Coolidge (79 page)

  52   “a devil of him first”:
Letters, Lectures, and Address of Charles Edward Garman: A Memorial Volume
, ed. Eliza Miner Garman (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909), 305.

  52   “But why should not”: Ibid., 343.

  53   “I have been thinking”: April 26, 1894, letter from Coolidge to his father in Lathem, ed.,
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge
, 56.

  54   “a man of power”: Coolidge’s paraphrase of Garman is in Calvin Coolidge,
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
(New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929), 100.

  55   “One should never trouble”: Coolidge’s lines to Dwight Morrow about promotion are quoted in Nicolson,
Dwight Morrow
, 91.

  55   “Margaret’s Mist”: The text of the story is available at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum, Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.

  55   “the black water closing”: “Margaret’s Mist” is quoted in Arthur Fleser,
A Rhetorical Study of the Speaking of Calvin Coolidge
(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 13.

  57   lightning had struck: “The barns of JC Coolidge of Plymouth were struck by lightning and burned a few days ago.” “Condensed State News,”
St. Albans Messenger
, August 25, 1892.

  58   Yet the speech:
Amherst Student
, June 25, 1895, 266–268. The text of the Grove Oration is available at www.calvin-coolidge.org/html/grove_oration.html. Many other speeches by Coolidge are also available at the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, www.calvin-coolidge.org.

  58   His grade point average: Lathem, ed.,
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge
, 72.

  58   His graduation was noted: “Amherst College Notes,”
Caledonian
, June 28, 1895.

Chapter 3: Determination

  60   Each piece of slate: Many details about the library can be found on its excellent website, www.forbeslibrary.org, as well as in Lawrence Wikander,
Disposed to Learn: The First Seventy-five Years of the Forbes Library
(Northampton, Mass.: Trustees of Forbes Library, 1972).

  60   Tuition at Harvard Law School:
The Law School of Harvard University, Announcements, 1895–96
 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1895), 10.

  60   But in the end it just hadn’t sat: Dwight Morrow to James Sheffield, June 1, 1920, series 1, box 13, folder 30, Dwight Morrow Papers, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College Library, Amherst, Mass. In that letter to John Sheffield, Morrow wrote, “When he graduated from Amherst in 1895 he [Coolidge] did not have enough money to go to a law school.”

  61   Charles Forbes: J. L. Harrison to John M. Greene, enclosing biographical sketch of Charles Edward Forbes by C. A. Cutter, December 3, 1917, Origins Collection, series 2, folder 5, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

  62   The Boston and Maine Railroad: The Boston and Maine opened North Station in 1894. Details of Massachusetts’s growth and connections can be found in
Massachusetts:
A Guide to Its Places and People
, a Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), 635.

  64   Daniel Shays’s men: During Shays’s Rebellion more than a thousand farmers converged on the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton. David P. Szatmary,
Shays’ Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 58.

  64   Coolidge boarded at 162 King Street: Susan Lewis Well,
Calvin Coolidge at Home in Northampton
(Northampton, Mass.: Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum, Forbes Library, 2008), 5. Well’s volume is an excellent source on Coolidge’s years in Northampton.

  64   his college hairstyle: Calvin Coolidge,
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
(New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929), 73.

  65   “a strong sentiment”: Theodore Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
(New York: Macmillan, 1913), 208.

  66   Dwight Morrow was languishing: Harold Nicolson,
Dwight Morrow
(London: Constable & Co., 1935), 44.

  66   “I had noted”: Claude M. Fuess,
Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1940), 74.

  67   Hammond and Field filed: Lyndall Gordon,
Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds
(New York: Viking, 2012), 292.

  67   Marsh had used college funds: Stanley King,
A History of the Endowment of Amherst College
(Amherst, Mass.: Amherst College, 1950), 107.

  68   At the Democratic National Convention: In the summer of 1896 the papers carried the details of Bryan’s address; for example, see “Fourth Ballot,”
The New York Times
, July 11, 1896.

