President of the State Senate, Levi H. Greenwood, considered running for Lieutenant Governor, Coolidge decided to run again for the Senate in the hopes of being elected as its presiding officer.[37] Although Greenwood later decided to run for reelection to the Senate, he was defeated and Coolidge was elected, with Crane's help, as the President of a closely divided Senate.[38] After his election in January 1914, Coolidge delivered a speech entitled Have Faith in Massachusetts, which summarized his philosophy of government. It was later published in a book, and frequently quoted.[39]
| Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation. |
| Have Faith in Massachusetts as delivered by Calvin Coolidge to the Massachusetts State Senate, 1914.[39] |
Coolidge's speech was well received, and he attracted some admirers on its account.[40] Towards the end of the term, many of them were proposing his name for nomination to lieutenant governor. After winning reelection to the Senate by an increased margin in the 1914 elections, Coolidge was reelected unanimously to be President of the Senate.[41] As the 1915 session ended, Coolidge's supporters, led by fellow Amherst alumnus Frank Stearns, encouraged him again to run for lieutenant governor. This time, he accepted their advice.[42]
Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts[edit]
Coolidge entered the primary election for lieutenant governor and was nominated to run alongside gubernatorial candidate Samuel W. McCall. Coolidge was the leading vote-getter in the Republican primary, and balanced the Republican ticket by adding a western presence to McCall's eastern base of support.[43] McCall and Coolidge won the 1915 election, with Coolidge defeating his opponent by more than 50,000 votes.[44]
Coolidge's duties as lieutenant governor were few; in Massachusetts, the lieutenant governor does not preside over the state Senate, although Coolidge did become an ex officio member of the governor's cabinet.[45] As a full-time elected official, Coolidge no longer practiced law after 1916, though his family continued to live in Northampton.[46] McCall and Coolidge were both reelected in 1916 and again in 1917 (At the time, both offices were held for one-year terms). When McCall decided that he would not stand for a fourth term, Coolidge announced his intention to run for governor.[47]
1918 election[edit]
Coolidge was unopposed for the Republican nomination for Governor of Massachusetts in 1918. He and his running mate, Channing Cox, a Boston lawyer and Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, ran on the previous administration's record: fiscal conservatism, a vague opposition to Prohibition, support for women's suffrage, and support for American involvement in World War I.[48] The issue of the war proved divisive, especially among Irish- andGerman-Americans.[49] Coolidge was elected by a margin of 16,773 votes over his opponent, Richard H. Long, in the smallest margin of victory of any of his state-wide campaigns.[50]
Boston police strike[edit]
Main article: Boston Police Strike
In 1919, in response to rumors that policemen of the Boston Police Department planned to form a union, Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis issued a statement saying that such a move would not be tolerated. In August of that year, the American Federation of Labor issued a charter to the Boston Police Union.[51] Curtis said the union's leaders were insubordinate and planned to relieve them of duty, but he said that he would suspend the sentence if the union was dissolved by September 4.[52] The mayor of Boston, Andrew Peters, convinced Curtis to delay his action for a few days, but Curtis ultimately suspended the union leaders on September 8.[53]
| "Your assertion that the Commissioner was wrong cannot justify the wrong of leaving the city unguarded. That furnished the opportunity; the criminal element furnished the action.There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time. ... I am equally determined to defend the sovereignty of Massachusetts and to maintain the authority and jurisdiction over her public officers where it has been placed by the Constitution and laws of her people." (emphasis added) |
| Telegram from Governor Calvin Coolidge to Samuel Gompers September 14, 1919.[54] |
The following day, about three-quarters of the policemen in Boston went on strike.[55][c] Coolidge had observed the situation throughout the conflict, but he had not yet intervened. That night and the next, there was sporadic violence and rioting in the lawless city.[56] Peters, concerned about sympathy strikes, had called up some units of the Massachusetts National Guardstationed in the Boston area and relieved Curtis of duty.[57] Coolidge, furious that the mayor had called out state guard units, finally acted.[58] He called up more units of the National Guard, restored Curtis to office, and took personal control of the police force.[59]Curtis proclaimed that all of the strikers were fired from their jobs, and Coolidge called for a new police force to be recruited.[60]
That night Coolidge received a telegram from AFL leader Samuel Gompers. "Whatever disorder has occurred", Gompers wrote, "is due to Curtis's order in which the right of the policemen has been denied…"[61] Coolidge publicly answered Gompers's telegram with the response that would launch him into the national consciousness (quoted, above left).[61] Newspapers across the nation picked up on Coolidge's statement and he became the newest hero to opponents of the strike. In the midst of the First Red Scare, many Americans were terrified of the spread of communist revolution, like those that had taken place in Russia, Hungary, andGermany. While Coolidge had lost some friends among organized labor, conservatives across the nation had seen a rising star.[62]Although he usually acted with deliberation, the Boston police strike gave him a national reputation as a man who would take decisive action,[63] and as a strict enforcer of law and order.[64]
1919 election[edit]
Coolidge and Cox were renominated for their respective offices in 1919. By this time Coolidge's supporters (especially Stearns) had publicized his actions in the Police Strike around the state and the nation and some of Coolidge's speeches were published in book form.[39] He faced the same opponent as in 1918, Richard Long, but this time Coolidge defeated him by 125,101 votes, more than seven times his margin of victory from a year earlier.[d] His actions in the police strike, combined with the massive electoral victory, led to suggestions that Coolidge run for President in 1920.[66]
Legislation and vetoes as governor[edit]
By the time Coolidge was inaugurated on January 2, 1919, the First World War had ended, and Coolidge pushed the legislature to give a $100 bonus to Massachusetts veterans. He also signed a bill reducing the work week for women and children from fifty-four hours to forty-eight, saying, "We must humanize the industry, or the system will break down."[67] He signed into law a budget that kept the tax rates the same, while trimming four million dollars from expenditures, thus allowing the state to retire some of its debt.[68]
