Calvin Coolidge

Death cleared the house early. Coolidge's mother died in March 1885, when he was 12, and his only sister Abigail died in 1890 at 15. What was left was a father who kept the store at Plymouth Notch, notarized deeds, and held every small office the place had. Coolidge went to Amherst, graduated cum laude in 1895, read law in a Northampton office instead of attending law school, and in 1905 married Grace Goodhue, a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf. Then he climbed every rung Massachusetts offered. In September 1919 the Boston police walked off the job, and his wire to Samuel Gompers — no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time — made him a national figure inside a week.

Five years and seven months, and he did less on purpose than any president of the century. Three rounds of tax cuts, a federal budget that shrank, a war debt paid down, two vetoes of farm relief, the Immigration Act of 1924 with its national-origins quotas, and the Indian Citizenship Act in the same session. He walked away in 1927 with the market still climbing. The administration and the long argument about what it left behind belong to BriefHistory. The man is the business of this page.

In late June 1924 his 16-year-old son played tennis on the South Lawn without socks and raised a blister on his toe. It went septic. There were no antibiotics. Calvin Jr. died on July 7, 1924, less than a month after his father had been nominated for a full term. Coolidge wrote afterward that when the boy went, the power and the glory of the presidency went with him, and that he did not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House. Biographers describe what followed as clinical depression. He slept as much as 11 hours a day, pulled back from his cabinet, and by one account stopped functioning in the job. He won the election that November by seven million votes.

He was 60 when a coronary thrombosis killed him at his Northampton house on January 5, 1933. Grace found him on the floor of the dressing room. Franklin Roosevelt took the oath nine weeks later, and for the next 50 years Coolidge stood in the national memory as the man who had been asleep at the switch. H. L. Mencken's verdict, that he had no ideas but was not a nuisance, wore better than any of his policies. Then Ronald Reagan hung his portrait in the Cabinet Room and called him one of the most underrated presidents, and a foundation at Plymouth Notch has pressed the case ever since. Academic surveys still put him in the lower half.

Calvin Coolidge's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Revenue Act of 1924 law
  The second of three tax cuts he signed 1924
• Immigration Act of 1924 law
  National-origins quotas that all but closed the country to southern and eastern Europeans and barred most Asians outright 1924
• Indian Citizenship Act law
  Citizenship for all Native Americans born in the United States 1924
• Air Commerce Act law
  The first federal rules for civil aviation 1926
• Revenue Act of 1926 law
  Cut the top rate again and repealed the gift tax 1926
• The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge book
  Short, plain, and the only place he wrote about his son 1929

• July 4, 1872 aged 0 Born at Plymouth Notch, Vermont, the only president born on the Fourth of July
• 1885 aged ~13 His mother dies when he is 12 His sister Abigail died five years later at 15.
• October 4, 1905 aged 33 Marries Grace Goodhue of the Clarke School for the Deaf
• September 9, 1919 aged 47 The Boston police strike begins and he answers it with the National Guard His telegram to Samuel Gompers made him a candidate for national office.
• August 3, 1923 aged 51 His father swears him in by lamplight at 2:47 in the morning A federal judge quietly administered the oath a second time later that month.
• July 7, 1924 aged 52 Calvin Jr. dies of sepsis at 16 from a blister raised playing tennis
• August 2, 1927 aged 55 Hands reporters a slip of paper saying he does not choose to run in 1928 He was in the Black Hills of South Dakota and took no questions.
• 1929 aged ~57 Publishes his autobiography He followed it with a syndicated newspaper column that ran two years.
• January 5, 1933 aged 60 Dies of coronary thrombosis at Northampton at 60

• Samuel Gompers 1850–1924
  Founding leader of the American Federation of Labor who established durable craft-union organization. opposed
• Charles Lindbergh 1902–1974
  Aviator who made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. decorated
• H.L. Mencken 1880–1956
  Satirist and cultural critic whose biting prose defined American journalism in the early 20th century. mocked by
• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. claimed by