Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  The Nation, which was even more critical of Coolidge than Pinchot had been, did not permit death to soften its disapproval. In its editorial, it said, “Calvin Coolidge succeeded in pleasing the great masses of his fellow citizens and yet never comprehended, or was able to comprehend, the deeper meaning of the economic surge on which he was borne forward like a chip on the crest of a wave.” To The Nation, he was a cipher: “He dealt with the issues only when they were forced upon him, left no constructive suggestions to cure our ills, and made no contribution whatever to the science of government.” But, it conceded, “the Coolidge myth persisted to the end.” Editor Oswald Garrison Villard, who wrote venomously of Coolidge throughout the years he was a public figure, added a separate article of his own:The “masters of America”—as Woodrow Wilson called them—the great heads of the corporations which dominate our social, business, and political life, found in him just the complaisant national figurehead they so eagerly desired. He had been utterly silent in the face of the corruption of the Harding cabinet, in which, by invitation, he sat; he never talked, as did Mr. Wilson, about our being “in the midst of a revolution” against the great capitalists. Nor did he denounce any of the big businessmen as “malefactors of great wealth,” as did Theodore Roosevelt; and there was no chance under him of such shocking scandals as disgraced the Harding regime. So as the tide of prosperity rose higher and higher, it became “Coolidge Prosperity,” as if he had created it by some wave of a magic wand. And when he capped the climax, just before the expiration of his presidency, by prostituting the White House as it has never been prostituted before by his statement of January 7, 1928, encouraging the maddest, wildest speculation in the world’s history, the spokesmen of finance and big business called him blest.

  During the years he was in the White House, Mencken, who had few good words to say about democracy and the average person, saw in Coolidge a man who had a knack of appealing to “the boobs.” “He will be ranked among the vacuums,” Mencken wrote in 1927. “It would be difficult to imagine a more obscure and unimportant man.” He noted Coolidge’s passivity: “It seems incredible that one with such towering opportunities in this world should use them so ill.” But in his less bombastic moments, Mencken acknowledged that Coolidge was one of the shrewder statesmen of the period and a master politician. He ultimately conceded that perhaps he really didn’t understand Coolidge, and in this he was in good company. “There is something deeply mysterious about such a man.” In his obituary of him, Mencken, who was not the type to speak well of the dead, wrote:We suffer most when the White House bursts with ideas. With a World Saver [Wilson] preceding him (I count out Harding as a mere hallucination) and a Wonder Boy [Hoover] following him he begins to seem, in retrospect, an extremely comfortable and even praiseworthy citizen. His failings are forgotten; the country remembers only the grateful fact that he let it alone. Well, there are worse epitaphs for a statesman. If the day ever comes when Jefferson’s warnings are heeded at last, and we reduce government to its simplest terms, it may very well happen that Cal’s bones now resting inconspicuously in the Vermont granite will come to be revered as those of a man who really did the nation some service.

  That day cannons fired off throughout the nation, Coolidge’s last forty-eight gun salute. All the flags were at half mast. Trains and automobiles were already arriving in Northampton for the funeral. President and Mrs. Hoover were there, as were Vice President and Mrs. Curtis. Chief Justice Hughes and Associate Justice Stone came. The governors of nearby states arrived, along with a large delegation from the Massachusetts legislature. The Congregational Church was crowded, and many more stood outside. It was a dreary day, with a cold drizzle.

  The body lay in state for an hour, and those present filed past the coffin. Among the pall bearers were Frank Stearns, William Butler, and former Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, whose daughter had married John Coolidge. The procession then traveled the one hundred miles north to the cemetery in Plymouth Notch in which all the Coolidges, including the president’s parents and son, were buried. In his description of the day, playwright Clarence Day wrote:Across the road, in a rocky field, the men and women of the village had gathered. They were not the kind of people to intrude or crowd nearer, and they kept complete silence. The young minister said a few words as the coffin was lowered. A sudden storm of hail pelted down.

  The widow, who had tried to smile that morning coming out of the church, could no longer hold back her tears.

  The cars left. The bent-shouldered sexton signaled to his helpers. They filled in the grave. Four country militiamen took up their positions on guard. Snow fell that night on the hillside and the slopes of Salt Ash Mountain.

