Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  Even so, the expense was worth considering. In this period one could become a lawyer by entering a law firm as an unpaid clerk, reading for the law, and then taking the bar examination. This was completely respectable, the way Abraham Lincoln had become a lawyer. But by the 1890s, given the professionalization of law, those taking this route could not hope for an exalted position in a major city. Still, if Coolidge intended to practice in Plymouth or some similar place, reading law was an inexpensive way of entering the profession.

  At first, Coolidge rejected this notion. He had been spoiled by contacts with Garman and Morse and yearned for the stimulation afforded by contact with superior intellects. This emerges in his letter to John Coolidge of June 19, and also in the cagey way he seemed to be advocating law school:I am surprised that the lawyers do not know more about law schools. Of course if they do not know they are not in a position to judge. No doubt most of them are biased by their personal experience. But as a matter of fact the best law offices will not take in a man to do office work, such as the ordinary student does in the country office, unless he had been to a law school.

  Coolidge had decided to compete for selection as Grove Orator, the graduate selected to deliver a humorous speech at graduation with many references to students and faculty, complete with heckling, and won by a vote of 52 to 18. Now he would be one of the six men to speak at the Class Day celebration, clearly indicating that he had overcome the obscurity of his freshman year.

  John and Carrie Coolidge traveled to Amherst for the graduation ceremonies that spring, and they heard the Grove Oration, which was a big success. Coolidge delivered it with a straight face and a monotone, which brought howls of laughter from his fellow students. Writing of this in his Autobiography, Coolidge took care to note that “While my effort was not without some success, I very soon learned that making fun of people in a public way was not a good method to secure friends, or likely to lead to much advancement, and I have scrupulously avoided it.”

  Even so, the Grove Oration marked a high point in Coolidge’s college career, and it would have an important impact on his future as well. In the audience were many Amherst graduates, some with local distinction. Henry P. Field was one of these, and he was quite impressed with the speech.

  Coolidge graduated cum laude, missing Phi Beta Kappa by a hair. Dwight Morrow was named by his fellow students the member of the class most likely to become famous, and later Morrow claimed he had voted for Coolidge—but this seems unlikely. Jay Stocking, another class leader, offered this assessment of the Calvin Coolidge of 1895:I was not one of those who expected Coolidge to have any spectacular career. I did not think he would become famous. The last place in the world I should have expected him to succeed was politics. He lacked small talk, and he was never known, I suspect, to slap a man on the back. He rarely laughed. He was anything but a mixer. The few who got in personal contact with him had to go the whole way.

  Stocking couldn’t fathom that the wonder of Coolidge was that he accomplished all he did without the usual trappings of politicians. He meant to be accepted on his own terms, and so he was.

  At that graduation were several young men destined for success. In addition to Morrow, there was Herbert Pratt, who became president of Standard Oil of New Jersey; George Olds, future president of Amherst; and Harlan Stone, the future attorney general and Supreme Court justice—named to both posts by President Coolidge. Coolidge could not have hoped to achieve such distinction. He might have had the making of a successful country attorney, drawing up wills, handling some estates, poring over real estate transactions, and, perhaps, serving as a selectman, or even going to Boston as a member of the legislature. But more?

  After the ceremony was over, Coolidge and Morrow went for a last walk together and talked of their futures. By then both had decided on the law. Morrow said he thought he would go to Pittsburgh or some other city with a large law school. As it turned out, he clerked in a Pittsburgh law firm for a year before enrolling in Columbia Law School. Coolidge said this was not for him—no Coolidge had ever gone west. “Well, where do you think you will go?” asked Morrow. Coolidge paused, and then replied, “Northampton is the nearest court house.”