  68   They asked Coolidge: Coolidge’s brief visit home and the gold debate are mentioned in Fuess,
Calvin Coolidge
, 82.

  69   he had qualified: Coolidge,
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
, 78.

  72   represented the New York, New Haven and Hartford: A list of Hammond and Field clients is supplied in Charles F. Warner,
Northampton of Today: Depicted by Pen and Camera
(Northampton, Mass.: Picturesque Publishing, 1902), p. 81.

  73   Dennis, like most people: Alfred Pearce Dennis, “The Man Who Became President,” in
Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth
, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1960), 17.

  73   seventy cents: Alfred Pearce Dennis,
Gods and Little Fishes
(Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1924). That volume provides an especially precise picture of Coolidge as a young lawyer at the county seat.

  73   “to a chance”: Dennis, “The Man Who Became President,” in Lathem, ed.,
Meet Calvin Coolidge
, 18.

  74   Winthrop Murray Crane: Carolyn W. Johnson,
Winthrop Murray Crane: A Study in Republican Leadership, 1892–1920
(Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1967).

  76   “My dear Miss Deering”: Deering correspondence supplied by Jim Cooke, Coolidge impersonator, correspondence of September 16, 2012.

  77   not like the Carpenters’ Union: the details of this and other local trade unions are listed in
Northampton-Easthampton Directory
(Northampton, Mass.: Price & Lee, 1902), 252.

  77   “leaving the parties”: This line of President Cleveland is contained in his letter to President Roosevelt of October 4, 1902, reprinted in
Theodore Roosevelt and His Time as Shown in His Letters
, ed. Joseph Bucklin Bishop (New York: Scribner’s, 1920), 204.

  79   listed on page 267:
Northampton Directory
, 267. A trove of such directories can be found in genealogy databases, including Ancestry.com.

  80   “My dear Miss Goodhue”: Calvin Coolidge to Grace Goodhue Coolidge, June 6, 1904, Box 392, 1, Coolidge Family Papers, Vermont Historical Society, Barre, Vt. The courtship correspondence is located here.

  83   “too poor to be”: Details and quotations from Barton can be found in Richard Fried’s excellent
The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).

  84   Andrew Carnegie, its great donor: Philip Butcher,
George W. Cable: The Northampton Years
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 203.

  85   That October, Wilbur Wright: T. A. Heppenheimer
, First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane
(Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 244.

  85   Mrs. Goodhue had long since: Grace Coolidge,
Grace Coolidge: An Autobiography
, ed. Robert H. Ferrell and Lawrence E. Wikander (Worland, Wyo.: High Plains Publishing, 1992), 20.

  86   “Come to see”: Ishbel Ross,
Grace Coolidge and Her Era: The Story of a President’s Wife
(Plymouth, Vt.: Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 1988), 16–17.

  86   They would buy bread: Ibid., 18
.

  87   The Coolidges brought a counterpane: Robert H. Ferrell,
Grace Coolidge: The People’s Lady in Silent Cal’s White House
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008), 26.

  87   in a dress: Ross,
Grace Coolidge and Her Era
, 21.

Chapter 4: The Roosevelt Way

  88   Within a few weeks: More information about the school committee election is in John J. Kennedy, “His Only Defeat,”
The Real Calvin Coolidge
2 (1986).

  89   “Only the fact that the President”: “From the Montreal Gazette: As Canada Politely Puts It,”
The New York Times
, October 14, 1905, p. 8.

  90   “Might give me time”: Claude M. Fuess,
Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1940), 90.

  90   Lunch in the enormous dining room: Susan Lewis Well,
Calvin Coolidge at Home in Northampton
(Northampton, Mass.: Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum, Forbes Library, 2008), 39.

  91   “A man is not really”: Lendol Calder,
Financing the American Dream
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 64.

