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near you. That's the letter K, the number 12.com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS. It's February 2nd, 1924. We're just above DuPont Circle, inside the gorgeous three-story red brick house located at 2340 S Street, Northwest Washington, D.C.,
This is former President Woodrow Wilson's home. And as the 67-year-old lies on his bed, in his room on the upper floor, breathing with increased difficulty, consuming little more than sips of broth, things aren't looking good. No surprise. I know. We've seen Woodrow struggle mightily with his health since his stroke in late 1919, which I trust you recall from episode 147. It's been heartbreaking to catch the glimpses of him that we have since then. To see him struggle to walk.
struggled to remember cabinet members' names. To watch as his ever-vigilant physician, Dr. Carrie Grayson, and doting wife, Edith, have nursed him along. And poor Edith. She effectively became the first woman to serve as President of the United States the way she carried her husband's responsibilities during their last year and a half in the White House. Still, Woodrow's taken a turn for the worse in the past few days. He can't even sign the letters he's dictated.
His three daughters have all been contacted, and with physicians and family flowing in and out of the Wilsons' charming DC home, members of the press have connected the dots. They're all lingering outside. Yes, Woodrow's end is imminent. It's now later in the day. Dr. Grayson and his team have Woodrow on oxygen and morphine.
But in this moment, the former president is clear-minded. And so, his dear friend, the dark-haired and handsome doctor, shows him the respect of telling him the truth. He's dying. Woodrow doesn't flinch. His professor and university president days are well behind him, but this Princeton man's scholarly mind remains. With clarity and lucidity, Woodrow opens his now weakened square jaw and answers, "'I am ready. I am a broken piece of machinery.'"
When the machine is broken. Here, Woodrow trails off. He only repeats, but now in a whisper, I am ready. And so he is, drifting in and out of consciousness. The final word he'll utter later in the day is Edith. If only Edith could have been there at that moment. I'm sure she would have loved to have heard her husband say her name one last time. Late the next morning, February 3rd, Woodrow opens his eyes.
As he does, Edith sits, holding his right hand, while his oldest daughter, Margaret, holds his left. They speak to him, call to him, but remain unanswered. After a few minutes, as the clock strikes 11.15 a.m., Dr. Grayson checks for a pulse, only to find none. The wartime president who dreamed of world peace has peacefully left the world. It's now three days later, a chilly and raw Wednesday afternoon, February 6th, 1924.
Following a small private service in the Wilson home, one that Edith ensured her dearly departed husband's senatorial nemesis who helped keep the U.S. out of the League of Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge did not attend. Eight veterans of the Great War are now carrying the black casket out the front door and down to the waiting hearse. They pass between flanking and saluting officers lining the driveway. Meanwhile,
Countless mournful spectators, reporters, including a moving picture camera operator, pack the sidewalks and neighbors' yards. It's only a glimpse of what is to come. 50,000 Americans watch as the procession of soldiers, Marines, and dignitaries, including President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge, make their way to Woodrow's final resting place, Washington National Cathedral.
Inside the still under construction, yet stunning neo-gothic House of God, a simple episcopal service takes place. A service that 5 million Americans experience audibly thanks to the radio. And once the service concludes and all have left save those closest to Woodrow, workmen lower his black coffin into the cathedral's vault. As they do, a bugler from the 3rd US Cavalry plays taps for the fallen former Commander in Chief.
With the coffin in its final resting place, Woodrow's family and friends begin to filter out. All save Dr. Kerry Grayson. He doesn't move. All alone, he stays, waiting until the heavy stone slab is back in its place. Ten years ago, the good doctor promised Woodrow's first wife, Ellen, as she laid on her deathbed, that he would take care of her husband after she was gone. And it's a promise that he will keep to the very end.
Finally, the stone is secured. Then, and only then, does heavy-hearted Dr. Grayson walk away, leaving his dear friend Woodrow, that idealistic, peace-seeking, professorial president, to repose in his eternal peace. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. History That Doesn't Suck
This isn't, in fact, Woodrow's final resting place. Though still interred at Washington National Cathedral, he'll be moved to a limestone sarcophagus in 1956. But all technicalities aside, rest well, Woodrow.
But having said goodbye to our great war president, and on the heels of the last episode in which we said goodbye to our handsome, scandal-ridden president, Warren G. Harding, it's time for the tale of their successor's administration, Vermont's taciturn redhead, President Calvin Coolidge. We'll first meet thrifty, hardworking Calvin as a child and observe as he faces hard family deaths while growing into the silent Cal that Grace Goodhue adores.
We'll then follow Cal as he ascends the political ladder in Massachusetts until getting tapped as Warren G. Harding's vice president. Of course, we know from the last episode how that goes, so we'll see how Calvin handles the transition from VP to president. We'll then enter Silent Cal's presidency. On the personal side, that means more family death while in the White House. On the economic side, that means teaming up with Andrew Mellon to cut taxes, government spending, and the national debt.
