Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  In the autumn of 1890, Calvin traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts, to take the entrance examination for Amherst. He had a cold which got progressively worse as the day of the test approached, and it may have affected his performance. In any event, he could not complete the examination, and returned home, where the illness persisted into early winter.

  At Sherman’s suggestion, he entered St. Johnsbury Academy, a leading preparatory school some ninety miles from Plymouth. After two months there the headmaster was willing to certify that he merited admission to Amherst—which in those years sufficed. So on September 17, 1891, little more than a week after his father remarried, Calvin entered Amherst.

  At the time, Amherst was a small, well-regarded school, drawing most of its students from the region. The enrollment was 336, of which 259 were from New England and New York, and almost all were sons of professionals or businessmen. In this period few expected to attend any institution of higher learning. In 1890 only 16,700 of 63 million Americans were awarded bachelors’ degrees.

  The college was a respected institution, but hardly an academic powerhouse. Rather, it concentrated on teaching in small classes. The student–faculty ratio in those days was ten to one, which meant the students not only knew their teachers well, but more important, received individual attention.

  The nature of academia was changing in the 1890s. Though Amherst was more immune to the changes occurring than were the major universities, the school Calvin Coolidge entered was somewhat different from the one George Sherman had graduated from ten years earlier. In Sherman’s time most graduates became teachers or ministers; by 1890, many more aspired to be lawyers or businessmen. Among the major alterations taking place in American higher education was the curriculum. While the classics still held sway in the 1890s, philosophy, Latin, and Greek—the hallmarks of an educated man—were being replaced by the social sciences. Even at Amherst, students were starting to go to schools in order to make “contacts.” When Sherman attended, about half the students belonged to fraternities; by 1890 the figure was closer to 80 percent.

  Rather than take a room in the ramshackle dormitories, Coolidge moved into a rooming house not far from the school. He intended to remain there until he was pledged by one of the fraternities, after which he could live there. Since there were nine fraternities for the small student body, it would be difficult not to be rushed. But Coolidge was passed over, and the disappointment showed. “I don’t seem to get acquainted fast,” he wrote to his father in October, and, as had been the case at Black River Academy, he soon became homesick. “A drabber, more colorless boy I never knew than Calvin Coolidge when he came to Amherst,” wrote one of his fellow students to Coolidge biographer Claude Fuess. “He was a perfect enigma to us all. He attended class regularly, but did not show any great interest.”

  There really was no mystery to this behavior. Coolidge, shy, withdrawn, awkward, and insecure, didn’t know how to meet or talk with girls. He couldn’t dance or make small talk. He certainly didn’t know how to flirt. If he had a girlfriend or if any of the girls at nearby Smith, Mount Holyoke, or some other school were the objects of his affections, we don’t know of it. He didn’t drink in his freshman year, and seldom smoked. And he was a grind, at a time when this was neither admired nor emulated.

  That first year came and went, and Coolidge returned home for the summer to help with the work around the farm and house. The sophomore year was more of the same. Coolidge derived satisfaction from his courses, especially those dealing with the classics, and his grades were good if not outstanding. He was getting the education he wanted, but not much more.

  Things seemed to take a turn for the better in the spring of 1892. A chapter of Phi Gamma Delta, a large national fraternity, was going to be established at Amherst, and two of the founders invited Coolidge to join. Coolidge was customarily cautious. “I don’t know but I would,” was his reply. But nothing happened because the founders didn’t follow up. He finally received a firm invitation in his last year at Amherst. This he accepted quite willingly, perhaps the natural reaction of a reticent young man eager to become part of a larger group. But Coolidge didn’t move into the fraternity house; he remained a boarder for the remainder of his college career.

  Coolidge was never a joiner. Even though it would have been useful politically and professionally, as an adult he never became a Mason, an Elk, a Red Man, an Odd Fellow, or a member of any other fraternal organization. Though he was always a religious person and a nominal Congregationalist, he was not a regular churchgoer either. For his entire life he was a strong, even passionate, believer in individualism. When asked to identify himself, he usually said he was a Republican, and a regular one at that. This was the extent of his willingness to submerge his identity into a large organization.

  Those who consider the later Coolidge a somber, inarticulate president will be surprised that during his college years he became known on campus as a public speaker. After being one of the losers in a traditional footrace, he was obliged to deliver a short speech and contribute toward an oyster stew and beer dinner for the winners. Coolidge’s speech was a success, and he was on his way toward distinction as a wit and speaker. Encouraged, he participated in debates, and in his junior year he was the cowinner of the J. Wesley Ladd prize for the best oration. Now his letters home were peppered with enthusiasm regarding his victories in debates. In 1894 he wrote:I had a debate yesterday as to whether a presidential or parliamentary form of government is the better. I had the parliamentary side, which is not particularly popular inasmuch as it is really to show England’s form of government is better than our own, and I spoke against Pratt of Brooklyn, who is a very good debater, being captain of our football team. But the parliamentary side won by a large majority when the question was decided.