Coolidge also wielded the veto pen as governor. His most publicized veto was of a bill that would have increased legislators' pay by 50%.[69] Although Coolidge was personally opposed to Prohibition, he vetoed a bill in May 1920 that would have allowed the sale of beer or wine of 2.75% alcohol or less, in Massachusetts in violation of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. "Opinions and instructions do not outmatch the Constitution," he said in his veto message, "Against it, they are void."[70]
Vice Presidency[edit]
1920 election[edit]
Main article: United States presidential election, 1920
At the 1920 Republican National Convention most of the delegates were selected by state party conventions, not primaries. As such, the field was divided among many local favorites.[71] Coolidge was one such candidate, and while he placed as high as sixth in the voting, the powerful party bosses never considered him a serious candidate. After ten ballots, the delegates settled on Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio as their nominee for President.[72] When the time came to select a Vice Presidential nominee, the party bosses had also made a decision on who they would nominate: Senator Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin.[73] A delegate from Oregon, Wallace McCamant, having read Have Faith in Massachusetts, proposed Coolidge for Vice President instead.[73] The suggestion caught on quickly, and Coolidge found himself unexpectedly nominated.[74]
The Democrats nominated another Ohioan, James M. Cox, for President and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for Vice President. The question of the United States joining the League of Nations was a major issue in the campaign, as was the unfinished legacy of Progressivism.[75] Harding ran a "front-porch" campaign from his home in Marion, Ohio, but Coolidge took to the campaign trail in the Upper South, New York, and New England.[75]On November 2, 1920, Harding and Coolidge were victorious in a landslide, winning more than 60 percent of the popular vote, including every state outside the South.[75] They also won in Tennessee, the first time a Republican ticket had won a Southern state since Reconstruction.[75]
"Silent Cal"[edit]
The Vice-Presidency did not carry many official duties, but Coolidge was invited by President Harding to attend cabinet meetings, making him the first Vice President to do so.[76] He gave speeches around the country, but none were especially noteworthy.[77]
As Vice-President, Coolidge and his vivacious wife Grace were invited to quite a few parties, where the legend of "Silent Cal" was born. It is from this time that most of the jokes and anecdotes involving Coolidge originate. Although Coolidge was known to be a skilled and effective public speaker, in private he was a man of few words and was commonly referred to as "Silent Cal." An apocryphal story has it that Dorothy Parker, seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." He replied, "You lose."[78] It was also Parker who, upon learning that Coolidge had died, reportedly remarked, "How can they tell?"[79] Coolidge often seemed uncomfortable among fashionable Washington society; when asked why he continued to attend so many of their dinner parties, he replied, "Got to eat somewhere."[80] Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a leading Republican wit, underscored Coolidge's silence and his dour personality: "When he wished he were elsewhere, he pursed his lips, folded his arms, and said nothing. He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle."[81]
As President, Coolidge's reputation as a quiet man continued. "The words of a President have an enormous weight," he would later write, "and ought not to be used indiscriminately."[82]Coolidge was aware of his stiff reputation; indeed, he cultivated it. "I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President," he once told Ethel Barrymore, "and I think I will go along with them."[83] Some historians would later suggest that Coolidge's image was created deliberately as a campaign tactic,[84] while others believe his withdrawn and quiet behavior to be natural, deepening after the death of his son in 1924.[85]
Presidency 1923–1929[edit]
Succession to the Presidency[edit]
Main article: First inauguration of Calvin Coolidge
On August 2, 1923, President Harding died suddenly while on a speaking tour of the western United States. Vice-President Coolidge was in Vermont visiting his family home, which had neither electricity nor a telephone, when he received word by messenger of Harding's death.[86] Coolidge dressed, said a prayer, and came downstairs to greet the reporters who had assembled.[86] His father, a notary public, administered the oath of office in the family's parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp at 2:47 am on August 3, 1923; the new President Coolidge then went back to bed. He returned to Washington the next day, and was re-sworn in by Justice Adolph A. Hoehling, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, as there was some confusion over whether a state notary public had the authority to administer the presidential oath.[87]
Finishing Harding's term[edit]
The nation did not know what to make of its new President; Coolidge had not stood out in the Harding administration and many had expected him to be replaced on the ballot in 1924.[88] He appointed C. Bascom Slemp, a Virginia Congressman and experienced federal politician to work jointly with Edward T. Clark, a Massachusetts Republican organizer whom he retained from his vice presidential staff, as Secretaries to the President (a position equivalent to the modern White House Chief of Staff).[89] Although a few of Harding's cabinet appointees were scandal-tarred, Coolidge announced that he would not demand any of their resignations, believing that since the people had elected Harding, he should carry on Harding's presidency, at least until the next election.[89]
He addressed Congress when it reconvened on December 6, 1923, giving a speech that echoed many of Harding's themes, including immigration restriction and the need for the government to arbitrate the coal strikes then ongoing in Pennsylvania.[90] Coolidge's speech was the first Presidential speech to be broadcast to the nation over the radio.[91] The Washington Naval Treaty was proclaimed just one month into Coolidge's term, and was generally well received in the country.[89] In May 1924, the World War I veterans' World War Adjusted Compensation Act or "Bonus Bill" was passed over his veto.[92] Coolidge signed the Immigration Act later that year, which was aimed at restricting southern and eastern European immigration, though he appended a signing statement expressing his unhappiness with the bill's specific exclusion of Japanese immigrants.[93] Just before the Republican Convention began, Coolidge signed into law the Revenue Act of 1924, which decreased personal income tax rates while increasing the estate tax, and creating a gift tax to reinforce the transfer tax system.[94]
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