Yes, Cal's definitely an economic conservative, but we won't leave it there. Instead, we'll dig deeper into the nuances of his thinking as we watch mostly hands-off Cal preside over a booming decade that makes the silent executive fairly popular even if, in hindsight, we can see the problems bubbling under the economic surface that will later explode as the Great Depression.
We'll also experience the 1920s culture war as the Scopes Trial questions the teaching of evolution. Look at foreign policy, including Vice President Dawes' plan to stem Germany's post-war hyperinflation. Observe as Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover makes a name for himself during the Mississippi flood of 1927. And finally, follow Cal to South Dakota, where he somewhat unexpectedly finds himself speaking at the dedication of Mount Rushmore. Well, Cal might be silent, but we've got a lot to talk about.
So let's get to it. You know how we do that. Rewind. Born on the 4th of July, 1872, and named after his father, John Calvin Coolidge Jr. begins his life in the same region his family has called home for generations. The green, yet rugged, rocky limestone fields of Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
You heard that right. Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Don't confuse the Notch with New England's other and far more famous Plymouth in Massachusetts. The Coolidges have been in the Notch since the 1780s and made their way like everyone else out here: subsistence farming, logging, and getting sugar and syrup out of the vast forests of the Green Mountain State. With a population of 1,300, the Notch doesn't make many maps.
It only has one school, one church, and a single general store, which John Calvin Sr. runs for a time, in fact. But that's just how John Calvin Jr., better known as Calvin or just Cal, likes it. Later in life, Cal will say, "'Vermont is my birthright,' then go on to praise its rugged nature."
It's a life of hard work, but that doesn't bother the young, ginger-haired New Englander who so greatly admires his farming, store running, and various office holding father. Indeed, Cal will follow his father's example both in terms of work ethic and public service throughout his life. Yet, despite his desire to be like his public servant pops, young Calvin already knows he'll have to navigate around his extreme shyness. He'll later recall how, as a child,
While nobody is calling him Silent Cal at this point, the quiet, reserved personality that will become his trademark has already emerged in childhood. Entering his teenage years, Cal is rocked by tragedy. In March 1885, his chronically ill mother, Victoria, passes away at only 39 years old.
The teen takes a strand of her red hair and preserves it in a locket, but the death shakes him. He later writes, "The greatest grief that can come to a boy came to me." As he grows long and lanky, Cal will take many lonely walks to the cemetery. Nor is tragedy done with the teen. Only five years later, 18-year-old Calvin's only sibling, his little sister, Abby, dies as well. In 1891, 19-year-old Cal leaves his beloved Vermont to study at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
The introverted Vermonter makes lifelong friendships, including Dwight Morrow and Frank W. Stearns, by joining the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Cal also joins the Amherst Republican Club. After graduation, Cal, or "Silent Cal" as his frat friends have now dubbed him, takes his father's advice and turns to the law, landing an apprenticeship with Hammond and Field in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1895. Yet, despite the new nickname, there's a real personality hiding somewhere in Cal.
After all, Henry Field will later explain bringing on the young graduate because, I like to laugh, and Calvin Coolidge was very funny. In 1898, Cal opens his own practice, specializing in out-of-court settlements and becoming well-known for his low fees. He's also elected to Northampton City Council. It's while he's running for this office that Cal catches the eye of a beautiful, dark-haired teacher at the Clark School for the Deaf, Miss Grace Anna Goodhue.
A fellow native Vermonter, Grace is nonetheless Cal's opposite. She's sociable, fun, just a pleasure to be around, unlike Cal, described by people back in the notch as, and I quote, a stick. Ah, but like Harry Field, Grace enjoys his sense of humor, and she brings something more out of him, as seen in his letters to her. To quote one, Since I left you on Wednesday evening, I have been thinking of what a delicious, merry-looking bundle you were.
Cal and Grace marry on October 4th, 1905. As the two New Englanders raise their two boys, John and Calvin Jr., born in 1906 and 1908 respectively, Cal continues to follow in his father's footsteps in more ways than just passing on given names. He keeps running for and holding a variety of offices. In fact, when asked about his hobbies, the ever concise Ginger replies, "Holding office."
And that's no lie. Apart from one loss in 1905 for the Northampton School Committee, he always wins. Cal becomes Northampton's mayor in 1909 and a Massachusetts state senator in 1911. The people love Cal. He has a reputation for honesty, positivity, and grounded policy. In 1915, he's elected lieutenant governor. In 1918, the Bay State makes him governor.
Ah, and as we learned back in episode 153, it's as Massachusetts governor that Cal stands firmly against Boston's striking policemen in October 1919, telling them that "there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." This hits just the right chord amid the Red Scare. The red-haired governor's popularity grows nationally.
Still, Cal's as surprised as anyone the next year when, in June 1920, Republican National Convention delegates turn against party bosses to nominate him as handsome and likable Warren G. Harding's running mate. Thus it is that, after their victory, the taciturn Vermonter finds himself Vice President of the United States.
