Calvin Coolidge 2014 US Presidential One Dollar Coin
The series of golden colored $1 coins honoring the former Presidents of the United States continued with the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Dollar. This represented the second issue for the year 2014 and the thirtieth release for the series overall.
Calvin Coolidge had served as city council member and mayor of Northampton, state legislator, lieutenant governor, and governor of Massachusetts, before serving as vice president under Warren G. Harding. Coolidge succeeded the Presidency following the sudden death of Harding and was reelected in his own right in 1926.
The United States Mint opened sales for the circulating quality versions of the Calvin Coolidge Dollar struck at the Philadelphia and Denver facilities on April 10, 2014. Products included 25-coin rolls, 100-coin bags, and 250-coin boxes available from either facility and priced at a slight premium to face value. This represented the primary channel of distribution for the coins following the Treasury Department decision to suspend production of the series for circulation.
The obverse of the coin featured a portrait of Calvin Coolidge designed and engraved by Phebe Hemphill. The inscriptions included “Calvin Coolidge, “In God We Trust”, “30th President”, and “1923-1929″. The reverse featured the rendition of the Statue of Liberty by Don Everhart that has been used in common throughout the series. Inscriptions read “United States of America” and “$1″. The date, mint mark, and “E Pluribus Unum” appear as incused edge lettering.
Throughout the year, the Calvin Coolidge Dollar was also incorporated into other numismatic products. A proof version struck at the San Francisco Mint was included within annual proof sets. An uncirculated version was included within other annual sets. Finally, circulating quality versions sourced from the first day of production were available within First Day Coin Covers, which carried a product limit of 20,000 units.
Calvin Coolidge Presidential Dollar Coin Specifications:
Diameter: 26.5 mm
Weight: 8.1g
Thickness: 2.0 mm
Edge: Lettered
Composition: 88.5% copper, 6% zinc, 3.5% manganese, 2% nickel
Mintage: 4,480,000 (Philadelphia), 3,780,000 (Denver)
Presidential $1 Coin — Lady Liberty Reverse Statue of Liberty, 1886
She is the work of sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who enlisted the assistance of engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, to help him solve some of the structural challenges presented by creating a statue of such magnitude.
The Statue of Liberty was completed in 1884 and shipped to the United States in June 1885, having been disassembled into 350 individual pieces that were packed in over 200 crates for the transatlantic voyage. In four months’ time, she was re-assembled in New York Harbor, standing just over 151 feet from the top of the statue’s base to the tip of the torch her right hand holds high above the waters of New York Harbor.
Originally intended as a gift to celebrate the American Centennial in 1876, the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a symbol of the friendship forged between the new American government and the government of France during the American Revolutionary War.
The tablet she holds in her left hand carries the inscription "July IV MDCCLXXVI" in reference to the July 4, 1776, signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the Nation.
There are 25 windows running the length of Lady Liberty’s crown, which is topped by seven rays, meant to convey both the light of the sun and the seven seas and continents of the world.
For millions of Americans, the Statue of Liberty was the first sight that their ancestors saw as they arrived in America after having left their homes in search of a better life for themselves and for their families.
To celebrate her 100th anniversary, the Statue of Liberty was featured on a United States commemorative coin in 1986. In 1997, a close-up image of the Lady Liberty was chosen for the obverse of the new American Eagle platinum coins.
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| Calvin Coolidge 2014 One Dollar Coin Cover |
Presidential $1 Coins
Presidential Dollar Coins feature larger, more dramatic artwork, as well as edge-incused inscriptions meant to revitalize the design of United States coins and return circulating coinage to its position as an object of aesthetic beauty.The U.S. Mint launched the Presidential $1 Coin Program in 2007. The 10-year initiative includes one dollar coins featuring obverse designs honoring the Presidents in the order in which they served in office.
Read less Image of Presidential $1 Coins
The U.S. Mint produces and issues four Presidential Dollar coins per year, each with a common reverse design featuring a striking rendition of the Statue of Liberty. The program was authorized by the Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-145).
2007 Presidential Dollars
2008 Presidential Dollars
2009 Presidential Dollars
2010 Presidential Dollars
2011 Presidential Dollars
2012 Presidential Dollars
2013 Presidential Dollars
2014 Presidential Dollars
Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2015 Presidential Dollars
2016 Presidential Dollars
Calvin Coolidge, in full John Calvin Coolidge (born July 4, 1872, Plymouth, Vermont, U.S. — died January 5, 1933, Northampton, Massachusetts) was the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th vice president in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, and also as a man who said very little, although having a fair sense of humor.
Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity. As a Coolidge biographer put it, "He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength." Coolidge's retirement was relatively short, and he died at the age of 60 in 1933, less than two months before his direct successor, Herbert Hoover, left office.
Though his reputation underwent a renaissance during the Ronald Reagan administration, modern assessments of Coolidge's presidency are divided; he is adulated among advocates of smaller government and laissez-faire, while supporters of a strong central government generally view him less favorably.
Early life and career
Coolidge was the only son of John Calvin Coolidge and Victoria Moor Coolidge. His father, whose forebears had immigrated to America about 1630, was a storekeeper who instilled in his son the New England Puritan virtues—honesty, industry, thrift, taciturnity, and piety—while his mother cultivated in him a love of nature and books. A graduate of Amherst College, Coolidge began practicing law in 1897. In 1905 he married Grace Anna Goodhue, a teacher in the Clarke Institute for the Deaf, with whom he had two sons.
