Presidents: Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge became president upon the death of Warren G. Harding. Coolidge was a man of few words and often referred to as “Silent Cal”.

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born on July 4, 1872, the only president to be born on Independence Day. He was the oldest of two children to John Calvin and Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge, Sr. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was twelve years old.

Coolidge attended Black River Academy and then Amherst College, where he distinguished himself in the debating class, as a senior joined the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta and graduated cum laude.

Coolidge apprenticed at a local law firm and was admitted to the bar in 1897. The following year he opened his own law firm.

In 1898, he won election to the City Council of Northampton and became involved in the Republican party. “In 1904, Coolidge suffered his sole defeat at the ballot box, 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!””

In 1905, he met Grace Anna Goodhue. The two married on October 4, 1905. They had two sons, John and Calvin Jr.

Coolidge was known for his frugality and as a man of few words.

In 1906, he won a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1910, he became major of Northampton. In 1912, he became State Senator. In 1914, he was “reelected unanimously to be President of the Senate.”

In 1915, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and in 1918, he won the election as Governor of Massachusetts. “His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action.”

In 1920, he was nominated as the running mate to presidential nominee Warren G. Harding. The team won the election.

President Harding invited Coolidge to attend cabinet meetings, making him the first vice president to do so.

During his time as Vice President, Colidge became known as Silent Cal. “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”. A possibly apocryphal story has it a matron, seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, “I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.” He replied, “You lose.””

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.

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.”

On August 2, 1923, President Harding unexpectedly died. Coolidge was at his family home in Vermont. He received word by messenger, as they had no electricity or phone.

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 a.m. on August 3, 1923; President Coolidge then went back to bed. He returned to Washington the next day, and was sworn in again to make sure there was no question about the authority of a notary public administering the presidential oath.

Coolidge initially retained all of Harding’s cabinet appointees. When the Teapot Dome Scandal broke later that year, he waited for the Senate investigations to take place, wanting to provide every presumption of innocence. He did clean house as necessary in the affair.

On December 6, 1923, he addressed Congress, which became the first presidential speech broadcast over the radio.

In June 1924, he won the nomination of the Republican Convention. Tragedy soon followed when his youngest son, Calvin Jr, who was also his favorite son, had a blister that grew into blood poisoning. He died on July 6, 1924.

Coolidge won the 1924 election. During his presidency the ” United States experienced a period of rapid economic growth known as the “Roaring Twenties.”

While on vacation, Coolidge surprisingly issued a terse statement that he would not seek a second full term as president: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” After allowing the reporters to take that in, Coolidge elaborated. “If I take another term, I will be in the White House till 1933 … Ten years in Washington is longer than any other man has had it—too long!” Even his wife did not known he was not seeking re-election until he announced it.

In his autobiography, Coolidge wrote of his son’s death “When he went, the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.” This in itself may be one reason he decided not to seek re-election.

Coolidge was reluctant to endore Herbert Hoover as the Republican nominee, but had no desire to split the party nomination. He said of Hoover “for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad.”

Upon leaving the presidency, Coolidge retired to a rented house before returning to The Beeches, their home in Northampton. He often enjoyed boating. In 1929 he published his autobiography and wrote a syndicated newspaper column “Calvin Coolidge Says” from 1930 to 1931.

During this period, he also served as chairman of the non-partisan Railroad Commission, as honorary president of the American Foundation for the Blind, as a director of New York Life Insurance Company, as president of the American Antiquarian Society, and as a trustee of Amherst College.

His party longed for him to run for president again in 1932, but he refused.

Calvin Coolidge died at The Beeches on January 5, 1933. Shortly before his death, Coolidge confided to an old friend: “I feel I no longer fit in with these times.” He is buried at the Plymouth Notch Cemetery, Plymouth Notch, Vermont.

His beloved grace outlived him by 24 years and was buried beside him.

Coolidge was the only president to have his portrait on a coin during his lifetime, the Sesquicentennial of American Independence Half Dollar, minted in 1926.

Coolidge made use of the new medium of radio and made radio history several times while president. He made himself available to reporters and met with them more regularly than any other president, his 2nd inauguration was the first presidential inauguration broadcast on radio, he was the first president to address Congress while broadcast on the radio, he signed the Radio Act of 1927 regulating the new creation, and used the Phonofilm sound-on-film process several times, making him the first president to appear on sound film.

As a Coolidge biographer wrote, “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.”

President Coolidge was cited as President Ronald Reagan’s favorite 20th Century President. He remains strong among most political conservatives.