Despite Warren Harding making Cal the first VP to fully participate in the presidential cabinet, Cal appreciates the complaint going back to the original vice president, John Adams, that this office offers little to do. Oh, and he doesn't always make friends. When a woman seated next to Cal at a social event breaks the ice by telling the famously quiet VP she's made a bet that she can get him to say more than two words, Cal merely replies, you lose.
Thank goodness Grace could spin this as a funny anecdote. Meanwhile, Cal hangs in there, presiding over the Senate. But, as we learned in the last episode, Warren's health is declining as he heads west on his nation-traversing voyage of understanding during the summer of 1923. In fact, Warren doesn't survive it. My God, someone has to tell Calvin he now bears the burden of the presidency. That task proves harder than you might think.
It's nearly midnight, Thursday, August 2nd, 1923. Calvin and Grace Coolidge are fast asleep inside the two-story White Clapper Farmhouse where the red-headed VP grew up in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. They've been vacationing here, enjoying a good visit with Cal's aging father, doing farm work and so on. Throughout the vacation, newspapers have indicated that President Warren Harding's condition is growing worse, but Cal can't exactly check in.
This remote New England village doesn't have a telegraph station and its only telephone is at the general store. Well, no matter. The Coolidges will return to Washington DC tomorrow and Cal can get all caught up then. For now, this exhausted farmhand is just glad to enjoy a good night's sleep. Suddenly, there's a hard knock at the door. Who on earth could that be at this hour at this remote farm?
John Coolidge gets up and answers. Standing before him is Bridgewater's telegraph operator, Wilfred Perkins. With no one answering the general store's telephone, Wilfred raced here in his car from his eight mile distant town to bring the vice president urgent news. President Warren Harding is dead. Now, here the telegraph operator stands with a convoy of Cal's staff and newspaper men passing that news to Calvin's father. The old farmer heads upstairs to where his son is sleeping.
He calls out in a trembling voice, "Calvin? Calvin?" Cal opens the bedroom door. He knows something's wrong. His father's face says as much, but of course, the news isn't far behind. John tells his son that Warren Harding is dead and that he is now the President of the United States. It's a sad yet tender moment.
In his autobiography, Cal will later reflect on his longtime widower, 78-year-old father's grief as a citizen over the loss of a president, one he had met and liked, too, mixing with an unspoken pride in his son. To quote Cal's later speculations on what his widower father might be feeling,
He must have been moved also by the thought of the many sacrifices he had made to place me where I was, the 25-mile drives and storms and zero weather to the academy and all the tenderness and care he had lavished upon me. Immediately, Cal puts on a black suit. Grace dresses in a black and white gown. They then kneel together. The new president asks God to bless the American people and enable him to serve them.
According to presidential portrait artist Charles Hopkinson, Cal rises with a bit of confidence, thinking to himself, I believe I can swing it. Once downstairs, Cal and Grace prepare a sympathetic telegram for Florence Harding. Then, the ever-public-serving father and son share another special moment. With the small group gathered in the kerosene-illuminated and carpet-worn sitting room containing the chair in which Cal's ailing mother once rocked,
John Coolidge acts in his capacity as a notary public and administers the oath of office to his son. Cal so solemnly swears on the family Bible at 2:47 a.m., August 3rd, 1923. Despite soon daily revelations in the newspapers of deceased Warren Harding's scandal-ridden administration, President Calvin Coolidge is determined to win the confidence of the American people by showing them continuity. He retains Warren's cabinet and their twice-a-week meeting schedule.
He tells Edward McLean at the Washington Post, Yes, Cal sees it as his duty to carry on Warren's work, even when he doesn't completely support it. That's the case with the Immigration Act of 1924, which reinforces the 1921 created immigration quota system we learned about back in episode 118.
This 1924 double down seeks to restrict entirely immigration from Asia and runs afoul of the United States and Japan's 1907 quote-unquote gentleman's agreement. Cowell worries about the direct insult this will be to a country that is so quickly growing in power, both militarily and economically. But nevertheless, he signs the bill in May 1924.
A month later, he also signs the Harding-era Indian Citizenship Act, which finally establishes that Native Americans are U.S. citizens by birthright. Cal goes hardcore on reining in government spending. He sends a letter to all government departments declaring that he expects to cut $300 million in spending from last year's budget. In fact, we might say Cal walks the walk more than Warren did.
As Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes observes, asking affable Warren for something usually resulted in a yes. But with the task to turn Calvin, it's almost always a no.
We'll get to the details of Cal's economic views later in this presidency-end episode. But right now, as we enter 1924, we do need to note that, as the thrifty Vermonter watches federal spending and seeks to cut taxes imposed during the Great War, he also upsets veteran doughboys this year by vetoing the World War Adjusted Compensation Act. Warren vetoed a similar bill in 1921, but unlike his handsome predecessor's veto, Congress overrides Cal's.
While it isn't a tale for today, keep this bill in mind. Its promised bonus won't be due to most doughboys for two decades, but it will have quite the impact on the next president in a future episode.