  Characteristically, Coolidge didn’t let on to the extent of his ambitions. On August 30, shortly after he graduated, Coolidge wrote to former Vermont Governor William P. Dillingham, who was one of the major reform politicians of the region, and was then practicing law in Montpelier, asking whether there might be an opening in his office. Dillingham was out of town and couldn’t respond, so Coolidge had to find another place to read the law. Had Dillingham responded promptly, Coolidge might have wound up as a fine lawyer or politician in Vermont, and given his proclivities, might even have become governor. But he wouldn’t have been in Boston in 1919, a watershed in his life.

  One of his classmates, Ernest Hardy, had found a slot at the law firm of Richard Irwin in Northampton, and he knew the partners at the offices of John C. Hammond and Henry P. Field, both Amherst graduates—and, of course, Field had heard the Grove Oration. They offered Coolidge the opportunity to read law with them, and he accepted. Hammond, the senior partner, had the reputation of being the best lawyer in town, while Field, whom Coolidge later characterized as “a man of engaging personality and polish,” dabbled in politics and was then an alderman.

  Hammond & Field handled wills and estates, real estate transfers, and minor suits. Whenever possible they tried to settle disputes out of court; reputations for fairness and evenhandedness, not for being litigious, counted in 1895 Northampton. This was in the tradition of none less than Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.” Court appearances in advocacy roles were for “big city lawyers,” not the Hammonds and Fields.

  This suited Coolidge’s personality. He felt uncomfortable making a case for a client to the exclusion of contrary evidence. He had a judicial rather than lawyerly temperament. In his Autobiography, he wrote approvingly of Stephen S. Taft, a Springfield attorney who was “the best lawyer I ever saw,” because “if he was trying a case before a jury he was always the thirteenth juryman, and if a trial was before the court he was always advising the judge.” Coolidge added, “But he did not win these cases.” Paraphrasing Lincoln, Taft told Coolidge, “Young man, when you can settle a case within reason you settle it. You will not make so large a fee out of some one case in that way, but at the end of the year you will have more money and your clients will be much better satisfied.”

  Coolidge’s future was to be in Massachusetts, not Vermont. Not that Northampton was so different from Plymouth. Northampton was closer geographically and culturally to Vermont than it was to Boston.

  Why did Hammond and Field offer Coolidge the spot? Many years later, when Coolidge was president, Field told a writer, “I liked to laugh and Calvin Coolidge was very funny.”

  3

  Law and Politics

  [W. Murray Crane] confirmed my opinion as to the value of a silence which avoids creating a situation where one would otherwise not exist, and the bad taste and the danger of arousing animosities and advertising an opponent by making an attack upon him. In all political affairs he had a wonderful wisdom, and in everything he was preeminently a man of judgment, who was the most disinterested public servant I ever saw and the greatest influence for good government with which I ever came in contact. What would I not have given to have had him by my side when I was president!

  The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

  WHILE HARDLY A METROPOLIS, Northampton was larger than Amherst or Ludlow. In 1895 the city, with a population of 15,000, was the commercial center for the region, to which farmers and inhabitants of smaller places went for supplies and entertainment. Like Amherst, it was a college town, and held Smith, Mount Holyo
ke, and several smaller schools, including the Clarke Institute for the Deaf; education was an important “industry” there.

  Northampton was the kind of place where an ambitious, able lawyer could do well for himself in a modest sort of way, and given interest and ability, expect a fairly decent political career, winding up as, say, a judge. This was probably in the back of Coolidge’s mind. Henry Field had that kind of life, becoming a judge in 1919. Field was interested in local politics, and he urged Coolidge to “get involved.” Coolidge had every intention of doing so. He was diligent, trustworthy, and intelligent, qualities Field noticed even while he must have been disappointed when Coolidge didn’t deliver on the anticipated rib-cracking humor. In referring to Coolidge, he once remarked to Hammond, “I guess we’ve added the Sphinx to our staff.” Yet Field was attracted to Coolidge, as some of his teachers had been. Coolidge had several mentors, and Field was next in line after Garman and before Winthrop Murray Crane. From Field he learned about local politics, and the need to service constituents, as well as how to become a successful small-town lawyer and politician.

