William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913, and the tenth chief justice of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1930, the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for reelection in 1912 by Woodrow Wilson after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position he held until a month before his death.
"William Taft" redirects here. For other uses, see William Taft (disambiguation).
William Howard Taft
- James S. Sherman
(1909–1912) - None (1912–1913)[a]
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Arthur MacArthur Jr.
(as Military Governor)
Seat established
September 15, 1857
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
March 8, 1930 (aged 72)
Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.
- Politician
- lawyer
Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. attorney general and secretary of war. Taft attended Yale and joined the Skull and Bones, of which his father was a founding member. After becoming a lawyer, Taft was appointed a judge while still in his twenties. He continued a rapid rise, being named solicitor general and a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed Taft civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904, Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and he became Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. Despite his personal ambition to become chief justice, Taft declined repeated offers of appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, believing his political work to be more important.
With Roosevelt's help, Taft had little opposition for the Republican nomination for president in 1908 and easily defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency in that November's election. In the White House, he focused on East Asia more than European affairs and repeatedly intervened to prop up or remove Latin American governments. Taft sought reductions to trade tariffs, then a major source of governmental income, but the resulting bill was heavily influenced by special interests. His administration was filled with conflict between the Republican Party's conservative wing, with which Taft often sympathized, and its progressive wing, toward which Roosevelt moved more and more. Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of reelection, and he took only Utah and Vermont in Wilson's victory.
After leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace. In 1921, Harding appointed Taft chief justice, an office he had long sought. Chief Justice Taft was a conservative on business issues, and under him there were advances in individual rights. In poor health, he resigned in February 1930, and died the following month. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president and first Supreme Court justice to be interred there. Taft is generally listed near the middle in historians' rankings of U.S. presidents.
Rise in government (1880–1908)
Ohio lawyer and judge
After admission to the Ohio bar, Taft devoted himself to his job at the Commercial full-time. Halstead was willing to take him on permanently at an increased salary if he would give up the law, but Taft declined. In October 1880, Taft was appointed assistant prosecutor for Hamilton County (where Cincinnati is located), and took office the following January. Taft served for a year as assistant prosecutor, trying his share of routine cases.[10] He resigned in January 1882 after President Chester A. Arthur appointed him Collector of Internal Revenue for Ohio's First District, an area centered on Cincinnati.[11] Taft refused to dismiss competent employees who were politically out of favor, and resigned effective in March 1883, writing to Arthur that he wished to begin private practice in Cincinnati.[12] In 1884, Taft campaigned for the Republican candidate for president, Maine Senator James G. Blaine, who lost to New York Governor Grover Cleveland.[13]
In 1887, Taft, then aged 29, was appointed to a vacancy on the Superior Court of Cincinnati by Governor Joseph B. Foraker. The appointment was good for just over a year, after which he would have to face the voters, and in April 1888, he sought election for the first of three times in his lifetime, the other two being for the presidency. He was elected to a full five-year term. Some two dozen of Taft's opinions as a state judge survive, the most significant being Moores & Co. v. Bricklayers' Union No. 1[b] (1889) if only because it was used against him when he ran for president in 1908. The case involved bricklayers who refused to work for any firm that dealt with a company called Parker Brothers, with which they were in dispute. Taft ruled that the union's action amounted to a secondary boycott, which was illegal.[14]
It is not clear when Taft met Helen Herron (often called Nellie), but it was no later than 1880, when she mentioned in her diary receiving an invitation to a party from him. By 1884, they were meeting regularly, and in 1885, after an initial rejection, she agreed to marry him. The wedding took place at the Herron home on June 19, 1886. William Taft remained devoted to his wife throughout their almost 44 years of marriage. Nellie Taft pushed her husband much as his parents had, and she could be very frank with her criticisms.[15][16] The couple had three children, of whom the eldest, Robert, became a U.S. senator.[2]
Solicitor General