Initially, questions of just how much Cal knew about the Harding administration's scandals, especially the Teapot Dome scandal, along with his budget cuts and accusations that he favors the rich, make many in the GOP question if Silent Cal shouldn't be replaced in the 1924 election by someone more popular, like Herbert Hoover. But Cal's use of the increasingly popular radio to talk directly with the public and openness with the media in his twice-weekly press conferences wins fans.
Through this use of the media, Americans, most of whom want less government in their lives, come to see the perhaps not so silent president positively, as a man of morals. Thus, the GOP will keep Cal as its candidate in 1924, adding banker and first director of the Bureau of the Budget Charles Dawes as his running mate. But even as Cal's star rises, the president is brought right back down to earth when personal tragedy strikes.
It's Monday, July 7th, 1924. President Calvin Coolidge sits with his eyes fixed on his 16-year-old son, Calvin, as the tall, gangly youth lies on his bed at Washington, D.C.'s Walter Reed Hospital. The path to this moment started about a week ago, when Calvin Jr. was playing tennis with his brother on the White House courts, but wasn't wearing socks.
As they played, the boy's middle toe on his right foot rubbed against his tennis shoe, developing a blood blister, then got infected, and in this world, yet to figure out antibiotics. That's all it takes. Cal Jr. looked a little better over the weekend after two soldiers provided him with a blood transfusion. But whatever ground he gained is fading. Alone with his frail son, Cal reaches into his coat and pulls out the locket with his mother's picture and a strand for red hair.
The president presses the locket into likewise red-headed Cal Jr.'s palm. The boy grasps it, but only briefly. The precious locket falls to the ground. Cal picks it up and puts it back in his boy's hand. Again, it drops. About this time, Grace Coolidge walks in.
She sees her husband pressing this precious memory of his own long-gone mother into their son's hand, as if it were a healing relic that, if held, could spare the boy from his grandmother's fate. But he can't hold it. The youth slips in and out of a coma. At 10:20 p.m., Cal Jr. joins his grandmother on the other side. The stoic New Englander couple puts on brave faces, but on the inside, both are devastated.
Grace Coolidge turns to poetry over the years to deal with the loss. One of her poems, entitled "The Open Door," starts: "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." As for Cal, he blames himself. In his post-presidency published autobiography, he'll later write: "If I had not been president,
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As Calvin and Grace Coolidge mourn the loss of Calvin Jr. during that first week of July in 1924, the Democratic National Convention is in the midst of picking a candidate to challenge him in the upcoming election. Ah, yes. We heard about this convention in episode 152, but I'll remind you briefly that it's a dead heat between New York Governor Al Smith and Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, with the Second Ku Klux Klan pushing for Al's defeat because he's a Catholic.
They go 103 rounds only to pass on both and compromise on Woodrow Wilson's square-jawed, white-haired, former Solicitor General and Ambassador to the UK, John Davis. His running mate is Nebraska Governor and Monopoly Man lookalike, Charles W. Bryan. But as much as America loves its two-party system, the 1924 election includes a notable third party.
Feeling spurned by both major parties, progressives run their own presidential ticket, consisting of Wisconsin's U.S. Senator Robert "Fightin' Bob" La Follette and running mate, Montana's U.S. Senator Burton K. Wheeler. With the Red Scare passed, "Fightin' Bob" feels he has a fightin' chance, particularly with the endorsements of famed socialist Eugene Debs, civil rights champion and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as another rising public figure, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger.
But with a booming economy, popularity, and the killer jingle "Keep Cool with Coolidge," it's no contest in November. Cal Coolidge crushes it, while Fightin' Bob lands just less than 5 million popular votes and carries his home state of Wisconsin for 13 electoral votes. Not bad for a third party.
and Democrat John Davis gets more than 8 million popular votes that translate to an electoral college count of 136. Cal's nearly 16 million popular votes give him a winning 382 electoral votes. With that victory, Cal's no longer a fill-in or caretaker president. He has the mandate of the people. Time for Cal to run the White House his own way, and he presents that vision at his inauguration.
It's just before one o'clock on a chilly Wednesday afternoon, March 4th, 1925. We're in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Capitol's East Portico, where 40,000 spectators cheer as President Calvin Coolidge walks onto the Corinthian-columned and star-spangled temporary stage. He's followed by his wife, Grace, his father, newly sworn-in Vice President Charles Dawes, and former President-turned-Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
Dressed in a black overcoat, the red-haired president places his hand on his grandmother's Bible as he takes the presidential oath. And what a jarring contrast to last time.
Far from being a middle-of-the-night oath administered by his father with half a dozen spectators in his childhood home, Cal now stands in broad daylight as Chief Justice Will Taft administers the oath at the Capitol with a massive crowd and radio audience of another 22,800,000 Americans.
While Warren Harding's inauguration was the first to be amplified and later broadcast via radio, today, Cal becomes the first president to have his inauguration broadcast live. Following cheers and a rendition of Hail to the Chief, Cal approaches the microphone to podium, ready to make history with this live broadcast of an inaugural address. My countrymen, no one can contemplate current conditions...
without finding much that is satisfying and still more that is encouraging. Our country is leading the world in the general readjustment to the results of the great conflict. Cal goes on for 41 minutes, and unfortunately, an issue with the amplification system creates a bothersome echo for those who are present. Calvin sounds far better on the radio.
