William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was an American politician, the 27th President of the United States, the 10th Chief Justice of the United States, a leader of the progressive conservative wing of the Republican Party in the early twentieth century, a chaired professor at Yale Law School, a pioneer in international arbitration, and a staunch advocate of world peace that verged on pacifism (though the pacifists of his time did not call him one of their own).

Taft served as Solicitor General of the United States, a federal judge, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War before being nominated for President in the 1908 Republican National Convention with the backing of his predecessor and close friend Theodore Roosevelt. His presidency was characterized by trust-busting, strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission, expanding the civil service, establishing a better postal system, and promoting world peace. Taft defeated Roosevelt for the Republican nomination in a bruising battle in 1912. In 1921, he became Chief Justice and is the only President to have served on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Early life

Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second of five children. His mother was Louisa Torrey, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College. His father Alphonso Taft came to Cincinnati in 1839 and opened his law practice.^* Alphonso was a prominent Republican, who served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant.

He was brought up in the Unitarian church and remained a faithful Unitarian his entire life. At age 18, he met his future wife Helen Herron in Cincinnati; she and Taft courted while he was away at college.

The William Howard Taft National Historic Site is the Taft boyhood home. The house in which he was born has been restored to its original appearance. It includes four period rooms that reflect the family life during Taft's boyhood. The home also includes second floor exhibits highlighting Taft's life and career and an educational center.^*

Education

Like his father, the younger Taft attended Yale College in New Haven. There, he was a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society co-founded by his father back in 1832, as well as the Beta chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. He would later become a member of the Yale Chapter of the Acacia Fraternity in 1913. His college friends knew him by the nickname "Old Bill." Initially, given Taft's physical size, Yale's football coach wanted him to join the college squad, but Taft's father refused to give him permission, citing both concern for his son's safety and his personal opinion that football was "not a gentleman's sport". Instead, Taft rowed on the Yale crew and was an accomplished wrestler. In 1878, Taft graduated from Yale, ranking second in his class out of 191. After college, he attended Cincinnati Law School, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1880. While in law school, he worked on the area newspaper The Cincinnati Commercial.

Career

After admission to the Ohio bar, he was appointed Assistant Prosecutor of Hamilton County, Ohio. Two years later, in 1882, he was appointed local Collector of Internal Revenue. Taft married his longtime sweetheart, Helen Herron, in Cincinnati in 1886. In 1887, he was appointed as a judge of the Ohio Superior Court. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. Bolstered by his acute legal knowledge, in 1892, President Harrison appointed him as an associate judge for the newly created United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a post which he held until 1900. He eventually became the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit, and as chief judge, he wrote one of his most famous opinions in Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States (1898). It was then that he met Theodore Roosevelt for the first time, who was, at the time, a United States civil service commissioner. In 1893, while still on the Sixth Circuit, Taft completed the legal dissertation on which he had been gradually working since becoming Solicitor General, thereby earning an Doctor of Laws from Yale Law School. Between 1896 and 1900, Taft was dean and professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati, in addition to his judgeship.

In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft as the chairman of a commission to organize a civilian government in the Philippines, which had been ceded to the United States by Spain following the Spanish-American War and the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Although Taft had initially been opposed to the annexation of the islands—and told McKinley that his real ambition was to become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—he reluctantly accepted the appointment when McKinley suggested that he would be "the better judge for this experience." From 1901 to 1903, Taft served as the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines, a position in which he was very popular among Americans and Filipinos. For example, in 1902, Taft visited Rome to negotiate with Pope Leo XIII for the purchase of lands in the Philippines owned by the Catholic Church. Taft then induced Congress to appropriate $7,239,000 to purchase the lands, which Taft then sold to Filipinos on easy terms. In 1903, President Roosevelt offered Taft the seat on the Supreme Court to which he had for so long aspired, but he reluctantly declined when native Filipino groups begged him to remain in Manila as Governor-General.

