On the Debt to Honor

May 26, 2025 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

*Arlington Amphitheater, May 30, 1925. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

“For those who are the inheritors of a noble estate and a high place in the world, it is a good thing to pause at intervals and consider by what favor of fortune and of ancestry their lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Thus to meditate on that course of events, which has given them what they have and made them what they are, will tend to remind them how great is their debt and how little is their share of merit.

*President Coolidge addresses the gathering on Memorial Day, 1925. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

“This is the day on which the American people each year acknowledge that they have such a debt. It has been set aside that a grateful Nation may do fitting honor to the memory of those who have made the greatest and most voluntary contribution to it. 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.

*Honoring the Unknown Soldier, Arlington, Memorial Day, 1925. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

*General Pershing among the stones at Arlington, May 1925. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

“To such a memorial as exists here we can only come in a spirit of humility and of gratitude. We can not hope to repay those whom we are assembled to honor. They were moved by a noble conception of human possibilities and human destiny. But we can undertake to find what was their inspiration and seek to make it our guide. By that they will be recompensed…

“We live far enough away from those times of test and trial to know that sincerity and honesty did not all lie on either side. We know the conflicts of loyalties, traditions, ancestry, and interest which drew men to one side and the other. I doubt if there ever was another so great and elemental a conflict from which men emerged with so much of mutual respect, with so little of bitterness and lingering hostility. The struggle brought the whole Nation at last to see that its only assurance was in unity. United, it could go its way in all security; divided, both sections becoming the prey of jealousy and intrigue, would have dissipated all the power they now have for good in the world.

“Our generation has recently lived through times still so vivid as to seem but as yesterday, which have taught us deeply to appreciate the value of union in purpose and effort. We have come to see as through a crystal that in the national variety of talents and resources, of cultures and capacities, of climates and of soils, of occupations and of interests, lies the guarantee of both our power and our authority. More than that, they have taught us how heavy and important is our responsibility in the world…

*Bestowing flowers and salute to the Unknown Soldier, Arlington, Memorial Day, 1925. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

“Our gathering here today is in testimony of supreme obligation to those who have given most to make and preserve the Nation. They established it upon the dual system of State government and Federal Government, each supreme in its own sphere. But they left to the States the main powers and functions of determining the form and course of society. We have demonstrated in the time of war that under the Constitution we possess an indestructible Union. We must not fail to demonstrate in the time of peace that we are likewise determined to possess and maintain indestructible States. This policy can be greatly advanced by individual observance of the law. It can be strongly supplemented by a vigorous enforcement of the law. The war which established Memorial Day had for its main purpose the enforcement of the Constitution. The peace which followed that war rests upon the universal observance of the Constitution. This Union can only be preserved, the States can only be maintained, under a reign of national, local, and moral law…” – President Calvin Coolidge, Arlington National Cemetery, May 30, 1925

On President’s Day 2025

February 18, 2025 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

*The Coolidges at Swampscott, Massachusetts, 1925. Photo credit: Leslie Jones Collection.*

