William Howard Taft

Taft grew up in a Cincinnati house where the standard was set before he arrived. His father Alphonso had been Grant's Secretary of War and then Attorney General, and expected excellence rather than remarking on it. Taft finished second in the Yale class of 1878, took a law degree in Cincinnati, and reported courts for a newspaper. Then the appointments came in a rush — Ohio Superior Court judge at 29, Solicitor General of the United States at 32, federal appeals judge at 34. He was on the bench and meant to die there. Helen Herron, whom he married in 1886, had visited the White House as a girl and decided she would live in it. She talked him out of a Supreme Court seat more than once.

Roosevelt handed him the nomination in 1908 and he won easily, then spent four years finding that the job rewarded none of the things he was good at. A tariff bill split the party. Antitrust suits he filed himself earned him no credit. In 1912 his own predecessor ran against him and Taft finished third with eight electoral votes, carrying Utah and Vermont. BriefHistory carries both of the great offices he held. This entry belongs to the 40 years around them.

Ten weeks into the presidency, in May 1909, Nellie had a stroke that paralyzed one side of her body and took her speech. Taft cleared what he could from the calendar and spent an hour or more of most days for the better part of a year teaching his wife words again, one at a time, in a house he had not wanted to move into. She recovered enough to spend her remaining influence on the Japanese cherry trees at the Tidal Basin, and planted the first one herself in 1912. His own body was failing more quietly. At his heaviest he carried around 340 pounds and had what physicians now identify as severe obstructive sleep apnea — he fell asleep at dinners, at meetings, mid-sentence. Out of office he lost roughly 70 pounds and slept.

He left the Court on February 3, 1930, and died five weeks later of heart disease and high blood pressure at his house in Washington. He was buried at Arlington, the first president to be — Kennedy is the only other. The courthouse he had lobbied Congress into paying for opened in 1935, two years after ground was broken and five after he died. His name now survives in two forms. One is a middling ranking that has scarcely moved in 90 years. The other is a story about a bathtub whose only firsthand source is a 1934 memoir by a White House usher. The tubs Taft actually ordered ran seven feet long, and he fit in them.

William Howard Taft's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act law
  The compromise that broke his party in half 1909
• Sixteenth Amendment law
  He proposed it — the states ratified the income tax in 1913 1909
• Mann-Elkins Act law
  Put telephone and telegraph rates under federal regulation 1910
• Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers book
  Lectures arguing that a president may do only what the law permits 1916
• Judiciary Act of 1925 law
  The Judges' Bill — it let the Supreme Court choose its own docket 1925
• United States Supreme Court Building building
  He lobbied Congress for it and died before ground was broken 1935

• September 15, 1857 aged 0 Born in Cincinnati to the man who would be Grant's Attorney General
• 1878 aged ~21 Graduates second in his class at Yale
• 1887 aged ~30 Takes a seat on the Ohio Superior Court at 29 He was on a bench of some kind for most of the next 43 years.
• July 4, 1901 aged 43 Sworn in as the first civil governor of the Philippines
• 1909 aged ~52 Nellie Taft has a stroke ten weeks into his term He spent much of the next year teaching her to speak again.
• March 27, 1912 aged 54 Nellie Taft plants the first Japanese cherry tree at the Tidal Basin
• July 11, 1921 aged 63 Sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States
• February 3, 1930 aged 72 Resigns from the Court in failing health
• March 8, 1930 aged 72 Dies in Washington of heart disease and high blood pressure

• Gifford Pinchot 1865–1946
  First chief of the U.S. Forest Service and leading advocate of scientific conservation and managed public lands. fired
• Charles Evans Hughes 1862–1948
  Chief justice, governor, and secretary of state who guided the Court through major New Deal constitutional conflicts. appointed
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1841–1935
  Justice whose pragmatic jurisprudence and free-speech opinions deeply influenced American law. sat with on the Court
• Louis Brandeis 1856–1941
  Justice and reform lawyer who advanced privacy, free speech, and progressive regulation. sat with on the Court