Yet, despite its length, the president doesn't give specifics. Instead, he uses this speech, as the New York Times puts it, quote, Stressing general principles rather than specific proposals for making them effective. Close quote. Paramount among these principles is continued mindfulness of government spending and lowering the tax burden. As he says toward the end,
This administration has come in power with a very clear and definite mandate from the people. This country believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation
is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create foundations under which everyone will have a better chance to be more successful. The verdict of the country has been given on this question. That verdict stands. We shall do well if we need it. Okay, not an exciting speech.
In fact, VP Charles Dawes really stole the show. Taking his oath and speaking in the Senate chamber just before they came outside, the nearly 60-year-old VP used his address to take the Senate to the verbal woodshed, decrying the filibuster and other debate rules he finds selfish and unproductive. The audience in the gallery laughed and clapped, while the Senators did not appreciate his remarks. But sticking with Cal...
Even if his inauguration wasn't exciting, its economic focus brings us to the frugal New Englander's views on government spending and taxation. Cal is aligned with the thinking of his white-haired, walrus mustache-wearing, and beyond fabulously wealthy, banker-turned-Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon. Watchinging his fellow wealthy Americans stash their cash in tax-exempt mutual bonds, Andrew advocates tax cuts to encourage the rich to reinvest their money in the economy to create jobs and taxable income.
Serving across the Harding, Coolidge, and future Hoover administrations, Andrew succeeds at implementing this plan. Between 1921 and 1929, the top tax bracket drops from 73% to 24%. The mustachioed treasurer calls this scientific taxation. Others will call it laissez-faire, supply-side, or, particularly popular among critics, trickle-down economics.
And yet, while not refuting that the 1920s economy is laying track for the Great Depression, many of Cal's biographers will caution against simplistically framing him as a "supply side" or laissez-faire president. Historian Robert Sobel argues that: "Coolidge was not a supply-sider, as Arthur Laufer and his disciples were to be in the 1980s. He meant for the tax cuts to be paid for mainly by reductions in government spending.
More important to Coolidge than alleviating the plight of the wealthy was the minimization of government activities. In his view, government was largely unproductive. True progress and prosperity were generated by the private sector, which included farmers as well as businessmen, laborers as well as managers. And perhaps largely as opposed to entirely is the key word there.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Greenberg points out, Cal Coolidge is not dogmatically opposed to government action. To quote him, Coolidge's economic philosophy did resemble the old laissez-faire doctrine. He favored regulating business lightly, cutting taxes, constraining federal expenditures, and using budget surpluses to reduce debt.
In other respects, however, such as his support for high tariffs on imports, Coolidge's policies might be more accurately called Hamiltonian. Indeed, Coolidge described Alexander Hamilton's economic creed as central to the Republican Party of the 1920s. Close quote. These nuanced insights may shed some light on Cowell's arguably most famous quote, which he delivered while speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on January 17, 1925.
Cal said, But in the context of the full speech, Cal wasn't simply praising business. Rather, he was explaining to his newspaper editor audience that making money, that is, doing business, was fine and good, but did not and should not come at the expense of reporting honest and accurate news at the highest of idealistic levels.
To quote further from this same speech, Cal elaborates, saying, Close quote.
Again, track is being laid for the Great Depression. But to understand Cal Coolidge's presidency and, frankly, his popularity, we would do well to remember that most do not realize how freed-up money going into a very unregulated stock market with margin trading will cross the line from investing to straight gambling, how wealth inequality is growing, how the 1920s are whimpering rather than roaring for American farmers,
or how international markets are going to mix with these domestic issues to create a financial Molotov cocktail that blows up in Uncle Sam's hand in 1929. No, right now, many Americans only see a roaring economy.
They see the national debt dropping. They love how Henry Ford's mass production techniques are making all sorts of products affordable, including new electronic gadgets like vacuum cleaners. And a majority of Americans can use such gizmos, all advertised as they listen to a show or a ball game on their radios, of course, because the nation's electronic infrastructure is spreading rapidly. Well, spreading rapidly in city centers. That's less the case in small towns in the country.
It sounds like urban and rural Americans are increasingly living different lives. Indeed, still largely off the grid and holding to a more traditional way of life than city dwellers, rural Americans are alarmed reading in the news about speakeasies, mob violence, flapper girls, and Margaret Singer's birth control clinics, and her nationwide newspaper, The Birth Control Review.
This is a culture war, and in 1925, no issue is hotter, perhaps, than the trial of Tennessee public school teacher John Scopes, charged with violating a new state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. Here's the deal: John isn't so much a boundary pusher as a willing sacrifice. Some leading citizens in Dayton, Tennessee, want the publicity of challenging the new law, and the American Civil Liberties Union is willing to fund the defense.