  Coolidge read law at Hammond & Field for a little more than a year and a half. In this period he impressed everyone with the way he prepared for all contingencies. In his Autobiography, Coolidge said that one of the first things he did was “to divest myself of the college fashion of long hair.” He was at the office at 8:00 AM and left at 6:00 PM. He read Kent’s Commentaries, prepared writs, deeds, and wills, and did whatever Hammond and Field bid him do.

  My evenings I gave to some of the masters of English composition. I read the speeches of Lord Erskine, of Webster, and Choate. The essays of Macauley interested me much, and the writings of Carlyle and John Fiske I found very stimulating. Some of the orations of Cicero I translated, being especially attached to the defense of his friend the poet Archias, because in it he dwelt on the value and consolation of good literature. I read much in Milton and Shakespeare, and found delight in the shorter poems of Kipling, Field, and Riley.

  Those who recalled Coolidge’s apprenticeship thought that he was dependable and sound, but they didn’t use words like “brilliant” or “imaginative” to describe him. One of his earliest admiring biographers wrote of the beginning of his public career:Two qualities, not extraordinary in themselves but powerfully effective when maintained consistently, explain much of Mr. Coolidge’s success in politics. They are the quality of cold judgment and the quality of doing the work immediately at hand. Neither of these is a magic attribute of character; each can be developed by almost any person. He began their development young, and he persevered.

  Although he was as reserved as ever, he did make some friends, among them Jim Lucey, an Irish-born shoemaker whom he first met while a student at Amherst. When he felt the need for recreation and company, Coolidge would stroll to the shoemaker’s shop, take a seat, and listen to the stories Lucey and his cronies would relate. He would do the same in a local barbershop, and occasionally, he would go to a nearby beer garden for a solitary draft. He purchased cigars at a local drug store, and sat quietly there, taking a few puffs before going to the office or home. Coolidge also became friendly with Dick Irwin, a prominent Northampton lawyer who had served in the state senate. He had other friends and acquaintances in varied walks of life, Democrats as well as Republicans, Catholics as well as Protestants, at a time when such differentiation mattered. Coolidge even joined a local canoe club, and on balmy Sundays went out on the lake. He seemed to have had no romantic attachments while at Hammond & Field, probably because as disciplined a person as he would have realized he could not afford to get married, and mere dating might have seemed frivolous.

  On June 29, 1897, with Field as his sponsor, Coolidge applied for admission to the bar. He was a few days short of his twenty-fifth birthday, and he was prepared to go into the world and make a living for himself. While he had made a favorable impression at Hammond & Field, it was understood from the first he would not join them. Small-town practices did not encourage expansion.

  Coolidge intended to open an office of his own, and do the best he could, patterning himself after Field. “I fully expected to become the kind of country lawyer I saw around me, spending my life in the profession, with perhaps a final place on the bench.” These words were written, of course, after Coolidge left the White House. At the time, however, he was not as sanguine. In a letter to his father on July 12, he expressed his trepidations about his prospects: I do not know as there is a “good opening” for a young lawyer anywhere. I knew of one once but in a few months the young lawyer was requested to get out of town. There is nothing here but a general law practice. No partner. I estimated for you the cost of fitting up an office. I judge I could live on a total expense of about $500 a year. I have been obliged to live for two years in entire seclusion. I do not judge that would be a wise course for a lawyer whatever it might be for a student—I presume one gets business by “getting in” with people, by associating with them in their clubs and in various walks of life and social organizations.

  Apparently, in an earlier letter, John Coolidge had suggested that his son might try to get a job in an office doing clerical work, perhaps at Hammond & Field, a prospect that must have been crushing.

  A man well trained in a law school might be of some use in an office. At present I am still trying to learn a little law. It is hardly possible that I could stay in this office and make such “business acquaintances” that I could leave the office and draw away its practice with me….

