According to The Boston Globe, Foley insisted that she did know how to cook a goose and promised to “prove it on election day,”29 and she made good on her promise. In the early morning hours of November 5, election officials announced that Edward Sibley had won the Senate race by 492 votes.30 The 3rd Worcester District had voted Greenwood out. Greenwood, hearing about his defeat at his rental home on Beacon Street in Boston, walked to the statehouse, quickly emptied his desk, bid farewell to those who were there, and walked out the statehouse door into political oblivion.31

  Coolidge learned of Greenwood’s defeat at his law office in Northampton early on Wednesday, November 5. The results of the election were so unexpected, and the consequences so massive, that many senators could not react to it for a few days. Many felt that Greenwood’s defeat would upset the party hierarchy for years to come, and it would take days, if not weeks, to find a replacement for him. Coolidge, though, immediately knew the implications of Greenwood’s defeat for his own political career. His actions that day became the first of two major crises he faced during his Massachusetts political career. He met both of them with quick thinking and bold, decisive action. Each crisis became the steppingstone for further political support and advancement beyond anything Calvin Coolidge could imagine.

  Wasting no time, he went back home to Grace and the children to say goodbye, packed a bag, and got on the next train to Boston. Upon arrival, he summoned his supporters, including former United States senator Murray Crane.32 Within a few days, Coolidge “showed his fellow Republicans that while some of them were talking through their hats, he could lay down 16 of the 22 Republican votes in the upper branch of the legislature”33 for senate president. On January 8, 1914, his fellow state senators elected Coolidge as president of the Massachusetts senate. Now it was he, not Levi Greenwood, who found himself on the path to reach the governorship.

  * * *

  1. Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), 242.

  2. Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Cosmopolitan, 1929), 18–19.

  3. Amity Shlaes, Coolidge (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013), 28.

  4. Ibid., 31.

  5. Ibid., 49.

  6. Ibid., 38.

  7. Ibid., 35.

  8. Ibid., 51.

  9. Ibid., 54.

  10. Coolidge, Autobiography, 34.

  11. Ibid., 35.

  12. Ibid., 36.

  13. Ibid., 37.

  14. Ibid., 40.

  15. Ibid., 40–41.

  16. Ibid., 41–42.

  17. Ishbel Ross, Grace Coolidge and Her Era (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962), 17.

  18. Coolidge, Autobiography, 44.

  19. Ibid., 45–46.

  20. Ibid., 47.

  21. Ibid., 48.

  22. Ibid., 49.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. “Senator Levi H. Greenwood’s Reply to the Suffragists,” Fitchburg Sentinel, No-vember 3, 1913.

  26. “Walsh by 53,961 Plurality,” Fall River Daily Evening News, November 5, 1913.

  27. “Gardner Talks on Bird’s Vote,” The Boston Globe, October 31, 1913.

  28. Ibid.

  29. M.E. Hennessy, “Political Views, Reviews and Interviews,” The Boston Globe, November 16, 1913.

  30. “Greenwood Beaten by 492,” The Boston Globe, November 6, 1913.

  31. “Greenwood Gives Up Keys,” The Boston Globe, November 6, 1913.

  32. Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), 114.

  33. Hennessy, “Political Views, Reviews and Interviews.”

  Chapter 10

  “Harding’s dying”

  Since Vice President Coolidge and his family had arrived at the Notch at the end of June, the itinerary had been ideal for any vice president—social calls to friends and family, funerals, and non-partisan, non-political, patriotic speeches. However, the vice president of the United States could not escape affairs of state entirely, so a pinch of politics got seasoned into Coolidge’s schedule.

  Coolidge’s first trip of the summer season began on July 1 and brought him and his family to Poland Springs, Maine, at the invitation of Maine’s governor, Percival Baxter. The governors of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island also accepted the invitation.1 Vice President Coolidge delighted in the fact that his wife Grace, and his two boys, John and Calvin Jr., made the trip with him. While he served in the Massachusetts senate and as lieutenant governor and then governor of Massachusetts, he worked in Boston during the week. Many times he tried, sometimes to no avail, to return to Northampton on the weekends, where Grace raised the two boys by herself. Trips like these made up for those long absences from his family.

  The family stayed at the Poland Springs House, also known as the Ricker Inn. A massive structure, able to house hundreds of guests during the summer months, it afforded the boys an opportunity to bowl, swim, and play with other children their age. As the ranking lady during their stay, Grace was feted by the first ladies of New England. Vice President Coolidge got down to business. While the Coolidge visit was billed as a vacation, there was political work to be done as the federal government directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to “prepare and adopt a plan for consolidation of the railroads of the United States into a limited number of systems.”2

  Waiting for the governors, and the vice president, upon their arrival in Poland Springs was James Sturrow, chairman of the New England Railroad Committee. Other members of the committee arrived in due time for the meeting. The committee expressed their point of view that the New England railroads, most notably the New Haven and the Boston & Maine, should not consolidate with lines from other states such as New York or Pennsylvania, but remain controlled by the New England states.3 For this to happen, the New Haven and B & M lines needed to be economically rehabilitated to remain independent. The governors received the report from the committee and deferred public comment until they had time to consider the report’s conclusions.