A Republican, Coolidge entered politics as a city councilman in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1898. He was elected mayor of Northampton in 1909 and then served in the Massachusetts state government as senator (1911–1915) and lieutenant governor (1915–1918). Elected governor in 1918, Coolidge captured national attention the following year when he called out the state guard to quell violence and disorder resulting from a strike by the Boston police, who had formed a labour union to press their demands for better pay and working conditions. When labour leaders called on him to support their demands for reinstatement of police officers who had been fired for striking, Coolidge refused, summing up his reasoning in a single sentence that reverberated throughout the country: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
That statement—combined with Coolidge’s strong stand against the Boston police at a time when many Americans viewed organized labour as too radical—catapulted Coolidge onto the Republican Party’s ticket in 1920 as Harding’s vice-presidential running mate. The personality of the taciturn Coolidge could not have provided a greater contrast to that of the gregarious Harding. In terms of policy, however, Harding and Coolidge were nearly identical. Both were members of the Old Guard Republicans, that conservative segment of the party that had remained with President William Howard Taft in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt left to form the Bull Moose Party. Promising the American people a “return to normalcy,” Harding and Coolidge achieved the greatest popular vote margin in presidential elections to that time, crushing the Democratic ticket of James Cox and Franklin Delano Roosevelt by 60 to 34 percent. The electoral vote was equally one-sided: 404 to 127.
Presidency
Acceding to the presidency upon Harding’s unexpected death (August 2, 1923), Coolidge took the oath of office from his father, a notary public, by the light of a kerosene lamp at 2:47 am on August 3 at the family home in Plymouth, Vermont. He inherited an administration mired in scandal. Cautiously, quietly, and skillfully, Coolidge rooted out the perpetrators and restored integrity to the executive branch. A model of personal rectitude himself, Coolidge convinced the American people that the presidency was once again in the hands of someone they could trust. The change of ambience in the White House did not miss the keen eye of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said that the new White House was “as different as a New England front parlor is from a backroom in a speakeasy.”
At the Republican convention in 1924 Coolidge was nominated virtually without opposition. Running on the slogan “Keep Cool with Coolidge,” he won a landslide victory over conservative Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Party candidate Robert La Follette, gaining about 54 percent of the popular vote to Davis’s 29 percent and La Follette’s nearly 17 percent; in the electoral college Coolidge received 382 votes to Davis’s 136 and La Follette’s 13.
Coolidge was famous for being a man of few but well-chosen words. Despite his reputation, “Silent Cal,” as he was called, had a keen sense of humour, and he could be talkative in private family settings. His wit was displayed in a characteristic exchange with a Washington, D.C., hostess, who told him, “You must talk to me, Mr. President. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.” Coolidge replied, “You lose.”
Coolidge captured the prevailing sentiment of the American people in the 1920s when he said, “The chief business of the American people is business.” The essence of the Coolidge presidency was its noninterference in and bolstering of American business and industry. Government regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, now were staffed by people who sought to assist business expansion rather than to police business practices. Most Americans, identifying their own prosperity with the growth of corporate profits, welcomed this reversal of progressive reforms. They generally agreed with the assessment of Oliver Wendell Holmes, associate justice of the Supreme Court: “While I don’t expect anything very astonishing from [Coolidge] I don’t want anything very astonishing.”
Key to the conservative, pro-business focus of the Coolidge administration was Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. A multimillionaire himself, Mellon believed strongly that reducing taxes for the rich was the best way to expand the nation’s wealth. He held that, as the rich invested funds that otherwise would have been taken away in taxes, new businesses would form and older enterprises would expand and that the result would be more jobs and greater national production. Under the leadership of Coolidge and Mellon, Congress sharply reduced income taxes and estate taxes.
One form of business enterprise, however, received almost no help from the Coolidge administration: agriculture. Farmers constituted the one group of producers clearly not participating in the decade’s prosperity. Twice Congress passed the McNary-Haugen bill, calling for the federal government to purchase surplus crops. Twice (1927 and 1928) Coolidge vetoed it, and the economic woes of American farmers persisted well into the following decade. Coolidge also vetoed a bill offering a bonus to veterans of World War I; Congress overrode that veto in 1924.
Reflecting its focus on internal economic growth, the Coolidge administration showed little interest in events outside the nation’s borders. Coolidge adamantly opposed U.S. membership in the League of Nations, though he did increase unofficial American involvement in the international organization. Ironically for such an inward-looking administration, two of its members received the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1925, Vice President Charles G. Dawes won the prize for his program to help Germany meet its war debt obligations, and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg won it in 1929 for his role in negotiating the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a multinational agreement renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
Life after the presidency
In 1928, announcing, “I do not choose to run,” Coolidge turned his back on what surely would have been another election victory and instead retired to Northampton. There he wrote a syndicated newspaper column, several magazine articles, and his autobiography (1929). And there, a little less than four years after leaving the White House, he died of a heart attack. After his death, as the country suffered through the worst economic crisis in its history, many came to view the Coolidge era as a time of inaction and complacency in the face of looming disaster. Although Coolidge’s personality continued to be the butt of jokes—upon hearing that Coolidge was dead, the writer Dorothy Parker quipped, “How can they tell?”—he was fondly remembered for his quiet New England virtues and for the renewed dignity and respect he brought to his office.
Coolidge was survived by first lady Grace Coolidge, a woman whose outgoing personality contrasted sharply with that of her tight-lipped spouse. She lived another 24 years, during which time she devoted herself to the needs of the hearing-impaired.