Ex Libris: Calvin Coolidge

A strong shyness and a deep reserve in boyhood lingered throughout Coolidge’s life, doubtless contributing to his guarded public emotions. His small-town Vermont roots may have also played a part in this restraint. After discovering in high school that he had a knack for both public speaking and telling jokes, he worked in college while reading for the law to overcome his natural reticence.
Like others of their age, Coolidge’s parents were well-versed in Scripture, and his grandmother, Sarah, taught Calvin and his sister Abbie the Bible chapter by chapter. In their house, there were as well certain classics, poetry, the plays of Shakespeare, and works by Greek and Roman authors.
The influence of ancient writers on the man who became America’s 30th president was especially profound. Both the Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vermont, where Coolidge spent his high school years, and his alma mater Amherst College steeped their students in Latin and Greek classics. At Black River, seven of the 12 courses Coolidge took from his sophomore through his senior year were in these subjects, and, by graduation, he had made his way through authors like Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil.
It’s difficult today to imagine a young man being gripped by such a book as Cicero’s “Orations,” but this is precisely what happened to Coolidge. Influenced in part by his budding interest in local and national American politics, Coolidge found in the “Orations” inspiration, insights, and wisdom for a lifetime. As Ottaway reports, Coolidge once wrote that this work of addresses had captured “my attention to such a degree that I translated some of them in later life.”
At his graduation from Black River Academy in 1890, Coolidge memorized and delivered a speech he’d written about the power of oratory. In this speech, as Shlaes tells us, he paid homage to Cicero and “the force of Cicero’s oratory,” which had deflected the plans of dictators and “made even Caesar tremble.” There is no little irony in the fact that this shy boy not only received praise from The Vermont Tribune for his speech, but that the topic he’d chosen was centered on public speaking.
Like John Adams, Coolidge had grown up in farmland and a New England village, knew his Bible, and had taken key lessons in statecraft from the Romans.
In these ways, Calvin Coolidge was likely the last of a breed.