When I read in one of my little daily books on historical happenings I noticed that President Warren Harding died August 2, 1923, I got out my Presidential Anecdotes Book to read more about him and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, who followed him in office.
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The twenty-ninth president, Harding, really never did want to be president, but his wife, Florence, urged him on to government offices. He took the office in 1921. He owned a newspaper in Marion, Ohio, where he met and married his wife. Although he was from a small town, he displayed no small town virtues when he became president. He invited his cronies to poker games in the White House, at which time liqour flowed freely dispite prohibition.
President Harding, admited he was a man of limited talents and said I’m in jail, and can’t get out, so I have to stay. When someone asked him how he liked to be president, he said, It is hell, no other word can describe it.
He did the best he could being president. One speech he made was considered excellent, advocating civil rights for blacks which Negro educator, Wilson J. Wilson Petrtus, called the most notable and courageous expression on the race question made by any president of the United States since Lincoln. Although he himself was honest, some of the men he appointed to high office turned out to be crooks.
In the summer of 1923, distressed by stories of graft and corruption among friends, and associates, Harding and his wife left Washington for a vacation and speech making tour. In San Francisco, he had a heart attack and was put to bed in a hotel. That evening, August 2, his wife was reading an article about him entitled A Calm View of a Calm Man. That’s good, said Harding at one point, Go on. Read some more. Moments later he died.
Shortly after midnight August 3, 1923,Vice President Calvin Coolidge got the message of President Harding’s death in Plymouth Notch, Vermont where he was spending his summer vacation. He got permission from Washington to have his father, a notary public, to swear him in as president. He then had a drink and went back to bed. He went back to Washington the next morning to take over his duties.
The country wanted nothing done while Coolidge was in office someone said, and he done it. In 1924, Coolidge ran for office on his own and defeated the Democratic candidate by a landslide. The Republican campaign slogan was Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge. He did just that, he was serene, calm, unperturable and truly cool. After he moved to the White House he put a rocking chair on the front porch and smoked cigars. He did less work and made fewer decisions than any other president. Someone said his chief feat was to sleep more and say less than any other president in his five years and seven months in office. He made very few speeches but the one I like best came from the book The Glory of America which reads The foundation of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country. I wonder if we are slipping away from this?
The book of Anedotes has many pages about Coolidge but not much about his presidency. After he announced in August 1927 that he would not run for president in 1928, the Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover. He was lucky, though for the economy went into a tailspin shortly after he left the White House. In retirement Coolidge wrote his autobiography. In 1930 he wrote a daily newspaper column. He died of a heart attack in 1933.