So, sure, John Scopes is willing to serve as tribute. But it's become a big deal. The ACLU has procured renowned Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow, while the prosecution's team has landed the several times Democratic candidate for president and former Secretary of State whom we've met in many a past episode. The great commoner himself, William Jennings Bryan.
Indeed, reporters like H.L. Mencken are calling this case the battleground for America's soul between the rural and urban. With many a visitor watching, including, it seems, every American who owns a monkey, many want this to be the culture war throwdown between creationism and evolution. But the court doesn't.
It wants the Scopes Monkey Trial, as this case comes to be known, to keep its legal focus. That is, to only assess whether or not John Scopes taught evolution. To that end, the court has refused all of the defense's experts on evolution, leaving Clarence Darrow with no cards left to play and a contempt of court charge for his response. Then, Clarence gets an idea. He'll call for an expert on the Bible.
And surely there are few more nationally known experts on the good book than the prosecution's own William Jennings Bryan. It's a challenge that WJB, ever ready to defend the faith, accepts. It's Monday, July 20th, 1925. Another hot, muggy, and sweaty day in Dayton, Tennessee, the seventh day in this trial.
In fact, it's so oppressively hot inside the courthouse that today's proceedings are moving outside to a platform on the lawn where shady trees can soften the suffering of the trial's more than 3,000 spectators. Everyone pushes as close as they can to the platform, sipping on pop and munching on popcorn, which they've bought from the vendors snaking their way through the hoard. Meanwhile, an army of journalists and photographers take photos and furiously write every detail of the scene.
But amid the heat and the hoopla, all eyes are on two men. One is William Jennings Bryan, aka the Great Commoner. Seated in his chair, the 65-year-old heavy-set Nebraskan looks as confident as ever, even as he sweats through that white shirt and tie.
The other is Clarence Darrow. The wrinkled and jowled 68-year-old with a less than stellar comb-over creaks up from his chair, pulls at his suspenders, and opens his questioning as he sets out to stump the great commoner on the Bible. You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan? Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about 50 years.
Do you claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted? I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there. But when you read that the whale swallowed Jonah, how do you literally interpret that?
I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and can make both do what He pleases. It is just as easy to believe the miracle of Jonah as any other miracle in the Bible. Do you consider the story of Joshua and the sun a miracle? I accept the Bible absolutely. Do you believe at that time the entire sun went around the earth? No. I believe that the earth goes around the sun.
The Bible is inspired, inspired by the Almighty, and he may have used language that could be understood at the time instead of using language that could not be understood until Dara was born. With the chaos growing, a court crier yells out to the thronging crowd, Stop that applause. Order. Order here. This is a court of law. There are no monkeys up here.
Over the course of two hours, Clarence continues the barrage of questions on the Great Commoner, who's as excited to answer as Clarence is to dish it out.
But as the hot sun wanes in the Tennessee sky, so does the patience of our two verbal duelists. Do you believe the story of the flood to be a literal interpretation? Yes, sir. When was that flood? About 4,004 BC? That has been the estimate. But what do you think that the Bible itself says? I could not say. What do you think? I do not think about things I don't think about. Do you think about things you do think about? Well...
Sometimes. Would you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old? Oh, no. I think it is much older than that. Do you think the earth was made in six days? Not six days of 24 hours. Standing up from the prosecution table, the 18th Circuit's District Attorney General, Tom Stewart, jumps in with an objection. What is the purpose of this examination?
Not missing a beat, WJB fires off before Judge John Ralston can answer the objection, telling the packed crowd, "The purpose is to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible." "Oh, and those are fighting words," declares Darrow. The defense attorney fires right back, "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and you know it, and that is all."
As much as the press and the nation eat up the Scopes trial drama, Tom Stewart on the prosecution has had enough. William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow wanted to duke it out. Fine, they did. But the jury wasn't even present for their epic biblical debate, in which many feel WJB did not show well. Nonetheless, the Scopes monkey trial ends with the jury deliberating for only nine minutes before returning a guilty verdict.
John Scopes is required to pay a $100 fine, which the Baltimore Sun gladly covers. While Clarence will be next to John's side at the appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, William Jennings Bryan will not be there. Only days after his biblical battle and the case's verdict, the great commoner comes home from church, has lunch, then takes a nap from which he never wakes, going to his creator on Sunday, July 26th, 1925.
Many are quick to blame Clarence and his intense questioning, but it's more likely that WJB died from complications of type 2 diabetes. As historian Jeffrey P. Morin bluntly, if not savagely, puts it in his examination of the Scopes trial, quote, "...over-eating, not brow-beating, had done Brian N." Close quote. As for the appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court really just wants to end this affair.
It does so in 1926 by upholding the law but overturning the Scopes' conviction on a technicality. As Chief Justice Greene states, "All of us agree nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case." Thus, the culture war over public education continues and does so without input from President Calvin Coolidge. When it comes to cultural issues, he lives up to his silent nickname. Yet, Cal can't remain silent on foreign affairs.
