Calvin Coolidge's Inaugural Address: Resources

Based out of Coolidge's childhood home in Vermont, this organization aims to preserve Coolidge's history and legacy. Definitely more pro-Coolidge than some other sites you'll see.

The Miller Center at UVA has extensive biographies on all the U.S. presidents, which also tend to go into a lot of historical context as well as give you a lot of information about the president's life.

A modest guy has a modest library, just part of the public library in Northampton, Massachusetts. The site has some photos and links to other Coolidge stuff.

Okay, this one isn't about Coolidge directly, but this epic miniseries is a great documentary about the 1920s through the lens of Prohibition.

This 1979 mini-series, based on the autobiography of a maid who worked in the White House for over 30 years, looks at the inner workings of the White House from the perspective of the staff. It includes the Coolidge years.

Although Coolidge is only mentioned briefly, this article does give an interesting overview to the art of the presidential inaugural address, via James Garfield reviewing all his predecessors' speeches when he sat to write his own.

In preparation for Barack Obama's inaugural address in 2009, this article looks back at inaugural addresses over the course of American history, pointing out a formulaic pattern that we can see across all previous examples. It opens with a quote from Coolidge's speech.

This article describes the actual scene of Coolidge's inauguration, the first to be broadcast over the radio to a national audience. For a description of what a radio is, see our "Nutshell" section.

This compilation of footage from all of the festivities on March 4, 1925, comes from a newsreel, complete with silent movie text cards. The footage includes the procession, the swearing-in process, and his Inaugural Address (sans sound). Skip ahead to about 6:30 to see some close-ups of Silent Cal himself.

Dawes was Coolidge's Vice President, and here he's promoting naval disarmament, which was a big issue for Coolidge. Dawes and Coolidge didn't get along, but they seem to agree on this point. This video takes place in 1929, after Dawes and Coolidge were out of office—but that also means that there's sound, unlike the footage of the inauguration (by this point talking pictures were around). You can compare Dawes' demeanor and speech to Coolidge's to get a sense of their different personalities.

The sound cuts out towards the end, but stay tuned—around 4:08 you can hear again, and you get some classic "Hell 'n' Maria Dawes" action.

Coolidge's Inaugural Address was the first ever to be broadcast on the radio. So we should probably hear what that sounded like.

Standard portrait of "Silent Cal" himself.

Coolidge being sworn in by Taft. They sure knew how to dress in those days.

For a dude who was on the introverted side, Coolidge seemed to like getting his picture taken dressed up, including some famous images of him in Native American clothing.

Coolidge's Vice President and architect of the Dawes Plan, in all his 1920s center-part glory.

Coolidge's Secretary of the Interior, builder of the Hoover Dam, and the President who was largely blamed for the Great Depression (maybe unfairly).

This was the legislation that put even stricter limits on the number of immigrants coming in from certain countries, primarily in Eastern Europe and Asia.

This famous image shows how strong the revived Ku Klux Klan was when Coolidge took office as they marched by the thousands down the streets of Washington, DC.