  The headstone that now marks the quiet spot bears no inscription but the name, Calvin Coolidge, the dates, and the president’s seal.

  In the months that followed scores of prominent individuals chimed in with their reactions to Coolidge’s death and assessments of his accomplishments as president. They ranged from the adulatory to the unpleasant, from the eloquent to the clumsy. Al Smith offered one of the clearest and fairest assessments of the man:I had a great liking and respect for him. Beneath a chilly, reserved, and dignified exterior, he was keen, kindly and entirely free from conceit, pompousness, and political hokum. We are often told politics in a republic produced only demagogues. Calvin Coolidge was a most successful and popular politician, but he had nothing of the demagogue in him.

  Coolidge was not a great president, thought Smith, but rather belonged…in the class of presidents who were distinguished for character more than for heroic achievements. His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history, and to afford in a time of extravagance and waste, a shining public example of the simple and honest virtues which came down to him from his New England ancestors. These are no small achievements, and history will not forget them.

  Calvin Coolidge was a salty, original character, an unmistakable home-grown, native, American product, and his was one of those typically American careers, which begin on the sidewalks, or on the farm, and prove to the youth of the nation that this is still the land of unbounded opportunity.

  Notes

  CHAPTER 1

  The Lippmann quote is from Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny (New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 12–13.

  CHAPTER 2

  The basic sources for Coolidge’s youth are Ernest C. Carpenter, The Boyhood Days of President Calvin Coolidge (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1925) and Hendrick Booraem V, The Provincial: Calvin Coolidge and His World, 1885–1895 (Lewisberg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1994). The remark by Hennessy is in his book, Four Decades of Massachusetts Politics, 1890–1935 (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1935), p. 282. For the Bradford quotation, see Gamaliel Bradford, The Quick and the Dead (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), p. 26. Coolidge’s recollections about Vermont are in Calvin Coolidge, “Books of My Boyhood,” Cosmopolitan, October, 1932, p. 19. The impact of Abbie Coolidge’s death on Coolidge is in Robert Gilbert, The Mortal Presidency: Illness and Anguish in the White House (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 22. For Coolidge at Amherst see Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont (Boston: Little Brown, 1940) and the same author’s Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston: Little Brown, 1935). Coolidge’s letter to his father is in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” March, 1935, p. 25. The John Coolidge quote regarding his son’s love of learning is in Alfred Pierce Dennis, “The Man Who Became President,” a 1924 essay in Edward Lathem, Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene, 1960), p. 24. For Charles Garman, see Former Students of Charles Edward Garman, Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) and Anonymous, Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, by Former Students of Charles Edward Garman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906). Coolidge on Garman is in Coolidge, Have Faith in Massachusetts, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), p. 320. Coolidge’s letter to his fath
er is in Edward Lathem, ed. Your Son, Calvin Coolidge: A Selection of Letters from Calvin Coolidge to his Father (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1968), p. 73.

  CHAPTER 3

  The best source for Coolidge’s law studies, early practice, and political career is Fuess, Calvin Coolidge. Fuess interviewed many of those individuals who knew Coolidge in this period, who of course are no longer alive. The statement about Coolidge’s qualities is from Edward Elwell Whiting, President Coolidge: A Contemporary Estimate (Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1923), p. 57. Coolidge’s letter to his father are in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, p. 80–81. For Grace Coolidge, see Ishbel Ross, Grace Coolidge and Her Era: The Story of a President’s Wife (New York, Dodd Mead, 1962); Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” Good Housekeeping, March, 1935, p. 243; and Bruce Barton, “The Silent Man on Beacon Hill, Woman’s Home Companion, March, 1920. Coolidge on progressive thought is in Howard Quint and Robert Ferrell, eds. The Talkative President: The Off-The-Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964), p. 9. The Murray Crane biography for which Coolidge wrote the preface is Solomon Bulkley Griffin, W. Murray Crane: A Man and Brother (Boston: Little Brown, 1926). For more on Crane, and a study of Massachusetts politics in this period, see Richard M. Abrams, Conservatism in a Progressive Era: Massachusetts Politics 1900–1912 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1964), especially Chapters 1 and 2, and Michael E. Hennessy, Four Decades of Massachusetts Politics 1890–1935. The Sawyer quote is from Roland D. Sawyer, Cal Coolidge, President (Boston: Four Seas, 1924), p. 98.