  From Poland Springs, the Coolidge family retreated to Rockland, Maine, on the Atlantic coast. Here, Vice President Coolidge celebrated his fifty-first birthday with a day of rest and relaxation. He did submit a special Fourth of July message to the American people through the International News Service:

  America has been a moral and financial success. Our institutions are entitled to the support of every person who wishes to benefit mankind. We need less complaint about what we do not have and more satisfaction with what we do have. In the midst of plenty we are listening to those who talk poverty. We shall do well to disregard the counsel of those who preach discontent. George Washington was contented. We who possess what he hoped July Fourth would come to represent, have a right and a duty to be contented.4

  The speech was vintage vice-presidential material. Coolidge refrained from making an overtly political statement but surely referred to the accelerating economy under President Harding and his administration. With a presidential election just over a year away, Coolidge felt he had a duty to portray the strength of the economic successes of the administration without signaling the beginning of the presidential campaign and a premature season of mudslinging.

  After their Maine respite, the Coolidge family returned to Plymouth Notch to help the vice president’s father, John Coolidge, Sr., with the farm at the beginning of harvest season. His father had become the most prominent citizen, other than his son, of the Notch. Businessman, farmer, notary public, store owner, state representative, and state senator as well as a law enforcement officer, he had supported Calvin financially throughout his formative years. For much of that time, John Coolidge was a single father and the closest relative Calvin had, as his mother and sister had died when he was a young student. Calvin Coolidge owed his father much and never forgot the support that the old man had given him throughout the years.

  On Thursday, July 12, Coolidge received regrettable news from Montpelier, Vermont. Longtime Vermont senator William P. Dillingham had died after a gallbladder operation. He had been a member of the Vermont house and senate, governor of Vermont from 1888 to 1890, and a United States senator from 1900 to his death. As a senator, he had supported the Harding administration and knew the Coolidge family through state politics over the years.5

  As president of the U.S. Senate, Coolidge formed a committee of senators from around the country to attend the funeral with him. Among them were senators from New England, Kentucky, Florida, and Arizona.6 Observers contended that more national state and local dignitaries attended the Dillingham funeral than any event to ever occur in Vermont. After the service, Coolidge acknowledged some old political friends that he had not seen in a long time, especially those who retained Vermont as their home. Among them was Vermont congressman Porter H. Dale, an old friend of Coolidge’s father. Several days after the funeral, rumors swirled around Vermont political circles that Dale would soon announce his decision to resign from the House of Representatives and run in the special election soon to be called to fill Dillingham’s Senate seat. Just a few days later, on July 25, 1923, Dale, standing in front of the Pavilion hotel in Montpelier, Vermont, issued this short statement: “I am a candidate for senator.” Asked if he would resign his seat in the House of Representatives, Dale replied, “Yes, sir, and the field is clear for candidates for the House at the primaries.”7

  Porter Dale was born in Island Pond, Vermont, on March 1, 1867. At first a teacher, he then studied law under his father and was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1896. He became a judge and then a colonel in the state militia. Before teaching, he studied and graduated at James E. Murdoch’s School of Elocution and Oratory in Philadelphia. His training there served him well when he successfully campaigned for the United States Congress in Vermont’s second district in 1914.8

  One Vermont newspaper described Dale’s supporters: “Dale served first of all three classes among his constituents—the moral element, represented by the churches; the war veterans, pensioners and claimants and the post office and other federal office holding classes.”9 Combined, these groups gave him a “strong nucleus of political strength hard to buck against. He was and would always have been a formidable foe for any rival.”10

  With the funeral complete, Coolidge returned to the Notch to prepare for a few days in Burlington, Vermont, for the family to visit with Grace’s mother, Lemira Goodhue. The Coolidge family arrived in Burlington on Tuesday, July 24. The Coolidge boys were particularly fond of their only grandmother. A visit to her house in Burlington also gave the boys a reprieve from the farm chores they were expected to perform at the Notch. By the end of the week, the family completed their visit and returned to the Coolidge Homestead at Plymouth. There, they all settled in preparation for the late summer harvest.

