William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was Alphonso Taft, a prominent Republican attorney who served as secretary of war and attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, then ambassador to Austria Hungary and Russia under President Chester A. Arthur. The younger Taft attended Yale University graduating second in his class before studying law at the University of Cincinnati. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880 and entered private practice. In 1886, Taft married Helen Nettie Herron, the daughter of another prominent local lawyer and Republican Party activist the couple would have three children. From early in his career, Taft aspired to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. His ambitious wife, meanwhile, set her sights on becoming first lady. With her encouragement, Taft accepted several political appointments, beginning in 1887 when he was named to fill the term of a judge in Ohio Superior Court. He was elected to a five-year term himself the following year. Other than the presidency, it would be the only office Taft ever obtained through a popular vote. In 1890, he was appointed as U.S. solicitor general, the third-highest position in the justice department. Two years later, he began serving as a judge on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had jurisdiction over Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky. In early 1900, President William McKinley called Taft to Washington and tasked him with setting up a civilian government in the Philippines, which had become a U.S. protectorate after the Spanish-American War in 1898. Though hesitant, Taft accepted the post of chairman of the Second Philippine Commission with the knowledge that it would position him well to advance further in national government. Taft's sympathetic administration in the Philippines marked a dramatic departure from the brutal tactics used there by the U.S. military government since 1898. Beginning with the drafting of a new constitution including a Bill of Rights similar to that of the United States and the creation of the post of civilian governor he became the first, Taft improved the island economy and infrastructure and allowed the people at least some voice in government. Though sympathetic to the Filipino people and popular among them, he believed they needed considerable guidance and instruction before they could be capable of self-rule, and predicted a long period of U.S. involvement in fact the Philippines would not gain independence until 1946. After McKinley was assassinated in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt twice offered Taft a Supreme Court appointment, but he declined in order to stay in the Philippines. In 1904, he agreed to return and become Roosevelt's secretary of war, as long as he retained supervision of Filipino affairs. Taft traveled extensively during his four years, in this post including overseeing the construction of the Panama Canal and serving as provisional governor of Cuba. Roosevelt, who had pledged not to run for the third term in the office, began to promoting Taft as his successor though he disliked campaigning, Taft agreed to mount a presidential run in 1908 at the urging of his wife, and soundly defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan by pledging to continue the Rooseveltian program of progressive reforms. The Republican William Howard Taft worked as a judge in Ohio Superior Court and in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals before accepting a post as the first civilian governor of the Philippines in 1900. In 1904, Taft took on the role of secretary of war in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, who threw his support to the Ohioan as his successor in 1908. Generally more conservative than Roosevelt, Taft also lacked his expansive view of presidential power, and was generally a more successful administrator than politician. By 1912, Roosevelt, dissatisfied with Taft’s presidency, had formed his own Progressive Party, splitting Republican voters and handing the White House to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Nine years after leaving office, Taft achieved his lifelong goal when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he held that post until just before his death in 1930.