  92   Among the books were: A number of authors have written about Coolidge’s book collection, including William Allen White,
A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 64.

  92   From Northampton, Calvin and Grace traveled: Grace Coolidge,
Grace Coolidge: An Autobiography
, ed. Lawrence E. Wikander and Robert H. Ferrell (Worland, Wyo.: High Plains Publishing, 1992), 38.

  93   “Little John is as strong”: Calvin Coolidge to John C. Coolidge, September 11, 1906, in
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge: A Selection of Letters from Calvin Coolidge to His Father
, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (Montpelier, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 1968), 105.

  94   “The frost may be”: The text of Coolidge’s speech was printed in the October 27, 1906, edition of
The Hampshire Gazette.

  94   felt no shame: Much later, speaking with Bertrand Snell, a Republican member of Congress, Coolidge would say, “I am a regular Republican. I am willing to go up or down with my party.” Snell’s memory of the chat is in Edward Connery Lathem, ed.,
Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth
(Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1960), 110.

  95   A few weeks later: Robert Sobel,
Coolidge: An American Enigma
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1998), 56.

  95   “the hub of the solar system.”: Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, Publishers, 1900), 124.

  96   “Dear John, This will introduce”: Edward Elwell Whiting,
President Coolidge: A Contemporary Estimate
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923), 74.

  97   the state constitution stipulated:
Manual for the Use of the General Court, 1907
(Boston: Wright & Potter, 1907), 495.

  97   the Ways and Means Committee: Fred Wilbur Powell,
The Recent Movement for State Budget Reform, 1911–1917
, thesis, Columbia University, 1918; reprinted in
Municipal Research
, New York, no. 91 (November 1917), 47.

  97   Coolidge went before: “Tariff Petition Forwarded,”
Springfield Republican
, February 13, 1907, 11.

  98   -11 degrees: The temperature was recorded at Amherst by the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station, vols. 205–288, 1906–1912.

100   Among Brandeis’s disciples: Claude M. Fuess,
Joseph B. Eastman:
Servant of the People
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 55.

100   Much later, his papers:
The Curse of Bigness
was published in 1934, but the ideas were present in Brandeis’s arguments from the turn of the century.

101   The Hepburn Act might be deterring: The case that it was the legislation that hurt the prospects for cross-country rail business is made in Edwin J. Clapp,
Transportation
(New York: Alexander Hamilton Institute, 1918), 197–199.

101   From 1905 to 1907: Ibid., 199.

101   “The railroad campaign”: Ibid.

101   The speaker replied: Whiting,
President Coolidge: A Contemporary Estimate
, 78.

104   The Northampton team pointed out: “Taxation of Colleges,”
Springfield Daily Republican
, February 28, 1908, 7.

107   The 1910 Census: There were approximately 223,000 Irish-born immigrants and 85,000 Italians in 1910. Coolidge’s progress and the changing electorate are tracked meticulously in John L. Blair,
The Governorship of Calvin Coolidge, 1919–1921
, PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1971.

109   “square deal”: The speech referred to is the New Nationalism Speech, delivered August 31, 1910, in Kansas. One version of the full text can be found at www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501.

110   “sitting in the seats”: Grace Coolidge’s account of the trip in a letter to Carrie Coolidge, December 11, 1910, reprinted in Lathem, ed.,
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge
, 116.

111   He represented both Amherst and Springfield: Blair,
The Governorship of Calvin Coolidge, 1919–1921
, vol. 1, 6, 7, and 44.

111   “It was as good as a show”: This line from a newspaperman is quoted in White,
Puritan in Babylon
, 149.

112   Edward Filene, the merchant: Kim McQuaid, “An American Owenite: Edward A. Filene and the Parameters of Industrial Reform, 1890–1937,”
American Journal of Economics and Sociology
35, no. 1 (January 1976): 80.

113   “the same towering ambitions”: John Dean,
Warren G. Harding
(New York: Times Books, 2004), 29.