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Calvin Coolidge (Presidential Leaders Series) Lerner Publishing Group, 2005 ISBN-10: 0-8225-1496-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-8225-1496-1 Pages: 112 Reading level: Grade 7 For ages 11 and older Available at most booksellers, including: AbeBooks.com Powell's Books Independent booksellers need our support! |
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Calvin Coolidge was a popular Republican president who led the United States from 1923 to 1929. He believed in cutting taxes and reducing national debt. A quiet man, Coolidge seemed an unlikely commander in chief. He fell into the role when President Warren G. Harding—under whom Coolidge served as vice president—died of a heart attack. He then won his own full term in the election of 1924. In spite of his shyness, Coolidge was the first president to make wide use of the media. He held frequent press conferences and made the first radio broadcast to the American people from the White House. During his presidency, Coolidge suffered through the death of his teenage son. In 1927 he took everyone by surprise by announcing that he would not seek another term as president. EXCERPT: |
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Do you know, I’ve never really grown up!
—Calvin Coolidge, confiding in his friend and mentor, Frank
Stearns
As the moon shone on the last hours of July 3, 1885, John
Calvin Coolidge and other Plymouth Notch boys dragged a
five-hundred-pound cannon from its hiding place in John
Wilder's garage. Wilder had helped to steal the cannon from
Plymouth Union a few days earlier. They wheeled the cast iron
gun up the road on its old wooden carriage and got ready to
welcome the Fourth of July in Vermont with a bang.
The cannon once belonged in the Notch when
the annual Plymouth Township meetings were held there.
But the main road was rerouted in the 1850s. After that, it
became easier to hold township meetings in Union, a larger
settlement a few miles away. Union folks insisted that
the cannon be moved along with the meetings. Every year,
boys from the Notch tried to steal the cannon back for
Independence Day. This time victory was theirs.
Calvin—everyone called him Calvin or
Cal—helped excitedly as the Notch raiders loaded the cannon
with gunpowder and fuses. They fired thirteen blasts at
about midnight, in honor of the thirteen original colonies
and, coincidentally, Calvin's thirteenth birthday.