It is unfortunate that there are so few intellectual histories (the history of the development of worldviews and thinking processes) on the Presidents. Study of any of them in this light would be rewarding, even for those regarded as the worst Chief Executives.

Calvin Coolidge is not among that ignominious group but stands as one of the most profound, consistent, and creative thinkers among America’s Presidents. Mr. Van Til explores where this came from and how it continued to develop over Coolidge’s lifetime. This quality as a thinker (well-known to his contemporaries) has become a severely under-examined, if not deliberately disregarded, aspect of contemporary study. In part, this is due to its rigor and difficulty. It is not easy to map, let alone navigate, a person’s intellectual roots and modes of thought. The history of ideas is complex and intimidating to even practiced hands. Mr. Van Til has not chosen an easy topic to tackle but it remains no less important. He begins by covering the biographical high points of Coolidge’s life.

It is certainly known and appreciated in many places that Cal was a thinker who thought internally, working out solutions and building his responses not on the page, as some Presidents do — seemingly in search of a thought or in defense of a legacy. Cal worked it all out in his mind and then launched it on the world. He was no less a quick thinker, whose rapid-fire wit and incisive observation skills were fundamental to his rise as a leader of the highest caliber. His press conferences, his daily meetings, his speeches, his participation in countless situations official and commonplace reveal a high intelligence, a set of skills not evident in the “front window” but packed in rooms all readily accessible to his organized and attentive mind.

Van Til next introduces us to the setting and the preeminent influences of Coolidge’s education: Amherst College, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, under Julius H. Seelye and Charles E. Garman. We all have a Seelye and Garman who inspired and shaped us in ways we may not even realize. Coolidge, ever the astute thinker, did comprehend these intellectual debts and honors his influences throughout life. It is a welcome feature of Van Til’s work that not only do we sojourn through the methods and perspectives of Seelye and Garman in their own words but we also enjoy an expedition through Coolidge’s speech collections published in Have Faith in Massachusetts (1919), The Price of Freedom (1924), and Foundations of the Republic (1926) as well as his Autobiography (1929) and some of his other post-presidential writing. Professor Van Til answers vital questions over what Coolidge should or should not have done as President, issues that continue to unfairly mar what Cal did accomplish and obscure a study of the era’s problem points with historical context. He, like Dr. Thomas Silver in Coolidge and the Historians, weighs in on the hostility of one-too-many “historians” who seemed more concerned with justifying their own political present than with an honest appraisal of historical perspective. Professor Van Til concludes with Coolidge’s speech in Philadelphia on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, given in 1926. It is provided in full as the best representative of Coolidge’s thinking encapsulated in any one speech. A summary of the books Van Til used and those relating to Coolidge (biographical and otherwise) up to 2015 completes this 182-page study.

Professor Van Til’s work has its small shortcomings (the formatting of the book being one of them, the one office Coolidge lost early in his career being another – which was school board, having just married Grace Goodhue, not because he violated any third term precedent) and other minor technicalities like Coolidge biographer Donald McCoy (who died in 1996) being quoted as writing in 1998. Confusing the newer edition of McCoy’s 1967 biography, The Quiet President, is a small error of attention to detail compared to Mr. Van Til’s overall achievement in Thinking Cal Coolidge. Taken together, the book is an excellent resource and merits a place alongside the growing Coolidge collection of materials setting the record straight after so many years of unwarranted mischaracterization by those who should know better. Contempt often clouds an honest study and Coolidge was subject to that enmity early. But, it is refreshing that scholarship is returning to both the 1920s and the life and legacy of President Coolidge.

Written on the fifth anniversary of her youngest son’s death (16-year old Calvin Jr.), Mrs. Coolidge’s poem was published in the fall of 1929 (appearing in Good Housekeeping magazine) just before the wedding of her oldest son, John to Miss Florence Trumbull of Connecticut. Paid for the use of this timeless tribute to her dear little boy, Mrs. Coolidge looked to the future in deed as in word. She would send the $250 check to John and his new bride “to use it for something in the new home, in some way that his brother might have chosen were he here.” We have no doubt that John and Florence put the money to just the right use, in exactly the spirit his brother would have applied it.

You, my son,

Have shown me God.

Your kiss upon my cheek

Has made me feel the gentle touch

Of Him who leads us on.

The memory of your smile, when young,

Reveals His face,

As mellowing years come on apace.

And when you went before,

You left the gates of Heaven ajar

That I might glimpse,

Approaching from afar,

The glories of His grace.

Hold, son, my hand,

Guide me along the path,

That, coming,

I may stumble not,

Nor roam,

Nor fail to show the way,

Which lead us home.

