Coolidge (76 page)

It has been my good fortune that the archivists charged with preserving the documents relating to Coolidge’s life are an exceptionally devoted group. Julie Bartlett Nelson of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, opened her collection to me and served as a guide to the other archives of New England. Peter Nelson of the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections graciously hunted down the records of Coolidge’s undergraduate years as well as his letters home. Paul Carnahan of the Vermont Historical Society in Barre helped make sense of the records of Oliver Coolidge. Thank you too to Naomi Allen and Elizabeth Carroll-Horrocks of the State Library of Massachusetts, who unearthed important records from Coolidge’s years as governor. Timothy Sprattler of the Phillips Academy (Andover) Archive uncovered some materials that an early biographer of Coolidge, Claude M. Fuess, had used. Sigrid Pohl Perry of the Northwestern University Special Collection helped find materials on Charles Dawes. I am indebted too to the staff at the Library of Congress and the Holy Cross College Archives and Special Collections.

It would not have been possible to go through all the materials necessary for this volume without the support of a number of researchers. Joanne Dooley found many of the primary sources for this volume. Her meticulousness and nose for archival findings improved this book. Her encouragement and editing, whether emanating from Canada, France, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will not be forgotten. It was Joanne who carried the president’s unpublished press conferences for digitization; may visitors to the Forbes Library enjoy them in the future. Susan Strange photographed Coolidge’s White House appointment books. Allison White helped analyze many primary sources. Erica Libby provided quality work. Helena Rice and Marjorie Strong looked through materials at the Vermont Historical Society. Fred Burwell and Heather Hoff of Beloit College sent the materials from the papers of Irving Maurer. Ruth Mandel assisted with finding images.

Friends in the background who have supported this project include: Roger Kimball, who published a Coolidge essay and hosted a conference; Lawrence Mone and Diana Furchtgott-Roth of Manhattan Institute; and Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College. Thomas Smith sponsored lectures on Coolidge; though Coolidge did not know Friedrich Hayek, he would have understood him. James Piereson provided wise counsel. Chris Demuth at Hudson Institute always knows best.

A number of readers have given generously of their time: Mimi Baird, Gene Smiley, and Hendrik Booraem. Rik will shortly publish a new book on the youth of Gerald Ford. The senior reader of
Coolidge
was Jerry Wallace, who has had much to say about and done much to improve the book at every stage. Andrew Kostanecki and Gerry Jones read as well. John Bennett raced through the manuscript at breakneck speed yet somehow managed to work thoroughly and helpfully. Theo Lipsky read much of this manuscript and improved it. Two friends have shaped the narrative of this book. The first is the storied editor Robert Asahina, now of the Bush Institute’s 4% Growth Project. The second is Nikolai Krylov of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Krylov’s narrative vision would be a gift to any author, and his historical insights, particularly concerning the Kellogg-Briand Pact and tax policy, illuminated
Coolidge
’s path.

Eli Lipsky, Theo Lipsky, Flora Lipsky, and Helen Lipsky have listened and helped enormously. Eli, Theo, Flora, and Helen provided the environment that made this book possible. Beatrice Barran did much as well. Jane Dowd and Noah Shlaes supported this project, as did Jared Shlaes and Nancy DeGrazia. My debt to Seth Lipsky is incalculable.

A Note on Sources

The thirtieth president remained obscure for so long because of a love story and two principles. The love story is the story of his love for his wife, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge. The principles were humility and federalism.

A woman of great empathy, Grace accompanied Coolidge at every stage in a tense and difficult career, often serving as a bridge between her terse, preoccupied husband and the world. Coolidge was enormously grateful. “For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities and I have rejoiced in her graces,” he wrote in his autobiography. In the Coolidges’ day there were no large presidential libraries; it was up to friends and supporters to subsidize the presidents’ projects after their presidencies, to fund repositories for that share of their papers that did not go to the Library of Congress or state archives. Coolidge did turn to his friends for postpresidential charity: Frank Stearns, his old Boston patron; Dwight Morrow; and Clarence Barron, the newspaper publisher. Over time the men raised $2 million, a significant sum. But at Coolidge’s behest, this money went not to the maintenance of his own papers but to fund the institution most important to Grace, the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she had been teaching when the pair first met. In this way the president, who accurately suspected that he might not live long, ensured that his wife had a large and meaningful endeavor that would benefit many and fill her decades.