  Calvin Coolidge had just finished his late Monday breakfast when Miss Cilley, owner of the general store across the street from his father’s house, sent a messenger to summon him to the store for a phone call from his friend and adviser, Frank Stearns. Eager to hear from his friend, Coolidge got up from the table and ambled across the street. Perhaps Stearns had some news that would break the boredom of the past few days.11 Coolidge’s son John had earlier provided the only exciting event when he backed the family car into a gas pump in Ludlow, just up the road a few miles. His grandfather and namesake, John Coolidge, Sr., was with him. The accident created a public and embarrassing mess.12

  Coolidge walked into the store and silently greeted Miss Cilley. The earpiece rested on the phone and Coolidge picked it up, leaned into the speaker, and acknowledged Mr. Stearns.

  Stearns quickly asked Coolidge if he had any new information on President Harding’s illness that he had read about in the morning’s local newspaper while vacationing in Pennsylvania.

  The vice president had not been notified of Harding’s illness due to the storms that had rocked the Notch Sunday morning. He had told his stenographer and chauffeur to take Sunday off and stay at their boarding house in Bridgewater so as not to run the risk of an accident in the rain. Coolidge had had no outside news from the world since Saturday.

  Coolidge, surprised at the news of the president, replied he did not know that Harding had fallen ill and, due to yesterday’s weather, he had not received any reports of any kind from anyone. Stearns, in his thick Boston accent, explained that Harding had taken a serious turn and undoubtedly read Coolidge the previous night’s bulletin from San Francisco. “Because of new symptoms having arisen during the day, indicating complications in the case of the President, a consultation of physicians has been called. After this has been concluded, bulletins will be issued regularly for the information of the public.”13

  Coolidge pressed the speaker of the wall phone tightly into his ear and listened intently as Stearns relayed the first news of President Harding’s illness to him. He and Frank Stearns went back many years. Both had graduated from Amherst. Stearns had inherited a successful clothing store in Boston from his father and formed a friendship with Coolidge while the latter served as lieutenant governor of the Bay State.

  While the news clearly upset Coolidge, he did not express surprise that the president had fallen ill. Harding, he knew, had suffered a bout of influenza in the spring and Coolidge felt, from his interaction with the president during cabinet meetings, that he had not fully recovered. He also knew Harding maintained an unhealthy weight and had high blood pressure and cardiovascular issues. Coolidge could only imagine the discomfort Harding had endured, restrained and cramped in the Superb during a cross-country trip in the summer with no respite from the heat. A healthy man would have struggled to stay robust under those circumstances. Coolidge thanked Stearns for the information and, knowing the isolation of Plymouth Notch from the outside world, told Stearns to keep him updated on any developments.

  A vice president must never appear to want the office of president while a president is sick. They must not appear, in any way, to seek the power from which they are only one heartbeat away, even if they fervently covet the presidential office. Any appearance of seizing power would evaporate much of the political support a vice president needed to hold the office. Coolidge considered it bad taste and bad manners to even think about it. From the store, he quickly sent a telegram to President and Mrs. Harding extending a message of sympathy and “expressing the hope that President Harding will have a speedy recovery and resume his trip.”14

  Coolidge’s secretary, Ted Clark, had been up for several hours Monday morning and had reported for work at the vice president’s office on Capitol Hill when he received the call from the State Department regarding Harding’s illness. The State Department liaison explained that Mr. Hoover had instructed Secretary Hughes that Coolidge be notified of the president’s illness. Clark had read Sunday’s papers, which suggested President Harding had become indisposed due to food poisoning, but he had not given it another thought, and the tone of the reporting indicated that the president would quickly recover. Clark had been in bed last night long before the bulletin warning of “the new symptoms and complications” had reached Washington. He thanked the State Department staffer and summoned his aide to send a telegram at once to Coolidge informing him of this sudden turn of events. Clark wrote out for transmission: “Telephone from San Francisco. President very sick, but all concerned feel will pull through. Heart over-strained. Will return to Washington when can be moved, but not for several weeks.”15

  Ted Clark had been a Washington insider and power player for years. Like Coolidge a graduate of Amherst and former resident of Northampton, Massachusetts, he came to Washington as secretary to President Wilson’s nemesis, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. He served with Lodge until the 1920 presidential campaign, when he went to work for Calvin Coolidge and became his personal secretary. He, like Coolidge, had to keep up the appearance of business as usual, but with a sick president and the possibility, no matter how remote, of a presidential succession, nothing ranked as usual. Clark picked up his pen and continued to work through the vice president’s correspondence just as he had always done.

  Secretary Edward (Ted) Clark (left) and President Calvin Coolidge, August 5, 1923 (Library of Congress).

  James Hagerty, ace political reporter for the New York Times, had been packing his luggage Sunday night in preparation for a family vacation. At midnight, a knock on his apartment door disturbed him from his task. He opened it and found his fellow Times reporter Mike Haggerty standing there with a message for him. “Van Anda sent me,” Haggerty explained. “Harding’s dying. The boss wants you to get up to Vermont right away to cover Coolidge.”16

 

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