Messages and Papers of the Presidents
CALVIN COOLIDGE

August 3, 1923

Messages, Proclamations, Executive Orders
and Addresses to Congress and the People

The thirtieth President of the United States of America was born, very appropriately, on July 4, 1872, on his father’s farm nestled among the Vermont hills at Plymouth. He was the son of John C. and Victoria Moor Coolidge and the descendant of English settlers who had landed in Massachusetts not long after the arrival of the Mayflower. Calvin grew up on the farm, attending the village school and, later, the Black River Academy at Ludlow, Vermont, and the St. Johnsbury Academy. In 1895 he was graduated from Amherst College with honors and the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

After graduation from college Calvin Coolidge studied law in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar in 1897, beginning the active practice of law in the same year. Almost at once he began his long career of holding public office. He became a councilman of Northampton in 1899, city solicitor in 1900 and 1901 and clerk of courts in 1904. In the same year he was made chairman of the Republican City Committee.

In 1905 he married Grace A. Goodhue, of Burlington, Vermont. They have two sons.

In 1907 Coolidge was elected to the state legislature of Massachusetts and was a member of the general court of the state for the term of 1907-8. He was twice elected mayor of Northampton, in 1910 and 1911, and in the following year was sent to the state senate, serving as its president in 1914 and 1915. In the next three years he was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and in 1919 and 1920 was elected and served as Governor.

It was while he was Governor of Massachusetts in 1919 that he sprang suddenly into national notice and approbation. In September of that year the police force of Boston, from a complex of causes, threatened to strike and finally carried that threat into action. To the demands of the policemen Governor Coolidge proved adamant, and successfully called in the national guard of the state to put down lawlessness in Boston and to act as policemen when the city awoke one morning to find itself deprived of its defenders of law and order. Coolidge’s position in this crisis was proclaimed throughout the country as a successful blow against radicalism in America.

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Calvin Coolidge, who had received on all ballots several score votes for the Presidential nomination, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency on the first ballot and was elected to that office in the following November. On the death of President Harding he became President, the sixth Vice-President to succeed to the Presidency through the death of its incumbent. The oath of office was administered to Calvin Coolidge by his father, in the town where the President had been born, in the early hours of August 3, 1923. [p.9321]