  Your plan of my being an office boy does not appeal to me. Still I have tried to do the best I could by my feeble efforts to carry out other plans which did not appeal to me very strongly and if I have sometimes faltered, if I have failed to meet with the success you desired, forgive me—I think I tried my best. And now if you are of the opinion that I have the making of a good office boy in me it is my pleasure to try to perform such duties to the best of my ability.

  More can be learned about Coolidge’s thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams from these letters than from any of his public utterances. He was completely at ease with John Coolidge, as with no other person he would ever know.

  For a while Coolidge considered relocating to Great Barrington, some fifty miles to the northeast of Northampton, and he toyed with the idea of going to Boston. He seriously considered Lee, Massachusetts, which was near Pittsfield and had a population of four thousand. Pittsfield itself had a population of twenty thousand, and there weren’t many lawyers there. There was no indication he ever intended to return to Plymouth, or any other place in Vermont. Coolidge was wedded to Massachusetts. In the end, on February 1, 1898, he hung up his shingle in Northampton.

  By then Coolidge had become more active in politics than in the law, perhaps because he felt that his prospects in private practice were dismal, or that he could get the right “contacts” in politics to benefit his law practice, a thought not unusual then. The 1896 national election campaign began while he was still at Hammond & Field. The Republican convention in St. Louis selected William McKinley for the presidency. The Democrats, in a wild convention in Chicago, nominated the young, charismatic William Jennings Bryan as their candidate, and the Populists chose Bryan shortly thereafter. This was an election with important policies at stake, the first since the Civil War in which there was a clear and distinct demarcation between the candidates.

  Paramount among these was the currency issue. McKinley was for the gold standard and Bryan for bimetallism, the free and unlimited coinage of silver. The distinction was presented and viewed as the creditor versus the debtor, industrial America versus agrarians, but of course it was more complicated than that. More than three decades after the end of the Civil War, Americans throughout the nation still voted with their hearts on that conflict, and there were local considerations as well.

  There was no doubt where Vermont and Massachusetts stood on the issues or the election; the states were solidly Republican. Coolidge was already active in party aff
airs in a small way. The previous year Henry Field had accepted the local party’s nomination for the mayoralty of Northampton, while Hammond ran for district attorney. These were not onerous or even full-time positions; Field and Hammond would continue their practice no matter the outcomes. Coolidge participated in the campaign. He attended the state Republican convention as an alternate, and returned home to work for McKinley. Coolidge attended local Republican meetings, and volunteered to do whatever he could to assist Field. Not that this was needed; while Democrats occasionally won the office, they did so more on personal contacts than ideology. In any case, Field wasn’t seriously challenged. Coolidge handed out flyers, and he spoke with his friends at Jim Lucey’s and other places about Field’s qualities and character.

  Not only was Northampton solidly Republican, but the town was also—outside of the Smith College faculty and some students—strongly for the gold standard. Making the best of a bad situation, Democrat John O’Donnell, a popular figure and a former Northampton mayor, published a defense of Bryan and free silver in the local Democratic newspaper. At Field’s suggestion, Coolidge wrote a reply that was published in the Republican newspaper. Although it was hardly a keen analysis of the money question, the article did demonstrate the skills he had honed as a debater. It was uncharacteristically sarcastic, and out of keeping with the kind of image Coolidge would later adopt.

  And finally we come to that most specious device of the advocate. All discussion of the merits of free silver is dropped, and we are asked to content ourselves with reading testimony to the character of its prime agitator. His private virtues are so attractive! And what are they? Merely a few conventional decencies which all the funeral orations since the memory of man have claimed as the attributes of each departed spirit. William J. Bryan is accused of financial heresy and we are told that his morals are orthodox. He is censured for an attempt to debauch the monetary system of America and the defense is “a personal character as pure as a woman.” He is charged with desiring to pollute the sacred shrine of the public credit, and we are calmly informed that he says his prayers every night.