Coolidge

by Amity Shlaes

As the holiday neared, disappointments mounted. Morrow had hosted Lindbergh in Mexico with great success, but the Coolidge combination of aviation and arms shipments was not always working as foreign policy. Stimson, operating in Nicaragua, had demonstrated great talent, but he and General Hilario Moncado, who was leading the Nicaraguan government, had not stopped General Sandino and his rebels; on the contrary, Sandino’s men were refusing to turn in their guns for any price; their refusal to be bought by the Americans looked like character. After a visit from Stimson, it was clear that Coolidge might once again have to dispatch the marines; at the end of the year five marines would be killed and twenty-three wounded at Quilali with matériel stolen from a U.S.-owned gold mine by General Sandino. Dispatching Lindbergh, the plan for January, might not be enough to prevent civil war in Nicaragua. The idea of shipping arms through proxies to one party or the other in a national conflict was merely making the United States look sinister.