District of Columbia Circuit Judge Josiah A. Van Orsdel, functioning as a polling judge, administers an oath of qualification to this most famous voter, Calvin Coolidge, 1924. The Coolidges would vote by absentee ballot that year since national responsibilities kept them out of their home precinct in Massachusetts. Mr. Coolidge will fill out the ballot himself at this desk on the White House lawn. Grace would do the same. They still made a point of leading by example. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

“The public press under an autocracy is necessarily a true agency of propaganda. Under a free government it must be the very reverse. Propaganda seeks to present a part of the facts, to distort their relations, and to force conclusions which could not be drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts. It has been observed that propaganda seeks to close the mind, while education seeks to open it. This has become one of the dangers of the present day.

“The great difficulty in combating unfair propaganda, or even in recognizing it, arises from the fact that at the present time we confront so many new and technical problems that it is an enormous task to keep ourselves accurately informed concerning them. In this respect, you gentlemen of the press face the same perplexities that are encountered by legislators and government administrators. Whoever deals with current public questions is compelled to rely greatly upon the information and judgments of experts and specialists. Unfortunately, not all experts are to be trusted as entirely disinterested. Not all specialists are completely without guile. In our increasing dependence on specialized authority, we tend to become easier victims for the propagandists, and need to cultivate sedulously the habit of the open mind. No doubt every generation feels that its problems are the most intricate and baffling that have ever been presented for solution. But with all recognition of the disposition to exaggerate in this respect, I think we can fairly say that our times in all their social and economic aspects are more complex than any past period. We need to keep our minds free from prejudice and bias. Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much. But of propaganda, which is tainted or perverted information, we cannot have too little” — President Calvin Coolidge, “The Press Under a Free Government,” before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D. C., January 17, 1925 (Foundations of the Republic, pp.184-5).

Colonel Williams’ “Free School,” established October 26, 1791 and chartered two years later as Williams College. Source: http://ephlib.wordpress.com/history-01/.

“Earth’s great lesson is written here. In it all men may read the interpretation of the founder of this college, of the meaning of America, of the motive high and true which has inspired her soldiers. Not unmindful of a desire for economic justice but scorning sordid gain, not seeking the spoils of war but a victory of righteousness, they came, subordinating the finite to the infinite, placing their trust in that which does not pass away. This precept heretofore observed must not be abandoned now. A desire for the earth and the fullness thereof must not be abandoned now. A desire for the earth and fullness thereof must not lure our people from their truer selves. Those who seek for a sign merely in a greatly increased material prosperity, however worthy that may be, disappointed through all the ages, will be disappointed now. Men find their true satisfaction in something higher, finer, nobler than all that. We sought no spoils from war; let us seek not spoil from peace. Let us remember Babylon and Carthage and that city which her people, flushed with purple pride, dared call Eternal.

“This college and her sons have turned their eyes resolutely toward the morning. Above the roar of reeking strife they hear the voice of the founder. Their actions have matched their vision. They have seen. They have heard. They have done. I thank you for receiving me into their company, so romantic, so glorious, and for enrolling me as a soldier in the legion of Colonel Ephraim Williams” — Calvin Coolidge, October 17, 1919

Final page of Ephraim Williams’ last will and testament, it which he leaves the remainder of his estate to the “Support and maintenance of a free School for Ever, provided the Said township fall with in the jurisdiction of the Province of Massachusetts bay, and provided, also that the Governour & General Court give the Said township the name of Williamstown…” Source: http://archives.williams.edu/founding/will4.php.

Hendrik Booraem V has performed an impressive and unique contribution to the study of our thirtieth president. Carving his niche in relating the lives and eras of Presidents when they were young men, Mr. Booraem focuses in this work on the first twenty-three years of Cal Coolidge’s life. Booraem takes us along with young Coolidge through his rural upbringing, study at Black River Academy and St. Johnsbury, his time at Amherst and finally his dilemma in choosing a career. He studiously avoids the familiar terrain of previous biographies, the man as President, and only connects who he was with who he would be at the close of this book. Even then, he never indulges in any kind of narrative by which Coolidge’s rise was inevitable or foreseen. In fact, Booraem presents the red-headed young man with that justified infusion of sympathy and respect that makes a fair-minded understanding possible. As such, Booraem gives proper place to the long correspondence between Calvin and his father as well as Coolidge’s much-underrated but actually revealing Autobiography.

Booraem has presented his subject carefully despite the gaps in the record that consternate every Coolidge researcher. We are guided back to the quiet, secluded countryside of Plymouth Notch, to meet the rugged families of that area and discover that the place and time were colorful and exciting in their own independent way. We meet Cal’s father, mother and sister, his grandparents and the aunts and uncles he regarded so dearly. We learn that while the shy Vermonter inherited much from his forbears, he remained enigmatic even to neighbors. A keen consciousness of his frailty and proximity to death remained a force in how his life unfolded the way it did. It was assumed he would succumb early as his mother had. He outlived those early expectations and achieved incredible success when all indications of personality and energy seemed to circumvent that. As Booraem notes, Cal turned out to have “abilities in such abundance” that few can make sense of him at initial glance. Some biographers stop trying and are content to caricature him instead of attempting to understand him. Booraem avoids this pitfall and introduces us to a young American boy growing up in the 1890s whose reticence conceals much more than meets the eye. Booraem’s style is analytical but fluid. He succeeds in exploring that line that has eluded so many between “Coolidge the Vermonter” and “Coolidge the human being.” It makes for a fascinating read in psychology as much as biography and is difficult to put down. It is full of many of the same life struggles and questions, uncertainties and successes, of any young person today. I enthusiastically recommend it.

Thanks to Booraem’s painstaking efforts, we see Calvin in a fuller light than others have recognized. We find Calvin’s interest in the whimsical and theatrical as a youngster, the development of his wit and intellectual “power,” as he would call it. We see his love for and skill in the art of debate and rhetoric. We see him as the quiet observer rather than the energetic doer. Yet, by the end of the book, the stage is set for what Coolidge would become. It was not that college had changed him, he remained the same through his time there. Those four years would simply reveal and refine what was already present within him. Booraem shows that he developed quietly on his own, not in seclusion, but as the solitary young man in the crowd who watches, learns and improves through diligent work. He was no athlete but possessed a much more enduring kind of strength. He had friends, to be sure, Hardy and Deering foremost of all, but he was his own person. He knew who he was and what he learned from Morse, Garman and the rest, confirmed his confidence in that fact.

While some lived fast and hard, usually dying young as a result, that life held no charm to Cal who wisely perceived its folly without needing to experiment in it. Yet, he was ready for death, should it come. The maxim he would repeat in maturity, “Do the day’s work,” captures both that focus on today — not entertaining long-term plans — but also the care, thought and integrity invested in the tasks at hand. Above all, we catch a view of Calvin, not as a fully-developed POTUS at age twenty-three, but as approaching the worthy man he aspired to be, a boy in search of his father’s approval, but also an intelligent, earnest, kind-hearted, and capable person. Coolidge was a complicated personality, but, as Mr. Booraem reveals, he was also a heroic one, deserving our admiration and, in not insignificant ways, our emulation.

You can find Mr. Booraem’s fine book here.

Coolidge during his time at Black River Academy, age 18.