  Coolidge was at Amherst during one of the nation’s most severe depressions. The year after he entered the college the long, violent Homestead strike took place, during which the manager of the works, Henry Clay Frick, barely escaped assassination. In his junior year, there was a major financial panic on Wall Street, various bank closings, and the heating up of the drive for a bimetallic currency. When Coolidge was a junior, in 1894—the year of the historic Pullman Strike in Chicago—more than 750,000 workers went on strike. The year he graduated, the United States government had to be bailed out by J.P. Morgan, who narrowly saved the nation’s credit.

  Surely Coolidge must have thought about these issues, but his letters and future writings offer no hint of it. He was against bimetallism, but what of his other convictions while a student? True, Coolidge was a charter member of the Amherst Republican Club, but this was not surprising; almost all Amherst students were Republicans. This had also been the case at B.R.A., where seventy students supported the Republican Benjamin Harrison against nineteen for Democrat Grover Cleveland in the 1892 presidential election.

  The isolation of western Massachusetts from the developing industrial economy of the period helps explain Coolidge’s silence on the great issues of the time. Chicago and Pittsburgh had their strikes, but not Plymouth or Northampton. The depression of the 1890s reached these places, but not with the impact it had in the industrial and commercial cities. Wall Street, too, seemed quite a distance from Amherst, especially since at the time only the wealthy had bonds and only speculators played with stocks, which excluded the parents of Amherst students.

  Coolidge’s grades at Amherst during his first three years were good although not outstanding, but this too was about to change. By then he had developed a liking for modern languages, especially French and Italian, and for modern history, political science, and philosophy. In his senior year he placed among the Hyde Fifteen, the top orators in his class, and an intercollegiate jury awarded him the gold medal for his essay on the American Revolution.

  In Coolidge’s junior and senior years he took courses with two of Amherst’s most popular teachers, Anson Daniel Morse and Charles Garman, who affected him profoundly. Recalling t
hese teachers, Coolidge later wrote:As I look back upon the college I am more and more impressed with the strength of its faculty, with their power for good. Perhaps it has men now with a broader preliminary training, though they then were profound scholars, perhaps it has men of keener intellects, though they then were very exact in their reasoning, but the great distinguishing mark of all of them were that they were men of character. Their words carried conviction because we were compelled to believe in the men who uttered them. They had the power not merely to advise but literally to instruct their students.

  Morse, who taught history, was a specialist on the subject of political parties, which to him “were by far the most important of the agencies through which the crude first thoughts and blind first feelings of the people are transformed into rational thinking and feeling, which is public opinion.” Morse hewed to the traditional Whig interpretation of history as a steady march of progress and expansion of liberty, from barbarism to civilization. “The whole course was a thesis on good citizenship and good government,” Coolidge wrote in his Autobiography. “Those who took it came to a clearer comprehension not only of their rights and liberties but of their duties and responsibilities.”

  While Morse’s influence on Coolidge’s development was important, that of Garman was even more profound. This was so not only for Coolidge, but also for generations of Amherst students. Garman was one of those rare teachers capable of encouraging students to think independently, while through force of intellect and personality at the same time able to inspire them to accept his philosophy of life and religious ideals. To his students, Garman was a prophet and guide. He had such a profound influence on Coolidge that it is impossible to understand the sources of Coolidge’s philosophy without referring to Garman.

  Garman was the son of a Congregationalist minister, and he took his Christianity seriously, if not literally—for a while he was enrolled at Yale Divinity School. Garman attended Amherst and returned to his alma mater after serving for a while at other schools. He was named to the Amherst faculty in 1882, when he was thirty-two years old, and was in his prime when Coolidge was a student. At different times he taught mathematics, natural sciences, and philosophy, which in that period encompassed psychology as well, but his most famous course was an eclectic combination of philosophy and religion, which appeared to have been derived from American transcendental thinkers.

  Garman was unique in that he had a national reputation for his work in the classroom, and not his research and publications. “We looked upon Garman as a man who walked with God,” Coolidge wrote. Fellow student Dwight Morrow, who was to carve out a career as a banker and diplomat, and was considered a star student, wrote to Garman in 1894, “I don’t believe, Professor, that you can fully appreciate what a strong hold you have on Amherst today. It isn’t only with the senior class with whom you come into contact. Underclassmen go to the seniors for advice continually because they know the seniors have something which they have not.” Another student, Charles Burnett, wrote that “Garman made us feel the tremendous importance of philosophy; and we became docile learners. A recalcitrant among his students was a rarity, and any opposition seemed outrageous.” To which Coolidge could add, “It has always seemed to me that all our other studies were in the nature of a preparation for the course in philosophy.” From this it might seem Garman created acolytes, but this wasn’t so. Many students testified to his unwillingness to come to conclusions, to accept nothing on authority, and to be skeptical—even of himself.

  Coolidge spoke and wrote of Garman on many occasions, but usually in generalities.