The principles mattered as well. The idea that his life’s papers might be displayed grandly offended Coolidge as the kind of “self-aggrandizement” he condemned in others. Coolidge approved of the National Archives and even backed a $1 million appropriation toward a structure to house the archives. But the modern concept of a large, federally funded presidential library he would have deemed inappropriate; if the public should pay for a presidential library, it should pay at the town or state level. State and town governments or private philanthropies were, in Coolidge’s opinion, the proper custodians of citizens’ materials, even of citizen-presidents. Coolidge did give specifically presidential papers to the Library of Congress. Perhaps the most important materials at the Library of Congress are Coolidge’s appointment books, a day-by-day account of his presidency. I collaborated with a researcher to photograph these in their entirety; their contents offer a window into Coolidge’s relationship with his cabinet and some insight into his priorities as president. The Library of Congress also houses the papers of Edward T. Clark, Coolidge’s secretary; Everett Sanders, his secretary after Clark; and Joel T. Boone, his White House physician. Boone kept a detailed diary in which he recorded his interactions with the Coolidge family, and he drafted an unpublished memoir in which he discussed his service to the Coolidges. Boone’s papers offer a firsthand look into the personal relationships within the Coolidge White House.

But it was Judge Forbes’s Library of Northampton, an institution founded by a local judge in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie and a monument to self-improvement, that Coolidge deemed the proper repository for his nonpresidential papers: letters, records from his time in state and town government, and personal documents. So it was to Northampton that the trucks rolled when he left the White House.

Even in Coolidge’s day, the Forbes Library received insufficient funds for the support of the Coolidge materials. To its credit, the library, now home to the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum, has maintained those papers well. Thanks to the talent of its current archivist, Julie Bartlett Nelson, and her predecessors, the collection is beautifully preserved. The Forbes Library has materials from his life before and after the presidency, including documents related to his law practice and time as a Massachusetts politician. The Forbes Library also has the transcripts of Coolidge’s unpublished White House press conferences. I have worked with the Forbes Library to digitize these transcripts. A visit to the library affords much pleasure. In addition to the extensive collection of documents there, the Forbes Library also displays some of Coolidge’s personal items, including his electric exercise horse. One of the valuable assets at the Forbes Library is the finding aid to the Coolidge files, edited by Lawrence E. Wikander, and arranged and microfilmed under a grant of the perspicacious Earhart Foundation.

Many of the Coolidge materials are dispersed elsewhere. The Vermont Historical Society in Barre, Vermont, houses materials from Coolidge’s ancestors as well as some of his own childhood writings. The legal documents regarding Oliver Coolidge’s incarceration, as well as his letters, are also in the Barre files. The Historical Society also holds the remarkable papers of Ellen Riley, the Coolidges’ housekeeper at the White House, including her detailed diary.

Plymouth Notch, Vermont, is home to two important institutions devoted to Coolidge. The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, of which I am a trustee, offers a wealth of significant materials, particularly relating to Coolidge’s childhood and adolescence. Its shelves also contain Grace Coolidge’s letters to her fraternity (sorority) sisters of Pi Beta Phi. Years before, this foundation issued a wonderful and still valuable series of publications called
The Real Calvin Coolidge
that combined scholarly essays along with reprinted version of original documents related to Coolidge. The second institution is the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site, an open-air museum devoted to Coolidge. The medal Coolidge won for his essay on America’s roots is in the state’s collection, as is the shield given him by the Abyssinian regent. Plymouth Notch is the primary address for Coolidge pilgrims. Visitors to the Notch may inspect Coolidge’s father’s store, the house in which Coolidge grew up, and furnishings the Coolidges themselves had used. Some materials of Coolidge’s, most interestingly the diaries and town government records of his father, John Coolidge, are in the possession of Coolidge descendants. The Town Clerk’s Office of Plymouth, Vermont, has the land records that trace the Coolidge property lineage, including that of the limekiln lot. Any research into Coolidge’s life must start in Plymouth Notch.

Boston is home to several significant collections related to Coolidge, particularly to his time as a Massachusetts politician. The Massachusetts State Archives store the records of Coolidge’s legislative initiatives and voting during his tenure as state representative and senator. The Boston Public Library’s Boston Police Strike Documents of 1919 Special Collection is the primary resource for study of that event. Finally, the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Winthrop Murray Crane Collection has some of Crane’s correspondence with Coolidge.