Secretary of War, 1904-1908

In 1904, Roosevelt appointed Taft as Secretary of War. Roosevelt made the basic policy decisions regarding military affairs, using Taft as a well-traveled spokesman who campaigned for Roosevelt's reelection in 1904. Taft met with the Emperor of Japan, who alerted him of the probability of war with Russia. In 1906, Roosevelt sent troops to restore order in Cuba during the revolt led by General Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, and Taft temporarily became the Civil Governor of Cuba, personally negotiating with General Castillo for a peaceful end to the revolt. In 1907, Secretary Taft helped supervise the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal. Taft had repeatedly told Roosevelt he wanted to be Chief Justice, not President (and not an associate justice), but there was no vacancy and Roosevelt had other plans. He gave Taft more responsibilities in addition to the Philippines and the Panama Canal. For a while Taft was acting secretary of state. When Roosevelt was away, Taft was in effect acting President. 1:268

Presidency 1909-1913

Policies

After serving nearly two full terms, the popular Theodore Roosevelt refused to run in the election of 1908. Roosevelt certified Taft to be a genuine "progressive", in 1908, when Roosevelt pushed through the nomination of his Secretary of War for the presidency. Taft easily defeated three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Taft considered himself a "progressive" because of his deep belief in "The Law" as the scientific device that should be used by judges to solve society's problems. Taft proved a less adroit politician than Roosevelt and seemed to lack the energy and personal magnetism of his mentor, not to mention the publicity devices, the dedicated supporters, and the broad base of public support that made Roosevelt so formidable. When Roosevelt realized that lowering the tariff would risk severe tensions inside the Republican Party, pitting producers (manufacturers and farmers) against department stores and consumers, he stopped talking about the issue. Taft ignored the risks and tackled the tariff boldly, on the one hand encouraging reformers to fight for lower rates, then cutting deals with conservative leaders that kept overall rates high. The resulting Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 was too high for most reformers, but instead of blaming this on Senator Nelson Aldrich and big business, Taft took credit, calling it the best bill to come from the Republican Party. Again he had managed to alienate all sides.

Unlike Roosevelt, Taft never attacked business or businessmen in his rhetoric. However, he was attentive to the law, so he launched 90 antitrust suits, including one against the largest corporation U.S. Steel for an acquisition that Roosevelt had personally approved. As a result, Taft lost the support of antitrust reformers (who disliked his conservative rhetoric), of big business (which disliked his actions), and of Roosevelt, who felt humiliated by his protégé. Progressives within the Republican party began agitating against Taft. Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin created the National Progressive Republican League to defeat the power of political bossism at the state level and to replace Taft at the national level. More trouble came when Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, a leading conservationist and close ally of Roosevelt. Pinchot alleged that Taft's Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger was in league with big timber interests. Conservationists sided with Pinchot, and Taft alienated yet another vocal constituency.

Throughout his presidency, Taft contended with dissent from more progressive members of the Republican Party, many of whom continued to follow the political lead of former President Roosevelt.

Taft fought for the prosecution of trusts (eventually issuing 75 lawsuits) further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a postal savings bank and a parcel post system, expanded the civil service and promoted the enactment of two amendments to the Constitution. The 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators by the people, replacing the previous system whereby they were selected by state legislatures. Taft also signed The Organic Act of the Department of Labor, which in turn created the United States Department of Labor. In addition, he actively pursued what he termed "dollar diplomacy" to further the economic development of less-developed nations through American investment in their infrastructures.

Foreign policy

Through the early years of his presidency, Taft had difficulties with Nicaragua. When the United States shifted its interests to Panama for the purposes of building a canal, Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya negotiated with Germany and Japan in an unsuccessful effort to have a canal constructed in his state. The Zelaya administration had growing friction with the United States government, which started giving aid to his Conservative opponents in Nicaragua. In 1907, U.S. warships seized some of Nicaragua's sea ports. At the start of December, United States Marines landed on Nicaragua's Caribbean Sea coast. On December 17, 1909, Zelaya resigned and left for exile in Mexico. The U.S.-sponsored conservative regime of Adolfo Díaz was installed in his place. Military invasions increased with a Marine landing in 1910 and 1912. The Marines stayed in Nicaragua through 1925.

One of Taft's main personal goals while President was to promote world peace. Given his judicial sensibilities, he believed that international arbitration was the best means to effectuate the end of war on Earth. As such, he championed several reciprocity and arbitration treaties. In 1910, he convinced congressional Democrats to support a reciprocity treaty with Canada, but the Liberal Canadian government that negotiated the treaty was turned out of office in 1911 and the treaty collapsed. In 1910 and 1911, however, he secured the ratification of arbitration treaties that he had successfully negotiated with the United Kingdom and France and was thereafter known as one of the foremost advocates of world peace and arbitration.