  Ever since I was in Amherst College I have remembered how Garman told his class in philosophy that if they would go along with events and have the courage and industry to hold to the main stream, without being washed ashore by the immaterial cross currents, they would some day be men of power. He meant that we should try to guide ourselves by general principles and not get lost in particulars. That may sound like mysticism, but it is only the mysticism that envelopes every great truth. One of the greatest mysteries in the world is the success that lies in conscientious work.

  On one occasion, however, Coolidge was more specific about what he had taken away from those philosophy classes, quoting his teacher at length:Our late Dr. Garman recognized this limitation in one of his lectures, where he says: “Critics have noticed three stages in the development of human civilization. First: the let-alone policy; every man to look out for number one. This is the age of selfishness. Second: the opposite pole of thinking; every man to do somebody else’s work for him. This is the dry rot of sentimentality that feeds tramps and elect laws that excite the indignation of Herbert Spencer. But the third stage is represented by our formula: every man must render and receive the best possible service, except in the case of inequality, and there the strong must help the weak to help themselves; only on this condition is help given. This is the true interpretation of the life of Christ. On the first basis He would have remained in heaven and let the earth take care of itself. On the second basis He would have come to earth with His hands full of gold and silver treasures satisfying every want that unfortunate humanity could have devised. But on the third basis He comes to earth in the form of a servant who is at the same time a master commanding His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him; it is sovereignty through service as opposed to slavery through service. He refuses to make the world wealthy, but He offers to help them make themselves wealthy with the true riches which shall be a hundredfold more, even in this life, than that which was offered them by any former system.”

  Such thoughts would inform Coolidge’s actions as politician. Perhaps he would have come to these conclusions without Garman, for these kinds of ideas were in the air at the time. Andrew Carnegie said as much when he said he opposed charity and supported philanthropy, as did many more leading figures. As it happened, Coolidge obtained his strong belief in service to humanity and in the barrenness of materialism via Garman.

  Garman used no textbook, but rather wrote essays on the subjects he covered in class, ran them off on his own printing press, and distributed them to students, with the proviso they be returned. He did not publish any of them, although some were collected and privately printed by his wife after his death. Garman utilized the Socratic method in his teaching. And he might be considered a Hegelian, in that he viewed history as a struggle between opposing forces out of which mankind and the individual achieve progress. In his teaching he liked to set up ideas and then demolish them, confusing his students but at the same time forcing them to think. Among his favorite sayings were: “Carry all questions back to fundamental principles,” “The question how answers the question what,” “Weight the evidence,” and “Define your terms.” According to his students, he was skilled in nudging students into debates, which he refereed. Sometimes the students would continue their discussions long after the class was over, even well into the night. In a letter to a student, he wrote:Each man must solve his own problems if he is to perfect himself. Others can only furnish the appropriate conditions for him to work in. Now that at once makes the unit of our thought not the race but the individual. It requires eternity for the individual to work out his own perfection…. The individual is the only conceivable unit of thought.

  In other words, Garman believed everyone had to work out his own destiny, and could not permit others to think for or control his life or thoughts. He emphasized the importance of work, and the doctrine of service to one’s fellow man. Beyond that, Garman stressed spirituality. One historian of Amherst wrote of him, “Every student, he believed, must some time make a choice between a spiritual and a material world. That was the critical point in his life.”

  There were strains of this in Coolidge’s statements and actions after he left Amherst, but there was also a shrewd political sense that could not have derived from a man like Garman. Like many of Garman’s students, while he idolized the man and teacher, he was not an acolyte of the philosophy,
but rather of his methodology and religious impulses. In the end, he came away affected by Garman’s personal convictions, which included stress on character and honesty, progress, and a belief in Christian ideals. These thoughts would appear in many of his state papers while governor and president. Of Garman, Coolidge wrote:His course was a demonstration of the existence of a personal God, of our power to know Him, of the Divine immanence, and of the complete dependence of the universe on Him as the Creator and Father “in which we live and move and have our being.” Every reaction in the universe is a manifestation of His Presence.

  He added, “To Garman was given a power which took his class up into the high mountain of spiritual life and left them alone with God. What he revealed to us of the nature of God and man will stand. Against it ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail.’”

  Coolidge did well in that last year at Amherst. While hardly a leader or celebrity, at least he was recognized as intelligent, humorous, and of “sound judgment.” He had honed his convictions, in part through contact with Garman and Morse, but, more than he might have known, from Plymouth Notch and his family. Amherst merely annealed what already was there and enabled Coolidge to mature, to recognize his innate qualities. No longer did he talk and write about returning to Plymouth to work on the farm or in the store. In January 1895 he wrote to his father about a change in plans: “I have not decided what I shall do next year, shall probably go into the store or go to law school at Boston or New York.” Coolidge was offering his father a way out. Law school would be expensive; if John Coolidge didn’t want to pay for professional school, his son would be willing to return to Plymouth Notch. But he knew his father well. John Coolidge wasn’t going to permit his only surviving child to wither away in a store.