William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft

27th President of the United States
Term of office	March 4, 1909 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by	Theodore Roosevelt
Succeeded by	Woodrow Wilson
Date of birth	September 15, 1857
Place of birth	Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Date of death	March 8, 1930
Place of death	Washington, D.C.
Spouse	Helen Herron Taft
Political party	Republican

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930), was 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 professor at Yale University Law School, a pioneer in international arbitration, and a staunch advocate of world peace that verged on pacifism.

Taft served as Solicitor General, 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. It was Taft's promises to carry forward all of Roosevelt's policies more than anything else that enabled Taft to win the Republican nomination.

Two amendments to the U.S. Constitution were passed during Taft's presidency. The 16th Amendment gave the federal government the right to levy an income tax, which became increasingly important as a source of revenue. The 17th Amendment changed the appointment of U.S. Senators by state legislatures to direct election of senators by the people.

Taft is the only president to have served both as head of the executive and judicial branches of the United States government. However, he was much more comfortable in the courtroom than the White House. Becoming Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had been his lifelong personal ambition.

Early Life

Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Unitarian parents. 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 a law practice. Alphonso was a prominent Republican, who served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. He was one of the founders of the Republican Party machinery that lasts to this day.

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.

Education

Like his father, Taft attended Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut. There, he was a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society co-founded by his father in 1832. He was also a member of the Beta chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. His college friends knew him by the nickname "Old Bill." Initially, given Taft's physical size, Yale's American 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. After college, he attended Cincinnati Law School, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1880. While in law school, he worked on the local newspaper The Cincinnati Commercial.

Career

After admission to the Ohio bar, he was appointed assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County. Two years later, in 1882, he was appointed as the district collector of Internal Revenue. Taft married his longtime sweetheart, Helen Herron, 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 legal acumen, in 1892, President Harrison appointed him an associate judge for the newly created United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, covering Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. He held that post 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 a 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 concurrent 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. 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 the Filipino people. 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. Following successful negotiations with the Pope, Taft then persuaded 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 re-election in 1904. Taft met with the emperor of Japan, who alerted him of the probability of war with Russia.

Taft negotiated the Taft-Katsura Agreement, a secret diplomatic memorandum signed between himself and Prime Minister of Japan Katsura Taro on July 29, 1905. In the agreement, the United States recognized Japan's sphere of influence in Korea; in exchange, Japan recognized the U.S. sphere of influence in the Philippines. The agreement was not publicized until 1924, and was not a bilaterally signed document or even a secret treaty, but only a memorandum meant to smooth over Japanese-American relations. However, this agreement later came to be bitterly resented by Koreans, because it helped lay the groundwork for Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910.

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. Taft personally negotiated 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. Roosevelt had other plans. He gave Taft more responsibilities in addition to the Philippines and the Panama Canal. For a period of 18 days, in July 1905, Taft was acting Secretary of State.

Presidency 1909-1913

Policies

After serving nearly two full terms, the popular Theodore Roosevelt refused to run in the presidential election of 1908. Roosevelt certified Taft to be a genuine "progressive," and Roosevelt pushed through the nomination of Taft, 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, dedicated supporters, and 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. But Taft ignored the risks and tackled the tariff boldly, on the one hand encouraging reformers to fight for lower rates, and 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 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 M. LaFollette, Sr. 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 of the United States. The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators by the people, replacing the previous system whereby they were selected by state legislatures. This eliminated a check and balance on power and reduced the power of states in relation to the federal government. 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 country. The Zelaya administration had growing friction with the United States government, when the latter started giving aid to his conservative opponents in Nicaragua. In 1907, U.S. warships seized some of Nicaragua's seaports. In early December, United States marines landed on Nicaragua's Caribbean 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 an amphibious military landing of United States marines in 1910 and again in 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. 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 Party 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 one percent 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 vs. Stone Tracy Company approved it.

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, because it was considered as a tax on the wealthy. In February 1913, it became a part of the United States Constitution as the 16th Amendment. Since then the federal income tax has increasingly been used to tax middle and lower class citizens.

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 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 well-publicized political feuds of the twentieth century. In the U.S. presidential election of 1912, Taft outmaneuvered Roosevelt and kept control of the Republican Party. Roosevelt was forced to create the Progressive Party. The "Bull Moose" ticket split the Republican vote and resulted in the election of Democratic Party candidate Woodrow Wilson. Many historians argue Wilson would have won anyway, because the Republican factions would not support each other.

Administration and Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President of the United States	William Howard Taft	1909–1913
Vice President of the United States	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 U.S. presidential election, 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, respectively.

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 University 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 World War I began.