16th Amendment

To solve one impasse during the 1909 tariff debate, Taft proposed income taxes for corporations and business. The new tax on corporate net income was 1% on net profits over $5,000. Legally it was designated an excise on the privilege of doing business and not a tax on incomes as such. In 1911, the Supreme Court in Flint v. Stone Tracy Company approved it. Receipts grew from $21.0 million in the fiscal year 1910 to $34.8 million in 1912.

An income tax on individuals required a constitutional amendment, which was passed with little controversy in July, 1909, by 77 to 0 in the Senate and 318 to 14 in the House. It was quickly ratified by the states, and in February, 1913, it became a part of the U.S. Constitution as the Sixteenth Amendment.

Party schism

Despite his obvious achievements, progressives decried Taft's acceptance of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, which levied a tariff with protective schedules, his opposition to the entry of the state of Arizona into the Union because of its progressive constitution, and his growing reliance on the conservative wing of his party for political guidance. He was criticized for having too great an intimacy with conservative Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon. By 1910, Taft's party was thoroughly divided between progressives and the Old Right.

Taft later broke contact with Roosevelt in one of the most publicized political feuds of the 20th century. In the 1912 election, Taft outmaneuvered Roosevelt and kept control of the Republican party. Roosevelt was forced to create Progressive Party ("Bull Moose") ticket, splitting the Republican vote and resulting in the election of Woodrow Wilson (Many historians argue Wilson would have won anyway, because the Republican factions would not support each other.) Taft won 8 electoral votes making it the worst defeat ever for a President seeking reelection.

Administration and Cabinet


OFFICE	NAME	TERM

President	William Howard Taft	1909–1913
Vice President	James S. Sherman	1909–1912

Secretary of State	Philander C. Knox	1909–1913
Secretary of the Treasury	Franklin MacVeagh	1909–1913
Secretary of War	Jacob M. Dickinson	1909–1911
	Henry L. Stimson	1911–1913
Attorney General	George W. Wickersham	1909–1913
Postmaster General	Frank H. Hitchcock	1909–1913
Secretary of the Navy	George von L. Meyer	1909–1913
Secretary of the Interior	Richard A. Ballinger	1909–1911
	Walter L. Fisher	1911–1913
Secretary of Agriculture	James Wilson	1909–1913
Secretary of Commerce and Labor	Charles Nagel	1909–1913

Supreme Court appointments

Taft appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

Horace Harmon Lurton - 1910
Charles Evans Hughes - 1910
- Even though Hughes resigned in 1916 to run in the presidential election that year, he became Taft's successor as Chief Justice.
Edward Douglass White - Chief Justice - 1910 (Already on the Court as Associate Justice since 1894, and the first Chief Justice to be elevated from Associate Justice. Taft succeeded White as Chief Justice)
Willis Van Devanter - 1911
Joseph Rucker Lamar - 1911
Mahlon Pitney - 1912

Notably, Taft's six appointments to the Court rank third only to those of George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt; his appointment of five new justices tie the number made by Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. Four of Taft's appointments were relatively young at ages 48, 51, 53 and 54.

Two of the appointments were quite unusual because he appointed his predecessor as Chief Justice, as well as his successor as Chief Justice, even though the latter resigned to run for the presidency.

States admitted to the Union

New Mexico – January 6, 1912
Arizona – February 14, 1912

Post-presidency

Upon leaving the White House in 1913, Taft was appointed Kent Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The same year, he was elected president of the American Bar Association. He spent much of his time writing newspaper articles and books, most notably his series on American legal philosophy. He also continued to advocate world peace through international arbitration, urging nations to enter into arbitration treaties with each other and promoting the idea of a League of Nations even before the First World War began.

When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Taft founded the League to Enforce Peace. He was co-chair of the powerful National War Labor Board in 1917-18. Although continually advocating peace, he strongly favored conscription once the United States entered the conflict, pleading publicly that the United States not fight a "finicky" war. He feared the war would be long but was for fighting it out to a finish, given what he viewed as "Germany's brutality."