Everyone comes to learn the Presidents by different means, at various seasons of life, and in diverse forms. Most rediscover the Chief Executives once life and experience has distanced him or her from the grade level classroom. How they “meet” any of the forty-five individuals who have occupied the Presidential Office can be as engaging and impactful as the opportunity would be to find a new friend, realizing that a fascinating array of stories waits to be tapped, and an instructive human life invites introduction to you with the slightest effort on your part. The written word unlocks this potential rediscovery of a friend you may have seen as a mere name in a list or among a series of pictures that had no particular meaning or attachment to you. Yet, the Presidents can still surprise us. They certainly continue to do so for me. I meet them at times I do not always expect. Sometimes I stumble upon one of them sitting by one of my bookshelves, ready for a conversation. Some of them even appear to live with us. Other times, I catch one of the Presidents out enjoying a horseback ride in the neighborhood. Again, I happen to turn around just in time to glimpse another one walking down a stairway at the faint strains of “Hail to the Chief.” No, I do not see the dead. I see the living. The Presidents, each in their own way, lives close to each of us, if we let them enter. I first met Calvin Coolidge through the introduction of Robert Sobel. His book, Coolidge: An American Enigma, brought about a voyage of discovery I did not anticipate. Cal and Grace have now lived with us for more than two decades. They come and go whenever they please. We do not always see them at the times we might expect, for no one entirely controls the person or itinerary of Calvin and Grace Coolidge. Yet, they appear when we most need them and go when they have done all that the occasion requires. They are some of our most beloved friends. They are never late for an appointment and always know, as the gracious gentleman and lady that they are, when to speak and when to be silent, when to be on hand, ready to support, and when to leave. Not everyone will encounter them by the same means: some of our good friends first discovered them through McCoy’s The Quiet President, others through Ferrell’s The Talkative President or Fuess’ The Man from Vermont, and still others from Charles C. Johnson’s Why Coolidge Matters or Amity Shlaes’ Coolidge. A number encounter them through Mary Randolph’s Presidents and First Ladies, the Colonel’s Starling of the White House, Booraem’s The Provincial, or Lathem’s Your Son, Calvin Coolidge or Calvin Coolidge Says. Maybe it was the Curtises, in Return to These Hills, Jerry Wallace, in The First Radio President, or Robert Woods’ The Preparation of Calvin Coolidge who guided you, as Virgil and Beatrice to Dante. Paul Johnson, in Modern Times, and John Earl Haynes, in Calvin Coolidge and the Coolidge Era, have each ushered fellow travelers to the Coolidges. Edward Ransom, Niall Palmer, and other British scholars have freshened the sails when American scholarship regarding the Coolidge Twenties was at its stalest. Tom Silver’s Coolidge and the Historians sent a volley into academia when it needed to be shaken from its pretentious chronological snobbery and hypocritical misrepresentation of Cal and the decade over which he presided. Craig Fehrman, in Author in Chief, has introduced several to the remarkable literary talents Cal had while John Derbyshire, in Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, melts away the decades to reveal Cal sitting with his cigar directly across from us, as if we sat before the President a century ago. A privileged few first discover Calvin and Grace speaking directly to them in Have Faith in Massachusetts, The Price of Freedom, Foundations of the Republic, The Autobiography, or Grace’s own Autobiography. However we first encounter the Coolidges, we are now all in the same boat. Who first introduced you to Cal and Grace? Whoever it was, we rejoice to count you as our fellow sojourners. A belated Happy President’s Day, Coolidge Country!

On Inauguration Day a Century Ago

January 20, 2025January 20, 2025 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, right foreground, delivers his inaugural address after taking the oath of office on the East Portico of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on March 4, 1925. Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the United States. Photo credit: Associated Press.

One of the unheralded heroes on Inauguration Day a century ago was legendary radio announcer Graham McNamee. He had already initiated the now familiar tradition of giving historical context and commentary to the news in President Coolidge’s first Annual Message in December 1923. McNamee’s image, wired from the resplendent Public Auditorium in Cleveland the previous summer while covering the Republican National Convention, became one of the first transmitted by the rapidly accelerating powers of the medium. The transmission, just developing at the time, took four minutes. His work for WEAF remained on the cutting edge as he was set to cover the Presidential Inaugural Address in March 1925, the first in history to be carried by radio. It was estimated by correspondents at the time that between 22 to 25 million people heard the Inaugural, including the full recording of Coolidge’s 4,000 plus word Address. Carried across twenty-two stations spanning coast-to-coast, the still novel technology captured the sounds of the pages and the President’s voice so crisply (including more than one of his inspirations!) that he seemed to be on the stage of nearly every school gym and public gathering in the country at the same, shared moment in time. It was America’s first synchronized experience of a vital cultural and political tradition, carrying with implications set to transcend the constraints of the globe itself. Yet, well on his way to earning the Radio Digest Award that year as the “World’s Most Popular Radio Announcer,” McNamee almost missed the entire occasion.