It might feel that way. He's certainly no Woodrow Wilson. But he isn't a full-fledged isolationist either. Though Cal isn't interested in the U.S. joining the League of Nations, he is game to join the newly established World Court. Provided the United States isn't bound by its decisions, that is. While this won't work out, Cal's position alone shows a willingness to engage the world. Let's hit a few other highlights. Cal notably improves U.S. relations with Mexico.
Not a high bar to clear if you recall the Wilson administration's early actions from episode 127, but the silent president sends his old fraternity brother and current JPMorgan banker Dwight Morrow to Mexico and he achieves wonderful results. Ultimately, Cal recognizes the Mexican government while U.S. business prospects improve. The New Englander also shows greater engagement with Latin America by attending the 6th International Conference of the American States in Cuba.
More than anything, though, we can describe Calvin's foreign policy as watching government spending and avoiding war. Indeed, he's a fan of cutting military spending, which frees up cash to pay down the national debt. More than that, though, his financial and peacekeeping priorities are highlighted separately by his two most notable foreign policy achievements: 1924's Dawes Plan and 1928's Kellogg-Briand Pact. The Dawes Plan helps stabilize Germany's young Weimar Republic.
As we know from episode 147, the UK and particularly France demanded that Germany pay for the Great War. Literally. Well, Germany's resorted to printing money to do so, and that's resulted in hyperinflation.
Now, Cal won't entertain the US forgiving debts or lowering tariffs to ease these international fiscal woes. Again, he's a bit Hamiltonian. But he's all for supporting his former banker VP Charles Dawes' proposal which creates a triangular cash flow. It goes like this: The US loans Germany money, Germany uses that cash to pay Britain and France, and that ultimately helps Britain and France keep paying their war debts to the US.
The DOS plan works, at least for now, and the Vice President is recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. As for the Kellogg-Briand Pact, this agreement, ultimately signed by 62 major nations, is nothing less than a repudiation of war. All signatories agree to, quote, "...condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounce it as an instrument of national policy," close quote.
Secretary of State Frank Kellogg will, like Charles Dawes before, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in this. And while future generations will mock outlawing war as naive, it will play a role down the road, especially in the aftermath of World War II. But that's a story for a much later day. Wrapping up foreign affairs, it does seem that America is keeping cool with Cal. But you have to be careful. Sometimes cool weather means rain. And too much rain makes levees break.
In the winter of 1926, heavy snow and rain feeding into the Mississippi caused this mighty river to rise significantly by April 1927. The Mississippi flooding is far from unusual, but decades of a levee-only policy has, with built-up silt, forced levees higher and higher, and now they're bursting. This flood is washing away homes, cities, American lives.
Already struggling to get by in the South's sharecropper system, Black Americans are getting hit the hardest by these floodwaters. Many beleaguered Black Southerners decide they've had enough with life here. Thus, this flood further fuels the era's movement of Black Americans known as the Great Migration as they head for factories from Detroit to Harlem. Meanwhile, Calvin does not see this as a federal matter. He sees it as a state issue to be handled by governors and citizens.
But as stories of the incredible death toll and washed out refugee camps fill even the pro-coolidge newspapers and airwaves, the silent president asks Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to handle it. It's a good choice. Herbert, or "the Chief" as he's known, excelled at providing relief to Central Europe during and after the Great War.
Cal says there's no federal money for flood relief. Yet, the chief gets to it, working with local chapters of the Red Cross, setting up tent cities, and raising millions of dollars. Herbert's success here only adds to his national reputation as a great humanitarian and leader. And while Herbert Hoover attends to the Mississippi flood, perhaps building a profile that will soon outshine the president, Calvin himself is anxious to get away from Washington, D.C. From city life, frankly.
Well, South Dakota's Senator Peter Norbeck is likewise anxious to massage Cal's opposition to farm subsidies in the West. So he invites the president to his home state to come out to the Black Hills and use Custer State Park's impressive three-story lodge as a summer White House. Cal likes the idea. He says yes, and when not working, the Vermonter very much enjoys fishing, riding, and the cool mountain air.
Cal and Grace Coolidge are also honored by the kind reception they receive from the Lakota Sioux. Chauncey Yellowrope, in particular, honors this president who signed the legislation making all Native Americans U.S. citizens by adopting him into the Sioux Nation. He gives Calvin a Lakota name: Leading Eagle. Meanwhile, a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum is also vying for the president's attention.
Here's the deal. Two years back, state leaders got Congress to grant them permission to carve a massive sculpture in the Black Hills, and they've asked Gutzon to carry out that work. That plan has since evolved into Gutzon carving a massive waist-up likeness of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt on the southeast face of Mount Rushmore. Silent Cal isn't invested in this project, nor is he a fan of the temperamental artists overseeing it.
Still, the silent president is in the area, and he finds himself speaking at the dedication meant to kick off the still underfunded project. It's a pleasant and warm Wednesday afternoon, about 2:00 PM, August 10th, 1927. A party of senators, local officials, and President Calvin Coolidge, wearing fringed leather gloves, a 10 gallon hat, and cowboy boots no less, are riding horseback along a dirt trail about four miles outside of Keystone, South Dakota.