  CHAPTER 4

  The basic sources are Fuess, Calvin Coolidge, and William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon (New York: Macmillan, 1938). The Coolidge letters are in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge. For an understanding of state politics in this period, the best sources are Abrams and Hennessy. Coolidge’s refusal to attend the San Francisco Exposition is in Robert A. Woods, The Preparation of Calvin Coolidge (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1824), p. 33–34, and the mayoralty is discussed in p. 59–64. His contribution to the 1914 state platform is in Hennessy, p. 86, and Woods, p. 35. The John Coolidge remark on his son’s inauguration is in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, p. 126. The Coolidge speech at Wheaton College is in Coolidge, The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (New York: Scribner, 1924), p. 390–91. Stearns’s letter to Maynard is in Meet Calvin Coolidge, p. 27. The Coolidge, Taft, and Lodge letters are in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, p. 126–27. The Stearns and Grace Coolidge statements are in Ross, Grace Coolidge and Her Era, p. 42 and 46. Mrs. Coolidge’s comments on Stearns are in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” May 1935, p. 247–248. For details on Samuel McCall, up to but not including the 1915 election, see Lawrence B. Evans, Samuel W. McCall: Governor of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916). The material on Coolidge’s second term is from Michael E. Hennessy, Calvin Coolidge (New York: Putnam, 1924). The statement to Dwight Morrow is from Harold Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935), p. 87.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Hemenway material is in Ralph W. Hemenway, “His Law Partner Looks Back,” in Lathem, Meet Calvin Coolidge, p. 163–73 and Fuess, p. 151. The Coolidge correspondence is in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge. Fuess and Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1967) offers the best treatments of the 1918 gubernatorial election. Coolidge’s speeches during the campaign are in Have Faith in Massachusetts. The Coolidge gubernatorial record during his first months in office is discussed in McCoy, Chapter 8. There are several fine books in which to discover background information on the early post–World War I period: Mark Sullivan, Our Times, Vols. IV and V (New York: Scribner, 1935); Jules Abels, In the Time of Silent Cal (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1969); Joseph Huthmacher, Massachusetts People and Politics, 1919–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1959); Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper, 1931); and William Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958). The material dealing with the labor unrest of the period may be found in the New York Times, the New York Herald, the New York Tribune, and the New York World for January–October, 1919. The A. Mitchell Palmer quotation is from his article, “The Case Against the ‘Reds’” in the Forum, February 1920, p. 185. Mayor Hanson was discussed in the New York Times, August 29, 1919, and his obituary on July 8, 1940. General Wood’s activity on the strike front in 1919 is in Herman Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography (New York: Harper, 1931), p. 333–37.

  CHAPTER 6

  The most complete account of the Boston police strike is in Chapter XI of Fuess’s Calvin Coolidge, which is favorable to Coolidge. See also Francis Russell, “The Strike that Made a President,” American Heritage (October, 1963), p. 44–47 ff., which savages Coolidge, Peters, and Curtis, and is pro-union. McCoy deals with the strike in Chapter 9 of his book. William Allen White, who alternates between criticizing and praising Coolidge, deals with the strike in A Puritan in Babylon, Chapter XV. The story of the jitney conflict is in Hennessy, Calvin Coolidge, p. 112–13. The veto of the alcohol measure conflict is in Calvin Coolidge, The Price of Freedom, p. 407. The AFL speech is from Woods, p. 163, and the Timilty view of Coolidge is on p. 33. The Fosdick review is in Outlook, February 2, 1921, p. 187–88. The French Strother observation is from “Calvin Coolidge,” in World’s Work, April 1924, p. 579. The message to Gompers is in Calvin Coolidge, Have Faith in Massachusetts. The Coolidge statement indicating he was prepared to lose the election rather than give in to the strikers appears in many places and several forms; this one is in Cameron Rogers, The Legend of Calvin Coolidge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1928), p. 143. The political speech is from Edna M. Colman, White House Gossip: From Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1927), p. 408. FDR’s opinion of Coolidge is in White, p. 144. The analysis of Coolidge by a neighbor is in “Coolidge: A Governor Who Makes No Mistakes and Never Lost an Election,” Current Opinion, January 1920, p. 37.