“Here about us, in this place of beauty and reverence, lies the mortal dust of a noble host, to whom we have come to pay our tribute, as thousands of other like gatherings will do throughout our land. In their youth and strength, their love and loyalty, those who rest here gave to their country all that mortality can give. For what they sacrificed we must give back the pledge of faith to all that they held dear, constantly renewed, constantly justified. Doing less would betray them and dishonor us.” — President Calvin Coolidge, Memorial Amphitheater, Arlington, May 30, 1925

Established as a day of decorations and tributes to America’s fallen, both North and South, Memorial Day continues to carry enduring importance not as an occasion to glory in the wars of the past, satisfy the vanity of the living or act out some tedious annual ritual of feigned gratitude. What we give on that day is not so that it may be seen. Better that we give nothing at all than give with an eye to be noticed and praised. If it be not sincere, you have nothing to display but your own mendacity. If the principles for which the fallen gave live anywhere, they must live in the hearts of the living. Decoration Day was created to reflect upon self-denying sacrifice and the cost of that sacrifice in service to national ideals (that is, the principles brought together from across the centuries to form America’s foundation stones), whether that unknown soldier falls on the farmland of Gettysburg, in the forests of Argonne, on the beaches of Iwo Jima or Normandy, all gave everything there was to give for something beyond the material, something above the physical, something eternal. We cannot begin to repay what the fallen gave to millions they would never meet but neither should we attempt to devalue the debt.

It was in that spirit of sincere thankfulness that the people of Great Britain reverently interred at Westminster Abbey the first unknown soldier of World War I in 1920.

It was in that spirit that Judge Ivory G. Kimball’s vision for a place that would become the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater (constructed of marble quarried in Danby, Vermont, and imported from Botticino, Italy), and replacing the smaller, wooden amphitheater of Arlington House, had already been dedicated two weeks before Decoration Day that same year.

It was in that spirit that Americans began their own quest to bring home a representative of our soldiers, sailors, and Marines who remained beyond individual identification in the distant grounds of Europe’s cemeteries.

Selected on the morning of October 24, 1921, before both American and French forces at the City Hall in the city of Chalons, Sergeant Edward F. Younger (whose distinguished service in the American Expeditionary Force bestowed the honor) selected one of four caskets in which had been placed the remains of men who had been placed at Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel. With white roses in hand, Sergeant Younger quietly circled the caskets three times and placed the roses on the third from the left, facing it squarely and saluting. As preparations for the journey across the Atlantic aboard the USS Olympia culminated, the casket lay in state and under guard for a few brief hours. With flags at half-mast, the Olympia carried the revered cargo into Washington’s Navy Yard on November 9, 1921. Draped with the flag, the casket was escorted to the Capitol rotunda supported by the same catafalque which had held Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.

Thousands paid their respects the next day before solemn procession on November 11, would bring the unknown soldier to final rest at Arlington National Cemetery, in the plaza of the Memorial Amphitheater, due east the Amphitheater’s Memorial Display Room. The President, Vice President Coolidge, the Cabinet, former President Wilson, the Supreme Court, a number of Congressional and state leaders along with decorated military commanders and their units escorted the casket from the Capitol to Arlington.

A simple ceremony led by President Harding bestowed the service and both the Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross upon the unknown soldier. Representatives from Belgium, Great Britain, France, Italy, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland presented their nation’s honors: the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Victoria Cross, the Medaille Militaire and French Croix de Guerre, the Gold Medal for Bravery, the Virtutes Militaria, the War Cross and the Virtuti Militari. Three artillery salvos, Taps, and a National Salute accompanied the internment of the soldier in a simple marble crypt as the ceremony concluded.

Memorial Day gatherings in the Amphitheater would become a cherished tradition in the 1920s and the sober presentation of a wreath on the modest tomb of the unknown soldier would mark Armistice Day each November 11. But, with the increased awareness of higher duty given came the recognition that greater honor was required the tomb. Army guards took over civilian sentries in 1926.

It was in that spirit that Congress appropriated the same year a new design for the tomb, something more august and befitting the dignity of the man whose entire identity remained lost, known only to God. Over 70 designs were submitted but it would be the concepts of Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas H. Jones whose work would emerge out of the marble of Colorado and the skilled stone finishers of Vermont — the memorial we now see. The site would continue to live and expand with the growth of Memorial Day’s meaning to include similarly chosen unknown soldiers of World War II, Korea, and finally a place which remains vacant for those missing servicemen past, present and future. If Memorial Day is to mean anything, it must live in the hearts of the living.