There was a seat vacant on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1889, and Governor Foraker suggested President Harrison appoint Taft to fill it. Taft was 32 and his professional goal was always a seat on the Supreme Court. He actively sought the appointment, writing to Foraker to urge the governor to press his case, while stating to others it was unlikely he would get it. Instead, in 1890, Harrison appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. When Taft arrived in Washington in February 1890, the office had been vacant for two months, with the work piling up. He worked to eliminate the backlog, while simultaneously educating himself on federal law and procedure he had not needed as an Ohio state judge.[17]
New York Senator William M. Evarts, a former Secretary of State, had been a classmate of Alphonso Taft at Yale.[c] Evarts called to see his friend's son as soon as Taft took office, and William and Nellie Taft were launched into Washington society. Nellie Taft was ambitious for herself and her husband, and was annoyed when the people he socialized with most were mainly Supreme Court justices, rather than the arbiters of Washington society such as Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge and their wives.[18]
In 1891, Taft introduced a new policy: confession of error, by which the U.S. government would concede a case in the Supreme Court that it had won in the court below but that the solicitor general thought it should have lost. At Taft's request, the Supreme Court reversed a murder conviction that Taft said had been based on inadmissible evidence. The policy continues to this day.[19]
Although Taft was successful as Solicitor General, winning 15 of the 18 cases he argued before the Supreme Court,[2] he was glad when in March 1891, the United States Congress created a new judgeship for each of the United States Courts of Appeal and Harrison appointed him to the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati. In March 1892, Taft resigned as Solicitor General to resume his judicial career.[20]
Federal judge
Taft's federal judgeship was a lifetime appointment, and one from which promotion to the Supreme Court might come. Taft's older half-brother Charles, successful in business, supplemented Taft's government salary, allowing William and Nellie Taft and their family to live in comfort. Taft's duties involved hearing trials in the circuit, which included Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and participating with Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, the circuit justice, and judges of the Sixth Circuit in hearing appeals. Taft spent these years, from 1892 to 1900, in personal and professional contentment.[21]
According to historian Louis L. Gould, "while Taft shared the fears about social unrest that dominated the middle classes during the 1890s, he was not as conservative as his critics believed. He supported the right of labor to organize and strike, and he ruled against employers in several negligence cases."[2] Among these was Voight v. Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern Railway Co.[d] Taft's decision for a worker injured in a railway accident violated the contemporary doctrine of liberty of contract, and he was reversed by the Supreme Court.[e] On the other hand, Taft's opinion in United States v. Addyston Pipe and Steel Co.[f] was upheld unanimously by the high court.[g] Taft's opinion, in which he held that a pipe manufacturers' association had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act,[22] was described by Henry Pringle, his biographer, as having "definitely and specifically revived" that legislation.[23]
In 1896, Taft became dean and Professor of Property at his alma mater, the Cincinnati Law School, a post that required him to prepare and give two hour-long lectures each week.[24] He was devoted to his law school, and was deeply committed to legal education, introducing the case method to the curriculum.[25] As a federal judge, Taft could not involve himself with politics, but followed it closely, remaining a Republican supporter. He watched with some disbelief as the campaign of Ohio Governor William McKinley developed in 1894 and 1895, writing "I cannot find anybody in Washington who wants him".[25] By March 1896, Taft realized that McKinley would likely be nominated, and was lukewarm in his support. He landed solidly in McKinley's camp after former Nebraska representative William Jennings Bryan in July stampeded the 1896 Democratic National Convention with his Cross of Gold speech. Bryan, both in that address and in his campaign, strongly advocated free silver, a policy that Taft saw as economic radicalism. Taft feared that people would hoard gold in anticipation of a Bryan victory, but he could do nothing but worry. McKinley was elected; when a place on the Supreme Court opened in 1898, the only one under McKinley, the president named Joseph McKenna.[26]
From the 1890s until his death, Taft played a major role in the international legal community. He was active in many organizations, was a leader in the worldwide arbitration movement, and taught international law at the Yale Law School.[27] Taft advocated the establishment of a world court of arbitration supported by an international police force and is considered a major proponent of "world peace through law" movement.[28][29] One of the reasons for his bitter break with Roosevelt in 1910–12 was Roosevelt's insistence that arbitration was naïve and that only war could decide major international disputes.[30]