involvement in fact, the Philippines would not gain independence until 1946.Īfter 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. 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.

military government since 1898.īeginning 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. Taft’s sympathetic administration in the Philippines marked a dramatic departure from the brutal tactics used there by the U.S. 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. protectorate after the Spanish-American War (1898). 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. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had jurisdiction over Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky. Two years later, he began serving as a judge on the U.S. solicitor general, the third-highest position in the justice department. (Other than the presidency, it would be the only office Taft ever obtained through a popular vote.) He was elected to a five-year term himself the following year. 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. His ambitious wife, meanwhile, set her sights on becoming first lady. government.įrom early in his career, Taft aspired to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft became the only man in history to hold the highest post in both the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. president from 1909 to 1913 and chief justice of the U.S. In 1886, Taft married Helen “Nettie” Herron, the daughter of another prominent local lawyer and Republican Party activist the couple would have three children.ĭid you know? As U.S. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880 and entered private practice. The younger Taft attended Yale University (graduating second in his class) before studying law at the University of Cincinnati. Grant, then ambassador to Austria-Hungary and Russia under President Chester A. His father was Alphonso Taft, a prominent Republican attorney who served as secretary of war and attorney general under President Ulysses S.

William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

William Howard Taft by Jonathan Lurie