The Amherst College Archives and Special Collections offers materials from Coolidge’s undergraduate days, including the papers of the professor he so esteemed, Charles Garman. The Dwight W. Morrow Papers there have letters between Morrow and Coolidge. The Holy Cross College Archives and Special Collections house the papers of Coolidge’s close friend and political ally, Frank Waterman Stearns, including some of his correspondence with Coolidge. The Northwestern University Library Special Collections Department has the papers of Charles G. Dawes, Coolidge’s flamboyant vice president. The Smith College Archives in Northampton, Massachusetts, house the papers of Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, the wife of Dwight Morrow, which shed some light on her relationship with Grace. The Houghton Library at Harvard College stores the diaries of William R. Castle, a state department official. Castle wrote extensive entries several times a week that described the development of Coolidge’s foreign policy as seen from within the State Department and related some of the Washington gossip of the time. Beloit College has the diaries of Irving Maurer, the minister at the Coolidges’ Edwards Church in Northampton and later a president of Beloit College in Wisconsin. Harding and Coolidge’s speeches to the Business Organization of Government as well as the addresses of Coolidge’s budget director, General Lord, are key to grasping the two administrations’ commitment to budget cutting.

There are a number of excellent published volumes of Coolidge’s letters as well as the personal accounts of people who knew him. The gold standard of Coolidge editing remains Edward Connery Lathem’s volume of correspondence between Coolidge and his father, titled
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge: A Selection of Letters from Calvin Coolidge to His Father
. Lathem also pulled together a remarkable collection of eulogies and remembrances of Coolidge, titled
Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth
, written by those close to him as well as prominent figures from the period. In addition, Lathem published a collection from Coolidge’s syndicated newspaper column, written after his presidency, titled
Calvin Coolidge Says
.

The best biography of Calvin Coolidge was written by Calvin Coolidge himself.
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
, published in 1929, is a slim volume that nonetheless sketches a remarkably lucid account of his life and is a starting point for understanding the man. Claude M. Fuess’s biography,
Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont
, one of the earliest ones, remains among the best and is particularly useful, as the author interviewed many of Coolidge’s acquaintances. Fuess’s history of Amherst College, although not devoted specifically to Coolidge, is also magisterial and important to understanding how that institution shaped Coolidge as a young man. The same holds for his remarkable volume covering Amherst’s service in World War I. Those interested in Coolidge’s continuing relationship with Amherst will likely find the story of Alexander Meiklejohn’s conflict with the college of interest. Adam R. Nelson provides a strong account in
Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964
. Douglas C. Wilson’s essay, “The Story in the Meiklejohn Files,” reprinted in a volume he edited called
Passages of Time: Narratives in the History of Amherst College
, is a briefer but still thorough description.

Hendrik Booraem V’s
The Provincial: Calvin Coolidge and His World, 1885–1895
, an excellent volume, is the best source on Coolidge’s childhood.
Calvin Coolidge Meets Charles Edward Garman
by John Waterhouse is a surprising account of Coolidge’s intellectual maturation as a college student. Susan Lewis Well’s
Calvin Coolidge at Home in Northampton
describes the Coolidges’ life in that city, with accounts of their neighbors and everyday affairs that are unique to that volume. John L. Blair’s 1971 dissertation,
The Governorship of Calvin Coolidge, 1919–1921
, is the best work on that period of Coolidge’s life. It is also an excellent source on Coolidge’s role in the 1919 Boston Police strike. Some Boston police material from the period, including the invaluable Volume 56 of the Boston police records and the Annual Reports of the Boston police commissioner, have been digitized by the Boston Public Library and are available online.
The Life of Calvin Coolidge
by Horace Green, published in 1924, is particularly interesting because it reproduces Coolidge’s own letters in which he inquires about his ancestors and genealogy. Another early biography is Michael E. Hennessy’s
Calvin Coolidge
, published in 1924. Readers interested in the Massachusetts of Coolidge’s era will find that author’s
Four Decades of Massachusetts Politics, 1890–1935
, very useful. Especially instructive and containing much detail is Margaret Jane Fischer’s excellent
Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
, published by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation in 1981. Thomas B. Silver’s historiographical work on how Coolidge has been viewed by succeeding generations, titled
Coolidge and the Historians
, is useful for understanding how the scholarship on Coolidge has evolved. Silver was the president of the
Claremont Review of Books
, which published a number of excellent essays on Coolidge and the 1920s.