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U.S Presidents — Calvin Coolidge

OVERVIEW Name: Calvin Coolidge President: # 30 Term Number(s): 34, 35 Term Length: 5.6 Took Office: August 2, 1923 Left Office: March 4, 1929 Age when Elected: 51 Party: Republican Also Known As: "Silent Cal" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Education: Amherst College Occupation: Lawyer Other Governmental Position: 29th Vice President of the United States, 48th Governor of Massachusetts, 46th Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, President of the Massachusetts State Senate. Military Service: None Religion: Congregationalist Spouse(s): Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge (October 4, 1905) Children: John Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge, Jr. Birthdate: July 4, 1872 Birthplace: Plymouth, Vermont Deathdate: January 5, 1933 Deathplace: Northampton, Massachusetts Age at Death: 60 Cause of Death: heart attack Place of Internment: Notch Cemetery in Plymouth Notch, Vermont Signature SECOND ELECTION Election: Not Elected, succeeded President Warren G. Harding SECOND ELECTION Election Year: 1924 Main Opponent: John W. Davis Voter Participation: 48.90%   Electoral Popular States Click for larger image Winner 382 (72.00%) 15,723,789 (54.00%) 35 Main Opponent 136 (25.61%) 8,386,242 (28.80%) 12 total 531 29,121,432 48 CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS Vice President: vacant, Charles G. Dawes Secretary of State: Charles Evans Hughes (1923–1925), Frank B. Kellogg (1925–1929) Secretary of the Treasury: Andrew Mellon (1923–1929) Secretary of War: John W. Weeks (1923–1925), Dwight F. Davis (1925–1929) Secretary of the Navy: Edwin Denby (1923–1924), Curtis D. Wilbur (1924–1929) Secretary of the Interior: Hubert Work (1923–1928), Roy O. West (1928–1929) Secretary of Agriculture: Henry C. Wallace (1923–1924), Howard M. Gore (1924–1925), William M. Jardine (1925–1929) Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover (1923–1928), William F. Whiting (1928–1929) Secretary of Labor: James J. Davis (1923–1929) Attorney General: Harry M. Daugherty (1923–1924), Harlan F. Stone (1924–1925), John G. Sargent (1925–1929) Postmaster General: Harry S. New (1923–1929) Supreme Court Assignments: Harlan Fiske Stone (1925) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY At 2:30a.m. on August 3, 1923, while visiting Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was president. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family bible. Coolidge was "distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement," wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. "His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history ... in a time of extravagance and waste." Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He was graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. Slowly and methodically, he went up the political ladder from councilman in Northampton to governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. En route he became thoroughly conservative. As president, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying. He refused to use federal economic power to check the growing boom or to ameliorate the depressed condition of agriculture and certain industries. His first message to Congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers. He rapidly became popular. In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as "Coolidge prosperity," he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote. In his inaugural address, Coolidge asserted that the country had achieved "a state of contentment seldom before seen," and pledged himself to maintain the status quo. In subsequent years, he twice vetoed farm relief bills, and killed a plan to produce cheap federal electric power on the Tennessee River. The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: "This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone... And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy." Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through interviews: "Well, Baruch, many times I say only 'yes' or 'no' to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more." But no president was kinder in permitting himself to be photographed in Indian war bonnets or cowboy dress, and in greeting a variety of delegations to the White House. Both his dry Yankee wit and his frugality with words became legendary. His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, recounted that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, "You lose." And in 1928, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he issued the most famous of his laconic statements, "I do not choose to run for president in 1928." By the time the disaster of the Great Depression hit the country, Coolidge was in retirement. Before his death in January 1933, he confided to an old friend, "I feel I no longer fit in with these times." FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge For her "fine personal influence exerted as First Lady of the Land," Grace Coolidge received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences. In 1931 she was voted one of America's twelve greatest living women. Grace was born in 1879 and grew up in the Green Mountain city of Burlington, Vermont, the only child of Andrew and Lemira B. Goodhue. While still a girl, she heard of a school for deaf children in Northampton, Massachusetts, and eventually decided to share its challenging work. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1902 and went to teach at the Clarke School for the Deaf that autumn. In Northampton she met Calvin Coolidge; they belonged to the same boating, picnicking, whist-club set, composed largely of members of the local Congregational Church. In October 1905 they were married at her parents' home. They lived modestly; they moved into half of a duplex two weeks before their first son was born, and she budgeted expenses well within the income of a struggling small-town lawyer. To Grace Coolidge may be credited a full share in her husband's rise in politics. She worked hard, kept up appearances, took her part in town activities, attended church, and offset his shyness with a gay friendliness. The couple had a second son in 1908, and it was Mrs. Coolidge who played backyard baseball with the boys. As Mr. Coolidge was rising to the rank of governor, the family kept the duplex; he rented a dollar-and-a-half room in Boston and came home on weekends. In 1921, as wife of the vice president, Grace Coolidge went from her housewife's routine into Washington society and quickly became the most popular woman in the capital. Her zest for life and her innate simplicity charmed even the most critical. Stylish clothes—a frugal husband's one indulgence—set off her good looks. After Harding's death, Mrs. Coolidge planned the new administration's social life as her husband wanted it: unpretentious but dignified. Her time and her friendliness now belonged to the nation, and she was generous with both. As she wrote later, she was "I, and yet, not I—this was the wife of the president of the United States and she took precedence over me..." Under the sorrow of her younger son's sudden death at 16, she never let grief interfere with her duties as first lady. Tact and gaiety made her one of the most popular hostesses of the White House, and she left Washington in 1929 with the country's respect and love. For greater privacy in Northampton, the Coolidges bought The Beeches, a large house with spacious grounds. Calvin Coolidge died there in 1933. He had summed up their marriage in his autobiography: "For almost a quarter of a century she was borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces." After his death she sold The Beeches, bought a smaller house, and in time undertook new ventures she had longed to try: her first airplane ride, her first trip to Europe. She kept her aversion to publicity and her sense of fun until her death in 1957. Her chief activity as she grew older was serving as a trustee of the Clarke School; her great pleasure was the family of her surviving son, John. MAJOR EVENTS 1924: Immigration Act of 1924. 1924, 1926: Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926. 1927: Charles Lindbergh makes historic transatlantic flight. 1928: Kellogg-Briand Pact. TRIVIA 1. Coolidge was sworn into office by his father, who was a notary public and Justice of the Peace. 2. Coolidge was the first president to light the national Christmas tree in 1923 on the White House lawn. 3. Prior to becoming president, his national reputation was made by busting up the police strike in Boston. 4. Coolidge refused to use the telephone while in office. 5. A man of few words, a dinner guest made a bet that she could get him to say more than two words. When she told the president of her wager, he replied, "You lose."