William Howard Taft

Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men.

President Theodore Roosevelt sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act, while William Howard Taft sued 75.

Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1857.

Cincinnati is the birthplace of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States.

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 that November.

Bryan won his party's nomination in the 1908 presidential election, but he was defeated by Roosevelt's chosen successor, William Howard Taft.

He attended Cincinnati Law School, and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1880.

Then-dean and future 27th President of the United States, William Howard Taft (1880), merged it with the University of Cincinnati in 1896.

He continued a rapid rise, being named Solicitor General and as a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Six Solicitors General have later served on the Supreme Court: William Howard Taft (who served as the 27th President of the United States before becoming Chief Justice of the United States), Stanley Forman Reed, Robert H. Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, and Elena Kagan.

He attended Woodward High School in Cincinnati.

On the day after his election, President Elect William Howard Taft, who graduated from Woodward High School in 1874, laid the cornerstone of a third building, which opened to students in 1910 (39.11056°N, -84.51°W).

His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of War.

He was also the founder of an American political dynasty, and father of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft.

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.

Helen Louise "Nellie" Taft (née Herron; June 2, 1861 – May 22, 1943) was the wife of William Howard Taft and the First Lady of the United States from 1909 to 1913.

The couple had three children, of whom the eldest, Robert, became a U.S. senator.

The elder son of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, Robert Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate.

He groomed his close friend William Howard Taft, and Taft won the 1908 presidential election to succeed him.

Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men.

In March 1909, President William Howard Taft began his administration by replacing Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, James Rudolph Garfield, with Richard A. Ballinger, a former Mayor of Seattle who had served as Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) under Secretary Garfield.

The Taft family was not wealthy, living in a modest home in the suburb of Mount Auburn.

He later was Secretary of War and Attorney General of the United States and the father of President William Howard Taft.

Taft's opinion, in which he held that a pipe manufacturers' association had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, was described by Henry Pringle, his biographer, as having "definitely and specifically revived" that legislation.

Henry F. Pringle (1897 - 1958) was an American historian and author most famous for his witty but scholarly biography of Theodore Roosevelt which won the Pulitzer prize in 1932, as well as a scholarly biography of William Howard Taft.

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.

Among his younger half-brothers was William Howard Taft (1857–1930), the 27th President of the United States and 10th Chief Justice of the United States, and Horace Dutton Taft (1861–1943), the founder of The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, to which he donated $150,000 in 1929.

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.

Under the White and Taft Courts (1910–1930), the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment had incorporated some guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the states (Gitlow v. New York), grappled with the new antitrust statutes (Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States), upheld the constitutionality of military conscription (Selective Draft Law Cases) and brought the substantive due process doctrine to its first apogee (Adkins v. Children's Hospital).

He continued a rapid rise, being named Solicitor General and as a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Although Taft was successful as Solicitor General, winning 15 of the 18 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, 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.

William Howard Taft, the only person ever to serve as both President and Chief Justice of the United States, once served on the Sixth Circuit.

Taft attended Yale and, like his father, was a member of Skull and Bones.

Among prominent alumni are former president and Chief Justice William Howard Taft (a founder's son); former presidents and father and son George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush; Chauncey Depew, president of the New York Central Railroad System, and a United States Senator from New York; Supreme Court Justices Morrison R. Waite and Potter Stewart; James Jesus Angleton, "mother of the Central Intelligence Agency"; Henry Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War (1940–1945); Robert A. Lovett, U.S. Secretary of Defense (1951–1953); William B. Washburn, Governor of Massachusetts; and Henry Luce, founder and publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines.

The Taft family was not wealthy, living in a modest home in the suburb of Mount Auburn.

Noted residents include President William Howard Taft.

Taft hoped a Supreme Court appointment was in the works, but instead McKinley wanted to place Taft on the commission to organize a civilian government in the Philippines.

William Howard Taft was the first head of the Philippine Commission, a post he filled between March 16, 1900, and July 4, 1901, after which the commission head also became the Civil Governor of the Philippines.

Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate.

Secretary of War and Republican Party nominee William Howard Taft defeated three-time Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.

New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes ran, but when he made a major policy speech, Roosevelt the same day sent a special message to Congress warning in strong terms against corporate corruption.

In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed Hughes as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Although Taft was successful as Solicitor General, winning 15 of the 18 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, 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.

Passage of this law was urged by Chief Justice William Howard Taft.

As the War Department administered the Philippines, Taft would remain responsible for the islands, and Elihu Root, the incumbent, was willing to postpone his departure until 1904, allowing Taft time to wrap up his work in Manila.

In the United States Senate, Root was part of the conservative Republican support network for President William Howard Taft.

His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of War.

After leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace.

At a convention in Philadelphia's Independence Hall on June 17, 1915, with the LEP's first president, former U.S. President William Howard Taft, presiding, one hundred noteworthy Americans formally announced the formation of the League to Enforce Peace.