On Thursday and Friday, this past week, in Washington, D. C., the Coolidge Presidential Foundation and Library of Congress hosted a superb conference on the thirtieth president, covering in seven sessions the life, learning, and legacy of Cal. It was strongly attended, representing quite a diverse range of scholars, educators, and students of Cal alongside an overdue examination of the instructiveness the man and his era provide. We look forward to more excellent conferences to come and a flourishing return Coolidge deserves to public dialogue and civic discourse. Including his wisdom in the conversation will always elevate every citizen’s knowledge of and responsibility for our own part in what is required to continue our Republic. By rediscovering who he is and why he matters the foundations of our Republic and the price of freedom every American owes will be advanced.

Happy Birthday, in advance, President Washington, and a Happy Presidents’ Day, Coolidgeans everywhere!

Speaking of the region of Vermont where he was born that Independence Day of 1872, 150 years ago, when one of his heroes — U. S. Grant — was President, Coolidge writes:

“They were a hardy self-contained. Most of them are gone now and their old homesteads are reverting to the wilderness. They went forth to conquer where the trees were thicker, the fields larger, and the problems more difficult. I have seen their descendants scattered all over the country, especially in the middle west, and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and westward to the Pacific slope.

It was into this community that I was born on the 4th day of July, 1872. My parents then lived in a five room, story and a half cottage attached to the post office and general store, of which my father was the proprietor. While they intended to name me for my father, they always called me Calvin, so the John became discarded.

Our house was well shaded with maple trees and had a yard in front enclosed with a picket fence, in which grew a mountain ash, a plum tree, and the customary purple lilac bushes. In the summertime my mother planted her flower bed there…

This locality was known as The Notch, being situated at the head of a valley in an irregular bowl of hills. The scene was one of much natural beauty, of which I think the inhabitants had little realization, though they all love it because it was their home and were always ready to contend that it surpassed all the surrounding communities and compared favorably with any other place on earth.

My sister Abbie was born in the same house in April, 1875. We lived there until 1876, when the place was bought across the road…“

Here are some remembrances from my trip up to the Notch a few years ago…

Next, here are some past birthdays for CC…first up, 1924, followed by 1929 and finally 1931. 

Enjoy a slice of Independence Day for Cal this Monday! I sure will.

“Magna Carta is the background of all that we have” — Calvin Coolidge, per Catherine Palfrey Baldwin in “And Men Wept: An American Book for Americans,” p.72.

Happy 807th Birthday, Oh Magna Carta! As Coolidge carefully points out, however, in his Prize Essay in 1895: “the confirmation of the Magna Carta by Edward I…” Henry III deserves the credit for following the guidance of his older advisors to reaffirm the Charter but it was Edward I The Longshanks who confirmed its solidity in English — and by extension — American law. God bless England and God bless America!