When the First 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 and 1918. 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 (an Ohio Republican) became the only president to nominate a former 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 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 Great Britain, 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 more than two hundred 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 to the United States Constitution 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 presidents 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 300-340 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). 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 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. The only other president buried there is John F. Kennedy. Taft 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 younger 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 U.S. Senator from Ohio from 1971-1977; the President's great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, was governor of Ohio from 1999 to 2007. 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."

Assorted facts

• In religious beliefs, Taft was a Unitarian, stating "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 six feet tall and weighing over 350 pounds (159 kg), Taft is the heaviest person to be president. (Jefferson, Lincoln, Johnson and Clinton were taller.)
• 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 Manila Light Rail Transit System (LRT) passes through.
• Taft was the last U.S. President to have had facial hair, a moustache.
• Taft was an avid baseball fan, but he did not create the seventh-inning stretch as some have reported, which was in custom decades earlier. He was, however, the first U.S. President to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910.
• Taft was the first U.S. President to enjoy 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 U.S. president to have a presidential automobile. He converted the White House stables into a four-car garage in 1909.
• 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.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Primary sources

• Butt, Archie. 1930. Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt.
• 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. 1914. Recollections of Full Years.

Secondary sources

• Anderson, Donald F. William Howard Taft: A Conservative's Conception of the Presidency. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973. ISBN 0801407869
• Anderson, Judith Icke. William Howard Taft: An Intimate History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1981. ISBN 0393014622
• Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era. New York: William Morrow, 2005. ISBN 0060513829
• Bromley, Michael L. William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2003. ISBN 0786414758
• Burton, David H. Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. ISBN 083863768X
• Burton, David H. Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. ISBN 0838640427
• Burton, David H. William Howard Taft, Confident Peacemaker. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005. ISBN 0916101517
• Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs - The Election that Changed the Country. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0743203941
• Coletta, Paolo Enrico. The Presidency of William Howard Taft. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1973. ISBN 0700600965
• Conner, Valerie. The National War Labor Board. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. ISBN 080781539X
• Duffy, Herbert S. William Howard Taft. New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1930.
• Friedman, Leon, and Fred L. Israel. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Vol. 3. New York: Chelsea House Publication, (Revised) 1995. ISBN 0791013774
• Hammond, John Hays. The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond. New York: Arno Press, 1974 (original, 1935). ISBN 0405059132
• Hatch, Carl E. The Big Stick and the Congressional Gavel: A Study of Theodore Roosevelt’s Relations with his Last Congress, 1907-1909. New York: Pageant Press, 1967.
• Hechler, Kenneth S. Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era. New York, Russell & Russell; Ams Pr Inc, 1970 (original, 1940) ISBN 0404514707
• Korzi, Michael J. "Our chief magistrate and his powers: a reconsideration of William Howard Taft's ‘Whig’ theory of presidential leadership.” Presidential Studies Quarterly June 1, 2003.
• Manners, William. TR and Will: A Friendship that Split the Republican Party. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1969. ISBN 0151910812
• Minger, Ralph E. William Howard Taft and United States Diplomacy: The Apprenticeship Years. 1900-1908. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975. ISBN 0252004272
• Mowry, George E. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Harper, 1958.
• Pringle, Henry F. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography. 2 vol. Newtown, CT: American Political Biography Press, 1939, reissue 1997. ISBN 0945707193 (Pulitzer prize winner)
• Renstrom, Peter G. The Taft Court: Justices, Rulings and Legacy. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. ISBN 1576072800
• Scholes, Walter V. and Marie V. Scholes. The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970. ISBN 082620094X
• Wilensky, Norman N. Conservatives in the Progressive Era: The Taft Republicans of 1912. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1965.

External links

All links retrieved October 4, 2020.

• William Howard Taft and Sleep Apnea apneos.com.
• Taft's medical history
• Obituary arlingtoncemetary.net.

Preceded by: Orlow W. Chapman	Solicitor General of the United States 1890 – 1892	Succeeded by: Charles H. Aldrich
Preceded by: New seat	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit 1892 – 1900	Succeeded by: Henry Franklin Severens
Preceded by: Arthur MacArthur, Jr.	Governor-General of the Philippines 1901 – 1904	Succeeded by: Luke E. Wright
Preceded by: Elihu Root	United States Secretary of War February 1, 1904 – June 30, 1908	Succeeded by: Luke Edward Wright
Preceded by: Theodore Roosevelt	Republican Party Presidential nominee U.S. presidential election, 1908 (won), U.S. presidential election, 1912 (lost)	Succeeded by: Charles Evans Hughes
Preceded by: Theodore Roosevelt	President of the United States March 4, 1909 – March 3, 1913	Succeeded by: Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by: Edward Douglass White	Chief Justice of the United States July 11, 1921 – February 3, 1930	Succeeded by: Charles Evans Hughes