The Lakota call this mountain range Pahasapa. White Americans use its English translation, the Black Hills. A half hour later, Cal and the dignitaries arrive at a prepared wooden platform beneath a giant round granite mountain. The Lakota call it the Six Grandfathers. But nearly all of the 1,500 spectators here today know it only as Mount Rushmore. As the crowd looks on, distant dynamite clears tree stumps.
That's just how you start a ceremony in South Dakota. The portly and thick mustache wearing senator, Peter Norbeck, emcees the ceremony. He leads the crowd in singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee." This is followed by a prayer. Then it's Cal's moment. The thin, ginger president walks forward with his pants tucked into his cowboy boots and does his best to project his unamplified voice for the massive crowd. He says in part,
We have come here to dedicate a cornerstone that was laid by the hand of the Almighty. On this towering wall of Rushmore, in the heart of the Black Hills, is to be inscribed a memorial of four of our presidents laid on by the hand of a great artist and sculptor. The union of these four presidents carved on the face of the everlasting hills of South Dakota will constitute a distinctly national monument. It will be decidedly American in conception.
No one can look upon it understandingly without realizing that it is a picture of hope fulfilled. Its location will be significant. Here in the heart of the continent, on the side of a mountain which probably no white man had ever beheld in the days of Washington, in territory which was acquired by the action of Jefferson, which remained an almost unbroken wilderness beyond the days of Lincoln, which was especially beloved by Roosevelt.
At the conclusion of Cal's speech, an airplane flies over the spot on the mountain planned for George Washington. The aircraft drops a banner reading Washington, along with piles of telegrams from governors and celebrities. Concluding the ceremony, Cal hands six drill bits to Gutzon Borglum. The crowd waits as the heavily balding and mustachioed artist goes up a prepared 1,400-step wooden walkway, leading him to the top of the mountain.
Once there, he's lowered along the face in a bosun's chair, where he drives the six drill bits into the rock, ceremonially beginning what will become the face of the nation's first president. It will take 14 years for the carving of Mount Rushmore to be completed. Well, as completed as it will be once the decision is made to just carve the four presidents' faces, not their upper bodies.
Designated as a national memorial, it's everything that South Dakota's politicians could have hoped for in generating tourism dollars. But the not-consulted Lakota Sioux are heartbroken. Like many other Native nations, they revere the Black Hills as the most sacred place on Earth, a place of origin for the buffalo and various indigenous groups.
Perhaps the general take of most Lakota on Mount Rushmore is best summarized by medicine man John Laimdier, who says that Gutzon Borglum "could just as well carved this mountain into a huge cavalry boot standing on a dead Indian." Perhaps all the harder for the Lakota Sioux is the fact that the U.S. government illegally took the Black Hills, a position that the U.S. Supreme Court will finally acknowledge in 1980.
SCOTUS will rule that the federal government took the Black Hills in violation of its 1877 treaty and find that the U.S. owes the Lakota Sioux $102 million as a result. But the indigenous nation will refuse these funds with the simple response that the Black Hills are not for sale. At the time of this episode's recording, this remains unresolved. But as famous as Mount Rushmore will eventually become, most Americans are far more focused on another piece of news in early August 1927.
A week before this dedication, back on August 2nd, Silent Cal called a press conference and passed out pieces of paper with a simple message: "I do not choose to run for president in 1928." That's right. Cal is not running again. He's walking away from the White House. Huh. Perhaps that's an opportunity for Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover or the Great Humanitarian as the Mississippi Flood Fighter is increasingly known.
But that's a story for another time. So, we've followed Cal from the notch down to Massachusetts, from the White House to South Dakota. We've taken in his Hamiltonian meets laissez-faire economic philosophy and watched as his heavily delegated foreign policy improved relations with Mexico, pursued peace, and, at least temporarily, stabilized Germany. But what do we make of all of it? Of the taciturn Vermonter who saw government as unproductive?
Frankly, I don't think I can better sum him up than historian David Greenberg. So, to quote him: "Coolidge's record, in sum, was neither substantial nor enduring. Too many problems, left unaddressed, mounted. Too many causes languished, unpursued. His constricted vision of his office crippled him. And yet, what also counts is how a president gauges, guides, and gives expression to the mood of the people he leads. Here is where Coolidge's success lies.
Most Americans viewed him as level-headed, if not extraordinary. Virtuous, if not visionary. A man whose presence in the White House offered sustenance and calm. Coolidge was a transitional president at a transitional time. In his anxious acceptance of the era's ballyhoo and roar, in the quiet pleasure he took in beholding the fruits of American industry, in the solitary sadness he felt in trying to treasure a lost world,
In all these ways, he reflected and defined the 1920s. Close quote. But even as we end our presidential overview of most of the 1920s, we're far from done with our investigation of this roaring decade. Perhaps you'd like to hear about it over a drink. If so, you better hurry because this is the last call for quite a while. That's right. Next time, we're heading down the road to Prohibition.
History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and Will King. Production by Airship. Sound design by Motley Bach. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. For bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htbspodcast.com.
