Artist's depiction of the Inauguration. There was no photographer present.
August 3, 1923: A new President of the United States must be sworn in. It becomes the most difficult Inauguration in the office's history. Not because of any external threat, real or imagined. And not because of any resistance to the peaceful transfer of power. But because of simple logistics, and the technology of the time.
Note: I originally had this entry as part of the one for the previous day, the death of Warren Harding. Then I checked to see if I had entries set in all 50 States, and found that I didn't have one for Vermont. So I chose this one, since it's probably the biggest thing ever to happen to Vermont.
At 10:30 PM, Eastern Time, the night before, President Warren G. Harding had died in San Francisco. Now, the Secret Service had to find the Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, former Governor of Massachusetts. Like Harding, he was escaping the Summer heat of Washington, D.C., staying at his family's homestead in Plymouth, Vermont, where he had been born on July 4, 1872. (This makes him, to this day, the only person born on the nation's birthday to become President.)
This was 1923, and less than half of all American homes had telephones. And the Coolidge Homestead did not have a telephone. But it shouldn't have been that hard to send a telegram. Well, they couldn't reach the Coolidge Homestead by telegram, either.
So, Secret Service Agents had to drive up from Boston, and knock on the front door of the Coolidge Homestead in the middle of the night. The unwitting new President's father, John Coolidge, a former Vermont State Senator, a notary public, and a justice of the peace, answered the door. The Agents discovered that this rural home -- 150 miles northwest of Boston, 100 miles northeast of Albany, and 100 miles southeast of Vermont's largest city, Burlington -- didn't even have electricity. The ceremony had to be conducted by candlelight.
At 2:47 AM Eastern Time -- meaning that, less than 100 years ago, there was a time when the nation didn't have a working President for over 4 hours -- Calvin Coolidge was administered the Oath of Office by his father.
When John was asked by a reporter a few days later how he knew he could swear his son in, he said, "I didn't know that I couldn't." The legal basis for him being the person to swear the President in is a bit vague: He wasn't actually a judge, and every other person who has ever sworn a President in has been, at the very least, a judge.
Most have been the Chief Justice of the United States. This includes Salmon Chase, swearing in Andrew Johnson after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865; Harlan Stone, swearing in Harry Truman after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945; and Warren Burger, swearing in Gerald Ford after the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. The others:
* April 30, 1789, George Washington, Federal Hall, New York: Robert Livingston, Chancellor of New York. In other words, the State's Chief Justice. There wasn't yet a Chief Justice of the country, because there wasn't yet a Supreme Court, because the Justices of that Court hadn't yet been appointed by the President, because there wasn't yet a President.
* April 6, 1841, John Tyler, Indian Queen Hotel, Washington: William Cranch, Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.
* July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore, House of Representatives Chamber, U.S. Capitol, Washington: Cranch again.
* September 20, 1881, Chester Arthur, his apartment, New York: John R. Brady, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
* September 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, Ansley Wilcox House, Buffalo, New York: John R. Hazel, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
* November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson, aboard Air Force One, Love Field, Dallas: Sarah T. Hughes, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She remains the only woman to administer the Oath of Office to an incoming President.
Thus sworn in by his father, President Calvin Coolidge went back to bed, helping to feed the legend that he slept too much while he was President. The next morning, Coolidge was driven to Rutland, Vermont, where he took a train to Boston, and then another to Washington, where, just to be on the safe side, he was sworn in again, by a federal Judge, Adolph A. Hoehling Jr.
Calvin Coolidge ran for a term of his own in 1924, and, untainted by the Teapot Dome scandal that had engulfed Harding, won easily. On March 4, 1925, at the Capitol, he got a proper Inauguration, sworn in by the Chief Justice, himself a former President, William Howard Taft.
John Coolidge died in 1926. Calvin Coolidge did not run for a 2nd full term in 1928, and left office on March 4, 1929, with the Inauguration of Herbert Hoover. He died on January 5, 1933. His Presidency had so little drama, and Coolidge himself had so little personality, that, when the writer Dorothy Parker was informed that he had died, she said, "How can you tell?"
The Forbes Library in Northampton, in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where he lived while he was Mayor, has been converted into the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library. However, Coolidge Corner, outside Boston in Brookline, Massachusetts, is not named for him. Instead, it's named for the now-defunct Coolidge & Brother general store. Only one high school in America has been named for Coolidge, in the Takoma Park section of the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.
Statue, Plymouth, Vermont
He was played by Ian Wolfe in The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell in 1955, Ed Flanders in Backstairs at the White House in 1979, and Bruce McGill in Cristiada in 2012. (UPDATE: In 2023, he was played by Mark Landon Smith in Killers of the Flower Moon.)
Hoover ended up being the last surviving member of Coolidge's Cabinet, and also of Harding's, living until 1964.
Coolidge remains the last President born in Vermont. But none has ever represented the State in politics. Levi P. Morton, Vice President under Benjamin Harrison, was born in Vermont, but represented New York. The highest-ranking Vermont born politician is Patrick J. Leahy, who served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate from 2012 to 2015, and again from 2021 to 2023.
*
August 3, 1923 was a Friday. It was the off-season for the NFL and the NHL, and the NBA hadn't been founded yet. And, out of respect to Harding, all games scheduled for August 3 were postponed. So there were no games on this historic day. The games would be again on August 10, the day of Harding's Washington funeral.
Actress Jean Hagen and fashion designer Anne Klein were born on this day.
No comments:
Post a Comment