Chief Justice

In 1921, when Chief Justice Edward Douglass White died, President Warren G. Harding became the only President to nominate a previous President to the Supreme Court, fulfilling Taft's lifelong ambition. Virtually no opposition existed to the nomination, and the Senate unanimously confirmed Taft by voice vote. He readily took up the position, and served until 1930. As such, he became the only President to serve as Chief Justice, and thus is also the only former President to swear in subsequent Presidents, giving the oath of office to both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. He remains the only person in the history of the United States to have led both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government, and as of 2006, is also the last President to hold a public office after his Presidential term ended.

Taft traveled to England in 1922 to study the procedural structure of the English courts and learn how they disposed of a large number of cases expeditiously. During the trip, King George V and Queen Mary received Taft and his wife as state visitors. With what he had learned in England, Taft advocated passage of the 1925 Judges Act, which empowered the Supreme Court to give precedence to cases of national importance, thereby allowing the Court to work more efficiently. Taft was also the first Justice to employ two full time law clerks.

In 1929, Taft successfully argued for the construction of the Supreme Court Building, reasoning that the Court needed to distance itself from Congress as a separate branch of government. Until then, the Court had heard cases in a designated room in the basement of the Capitol. However, Taft did not live to see the building's completion in 1935.

While Chief Justice, Taft wrote the opinion for the Court in over 200 cases out of the Court's ever-growing caseload. His philosophy of constitutional interpretation was essentially a historical, contextualist sort of strict constructionism. Some of his more notable opinions include:

Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., (opinion for the Court)
- Holding the 1919 Child Labor Tax Law unconstitutional.
Balzac v. Puerto Rico, (opinion for the Court)
- Ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply the criminal provisions of the Bill of Rights to overseas territories. This was one of the more famous of the "Insular Cases."
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, (dissenting opinion)
- Disapproving of the Court upholding Lochner v. New York.
Myers v. United States, (opinion for the Court)
- Ruling that the President of the United States had the power unilaterally to dismiss executive appointees who had been confirmed by the Senate.
Gong Lum v. Rice, (opinion for the Court)
- Reluctantly ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit Mississippi's prevention of Asian children attending white schools in the midst of racial segregation.
Olmstead v. United States, (opinion for the Court)
- Ruling that the Fourth Amendment proscription on unreasonable search and seizure did not apply to wiretaps.
Old Colony Trust Co. v. Commissioner, (opinion for the Court)
- Holding that where a third party pays the income tax due to an individual, the amount of tax paid constitutes additional income to the taxpayer.

As Chief Justice he inaugurated Calvin Coolidge in 1923 and 1925 and Herbert Hoover in 1929.

Medical condition

Evidence from eyewitnesses and from Taft himself strongly suggests he had severe obstructive sleep apnea during his presidential term of office, a consequence of his 300 to 340 pound (136 to 159 kg) weight. His legendary tendency to fall asleep in almost any circumstance, an open secret and source of embarrassment for his intimates, is now understood to have been the most obvious manifestation of the disease. Within a year of leaving the Presidency, Taft lost approximately 80 pounds (32 kg). His somnolence resolved and, less obviously, his systolic blood pressure dropped 40-50 mmHg (from 210 mmHg). Undoubtedly, this weight loss extended his life.

Death and legacy

Taft retired as Chief Justice on February 3, 1930, because of ill health and was succeeded by Charles Evans Hughes, whom he had appointed to the court while President. Taft died on Saturday, March 8, 1930 due to heart complications. Three days later, on March 11, he became the first American president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. only other president buried there to date is John F. Kennedy He was the first Chief Justice not to have died in office since Oliver Ellsworth.

A third generation of the Taft family entered the national political stage in 1938. The former President's oldest son, Robert A. Taft I, was elected to the United States Senate. His other son, Charles Phelps Taft II, served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio from 1955 to 1957. Two more generations of the Taft family later entered politics. The President's grandson, Robert Taft Jr., served a term as a Senator from Ohio from 1971-1977; the President's great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, is the current governor of Ohio. William Howard Taft III was U.S. ambassador to Ireland. William Howard Taft IV was once a high official in the United States Department of State. He is now in private law practice.

According to a famous anecdote, when asked about his time on the Supreme Court and as President, Chief Justice Taft allegedly remarked, "I don't remember that I ever was President."