McNamee recalled it this way: “The inauguration proved a meaner job than most, as it was so hard to get information. Washington was full of officials, each apparently knowing all about what was to take place but unwilling to impart much of their knowledge. Everything was confusion, likewise everybody was passing the buck; and it was almost impossible to make our arrangements. For one thing we didn’t know when to go on the air.” It was predicated, McNamee explained, on how long the vice-presidential oath and ceremonies in the Senate Chamber took. It could be twenty minutes or an hour. No telephone wires were permitted in the Senate and so word had to be carried by runner. “Yet,” McNamee continued, “once on the air we had to stay on.” The announcer had to be ready to innovate, crafting the role of political commentator along the way. “So again I wrote reams of stuff, historical stories, and so on, as filler-in-material. Meantime I had stationed messengers in the capitol to hot-foot it to me as soon as the President and Vice-president left the Senate Chamber to come to the capitol steps, where the President himself was to take the oath of office.”

*WASHINGTON, D.C. — March 4, 1925, Calvin Coolidge Inauguration. Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge. Photo credit: Baltimore Examiner and Washington Examiner.*

Then it happened. “I got lost and the radio sets were almost left flat without an announcer,” McNamee recalled. “My booth was on the pedestal of one of the statues by the steps of the capitol; and all the messengers being busy, I left the booth for a minute, while the officials were still in the Senate Chamber, to get word to one of our staff. To reach him I had to hurdle a temporary fence built to keep the President’s pathway clear of intruders; and, once on the other side, I found I couldn’t get back. A patrolmen yanked me by the shoulder just as I was climbing over on the return journey, and refused to let me go further. I vain I pleaded: ‘Against orders,’ he said. I told him of the microphone lying silent and pictured all the people from coast to coast that would be disappointed. But he was evidently a man of a single-track mind, one of those burly and not very imaginative policemen that will stick like a bulldog to an order, once they get it, and who are inflexible when given a little authority.”

It became desperately close to time. “For ten minutes I argued until at last I saw light–another way of approach through the crowd, which I had not noticed before. I asked him about it; that was all right–it was out of his jurisdiction, but never would he have let me over that fence in spite of the waiting twenty-five million. And that was the total estimated by the newspapers, the audience on this occasion being vastly increased by the children. Almost every school in the land had a loud-speaker installed in its auditorium or its one little room, in the case of the country hamlets.”

*Inauguration Day, March 4, 1925, looking across the thousands gathered to witness the ceremony. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

McNamee got back to his booth just in time. “And at that I was caught, for after I reached the booth, and went on the air, with a little description, then a story, I was halfway through that story when a messenger came racing to me, saying that the procession had started from the Senate Chamber. We were having difficulty enough in timing things, anyway, and General Dawes upset even our tentative calculations. Instead of swearing-in the senators one by one, he had done it in batches. That story was pretty well jumbled, I am afraid, for the President was on its heels. I had to cut off my microphone quickly and signal the control room to put on the President’s microphone, just in time to catch the administration of the oath of office by Chief Justice Taft.”

*Chief Justice (and former President) William Howard Taft administering the oath of office to President Coolidge, prior to the Inaugural Address. Photo credit: Library of Congress.*

“The President stood there very quietly, looking subdued and careworn, I thought; this was so soon after his boy’s death; and his reply to the oath was so low that none of the people there present, excepting the few immediately around him, and none of the radio audience, heard it. We answered many inquiries by mail, afterwards, telling them that the response was a simple, ‘I do.’ ”

Read more about the legendary Graham McNamee in Salient Cal’s America: Reappraising the Harding & Coolidge Era. Thanks to McNamee and his excellent team’s work, here is an excerpt of President Coolidge’s Inaugural Address (which was recorded in full, at the time), the first of its kind carried via radio a century ago.