  CHAPTER 7

  The background for the 1920 Republican Convention is derived from Fuess, McCoy, and White, as well as the New York Times, the New York Herald, and the New York Tribune. The New York World reporter’s observations are in “Coolidge: A Governor Who Makes No Mistakes and Never Lost an Election,” Current Opinion, January 1920, p. 37. Coolidge’s relations with his stepmother are in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, p. 22, 58, 106, 159. The Lippmann quote is from Walter Lippmann, “The Logic of Lowden,” New Republic, April 14, 1920, p. 204. The use of money in the 1920 GOP campaign is discussed in Louise Overacker, Money in Elections (New York: Macmillan, 1922). The best source for information on Lowden is William T. Hutchinson, Lowden of Illinois: The Life of Governor Frank O. Lowden (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957). For the conventions and election, see Wesley M. Bagby, The Road to Normalcy. Francis Russell’s The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968) is sometimes inaccurate but is still useful. Better for the Harding campaign is James N. Giglio, H.M. Daugherty and the Politics of Expediency (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1978). There is a mine of information regarding the wheeling and dealing in Mark Sullivan, Our Times, Vol. VI. Daugherty’s prediction of a Harding nomination is in the New York Times, February 21, 1920, and his analysis of the race with Harding is in Harry Daugherty with Thomas Dixon, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy (New York: Churchill, 1932), p. 18–19. Samuel Hopkins Adams, Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939), is marred by the author’s antipathy for his subject, but contains material new for the times on the convention. Claude Fuess’s quote regarding the Senate group’s control of the convention is in Fuess, p. 258. The Penrose offer to Wood is in Bagby, The Road to Normalcy, p. 87. Johnson’s refusal to accept the vice presidential nomination is in several works, among them Ray Tucker and Frederick Barkley, Sons of the Wild Jackass (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1969 ed.), p. 98–
100. The Carpenter statement is in the New York Times, January 9, 1922. The Morris–Smoot encounter is in Charles Willis Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929), p. 326–27. The Mencken story is in H.L. Mencken, A Carnival of Buncombe, edited by Malcolm Moos, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1956), p. 134.

  CHAPTER 8

  Material for the 1920 campaign was drawn from the New York Times and the Boston Globe, and where indicated magazine articles of the time. Coolidge’s gubernatorial speeches were not covered carefully in the Boston newspapers of the period. This changed once he received the nomination. The Lynds’ quotation from the Muncie woman is in Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1956 ed.) p. 28–29. There is no book dealing specifically with the Coolidge vice presidency, and the best on the subject are Fuess and McCoy. The incident involving Norris and Kellogg is in McCoy, p. 135–36. Coolidge’s letters to his father are in Lathem, Your Son Calvin Coolidge. His views on Lodge are in White, p. 219. Coolidge’s speeches as vice president are collected in The Price of Freedom. His speeches as president are in Foundations of the Republic (Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1968 ed.) Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.’s, comments on Coolidge in the cabinet come from his diary, as quoted in Gilbert, The Mortal Presidency, p. 27. The Ladd story is in Duff Gilfond, The Rise of Saint Calvin: Merry Sidelights on the Career of Mr. Coolidge (New York: Vanguard, 1932), p. 152. While Gilfond embroiders many of the stories he told, versions of many appeared elsewhere. The fire marshal story is in George Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944), p. 202. The talk of a Coolidge replacement on the 1924 ticket is in Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, p. 571. Much of the other material dealing with Harding comes from this source and Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1969). Muscle Shoals is covered in Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Persistence of a Progressive, 1913–1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1971), p. 203 ff.; George Norris, Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George W. Norris (New York: Macmillan, 1945); and Allan Nevins and Frank Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915–1933 (New York: Scribner, 1957). The material on the economy during the early 1920s is from Robert Sobel, Herbert Hoover at the Onset of the Great Depression, 1929–1930 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975). For the Coolidge taxation program, see Benjamin Rader, “Federal Taxation in the 1920s,” Historian, Spring 1973, p. 415–435.