Media

Assorted facts

In religious beliefs, Taft was a Unitarian. "I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe."
Taft was severely overweight to the point that he became stuck in the bathtub in the White House several times, prompting the installation of a new bathtub capable of holding all of the men who installed it – a truth the White House denied until it was torn out years later. At 6 feet, and weighing over 350 pounds (159 kg), Taft is the heaviest person to be President. (Jefferson, Lincoln, Johnson and Clinton were taller.) There is some evidence that his mother started calling him "my pudgy-wudgy boy" before his fifth birthday. This may have led to his disdain for the word "pudgy." In fact, it was said that an aide blacked out "pudgy" from his morning newspaper.
President and Mrs. Taft were members of All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C.
In Manila, Philippines, an avenue is named after him, Taft Avenue. It is one of the busiest streets in the city and one of two major streets that the Light Rail Transit (LRT) passes through.
Taft was the last US President to have had facial hair (in this case, a moustache), as of 2006.
Taft was an avid baseball fan, but he did NOT create the seventh-inning stretch, which was custom decades earlier. He was, however, the first US President to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910.
Taft was the first US President to golf as a hobby.
Taft was the first president to occupy the Oval Office when it was opened in October 1909.
Taft was the first US President to own a presidential automobile. He converted the White House stables into a four-car garage in 1909. ^*
Taft owned a cow, Pauline, which he let graze freely on the White House lawn. Pauline was the last cow to live at the White House, and provided milk for the president and his family. ^*
Despite the fact that politics destroyed Taft's friendship with Teddy Roosevelt by 1912, the gracious Taft attended Roosevelt's private funeral in 1919 and reportedly wept mournfully at the passing of his one-time friend.
A member of the Taft Court went on to serve as chief justice: Harlan Fiske Stone.
There is an elementary school in Orange, California, named after him: Taft (William Howard) Elementary.
There is a high school in Woodland Hills, California, named after him: (William Howard) Taft High School. ^*
There is a law school named after him in Santa Ana, California: William Howard Taft University. ^*

References

Primary sources

Butt, Archie. Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (1930)
Taft, William Howard
- Liberty Under Law Yale University Press, 1922.
- Popular Government Yale University Press, 1913.
- Present Day Problems
- The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court Harper and Row, 1914.
- The Collected Works of William Howard Taft. Edited by David H. Burton. Ohio University Press, 2001-. 6 of 8 volumes have appeared.
- The President and His Powers. Columbia University Press, 1924.
Taft, Mrs. William Howard, Recollections of Full Years (1914)

Secondary sources

Anderson, Donald F. William Howard Taft: A Conservative's Conception of the Presidency (1973)
Anderson, Judith Icke. William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (1981).
Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Nellie Taft : The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (2005)
Bromley, Michael L. William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency (2003)
Burton, David H. Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal (1998)
Burton, David H., Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship (2005)
Burton, David H. William Howard Taft, Confident Peacemaker (2005)
Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -The Election that Changed the Country (2004)
Coletta, Paolo Enrico. The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1973)
Conner Valerie. ''The National War Labor Board' '(1983)
Duffy, Herbert S. William Howard Taft (1930)
Friedman, Leon, ed. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Vol 3,
Hammond, John Hays. The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond (1935)
Hatch, Carl E. The Big Stick and the Congressional Gavel: A Study of Theodore Roosevelt’s Relations with his Last Congress, 1907-1909 (1967)
Hechler, Kenneth S. Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era 1940.
Michael J. Korzi, Our chief magistrate and his powers: a reconsideration of William Howard Taft's "Whig" theory of presidential leadership (2003)
Manners, William. TR and Will: A Friendship that Split the Republican Party 1969.
Minger Ralph E. William Howard Taft and United States Diplomacy: The Apprenticeship Years. 1900-1908 (1975)
Mowry George E. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt (1958)
Pringle, Henry F. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography 2 vol (1939); Pulitzer prize
Renstrom, Peter G. The Taft Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy ABC-CLIO, 2003
Scholes, Walter V. and Marie V. Scholes. The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration 1970.
Wilensky, Norman N. Conservatives in the Progressive Era: The Taft Republicans of 1912 (1965).

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: William Howard Taft