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Thursday, September 27, 2012

William Howard Taft

Few men have ever had the background for your Presidency to equal that of William Howard Taft. His family members heritage of legal accomplishment, his very own early training from the law, his popularity for honesty and fairness, and his friendly manner, all had been natural stepping stones towards office of Chief Executive. As Governor General from the Philippines after which as Secretary of War, Taft so content President Roosevelt that he received Roosevelt's full endorsement as the Republican Presidential candidate during the 1908 election. The election itself produced a landslide victory for Taft and prefaced a four-year term fraught with issues and controversies.
William Howard Taft--the one man to become both president and chief justice--has a secure place in American history. Only occasionally, and maybe unfortunately, have ex-presidents remained politically active to the thing of holding important public office: John Quincy Adams represented his district of Massachusetts during the lower property from the Congress after becoming president; Andrew Johnson was reelected towards Senate, though he did not live extended adequate to eat his seat; and Herbert Hoover created a singular contribution at the head on the commission that bore his name and that helped to reorganize the federal government. Taft did much more. Right after four many years during the White Household he was appointed for the Supreme Court in the United States as chief justice in 1921 and presided more than the Court for your decade. Some may perhaps contend that in passing towards the Court he had taken a higher place. More than 1 respected voice—Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., between them--has been raised to argue that program on the Supreme Court stands out as the supreme public achievement. Undoubtedly Taft expressed himself in such terms from time to time, that is certainly not to suggest that he contemned the presidency. He concept of himself, rather, as much better suited being a jurist than an executive. These kinds of judgments, after all, are a matter of individual temperament, taste, and training, which in Taft's case combine to explain his preference for the judiciary. His heritage, education, and early experiences have been in the law, his inclinations and ambitions were judicial, and his learning was the offspring of these kindred elements.
Insofar as his writings are evidence of Taft's learning, they fall into 3 categories. His judicial philosophy is readily identified from his decisions both as a country judge and a federal jurist and from his Supreme Court opinions written during the 1920s. A couple of His numerous books along with other long observations on federal government and especially on a presidency show Taft to excellent advantage as each an erudite and thoughtful student of American government. Finally, his writings on international peace and arbitration extend the variety of his mind, demonstrating qualities of each judge and statesman. There is, furthermore, a easy intellectual consistency threading itself via these sets of writings, plus a number of clues that thing towards role that learning played in Taft's presidency. What he had gleaned from find out was reinforced by his experience during the methods of men. Tolerance for opinions with which he did not agree, a caution against precipitous conclusions, recognition that there was a meaningful difference among moral appropriate and moral wrong, the must be of program to others, including a consciousness from the frailties of humankind had been all attitudes Taft exhibited. His dependence on learning in all this was a lot like his respect for it; it was assumed, internalized, practical, and very without having the self-advertising enthusiasms of a Theodore Roosevelt.
Though born and raised in Ohio, William Howard Taft belongs a lot more to New England than the Middle West, during the view of his main biographer, Henry F. Pringle. A brand new England mentality was in several ways distinctively his, and maybe this is illustrated finest by the heritage of learning that passed to him from his mother no much less than his father. Both parents have been bred inside a tradition of intellectual commitment amid the practical affairs of everyday living, conventional New Englanders torn in between a passion for righteousness and also a need to get on in the world.
The Tafts came from England during the mid-1670s, the very first of them a Robert Taft, "a plain unlettered man" including a carpenter by trade. He lived to your time in Braintree, and it's not unlikely that he knew the household of John Adams, which by then had attained some prominence inside town. By 1679 Robert Taft had settled permanently at nearby Mendon. Over a single hundred many years later President George Washington, even though on the tour of New England, made a brief stop at Samuel Taft's farm and tavern, located over a turnpike connecting Boston and Hartford. The future president's father, Alphonso, was the very first with the loved ones to achieve national prominence, as an Ohio judge and as secretary of war and attorney general in the dying days of the Grant administration. In the 1880s he was United States minister to Vienna and St. Petersburg. Alphonso Taft was a remarkable man in several ways. He worked his way via Yale, graduating with honors in 1833. At the time Yale was fast within the grip of a Calvinistic revival, but Alphonso was cold on the evangelistic temper he encountered in New Haven, a harbinger of his later Unitarianism. Right after Yale he read law, migrated west, chose Cincinnati as his new home, and prospered being a lawyer almost at once. From the process, a couple of traits became identifiable inside the senior Taft. By the later 1840s he had largely forsaken conventional Protestantism, after the lead and lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Taft was not a good public speaker -- the campaigning to your 1908 election illustrated this point incredibly well -- but he had a couple of qualities which helped him immensely. He was a really large man using a big smile, and after he beamed at an audience before beginning a speech, the impression of overwhelming cordiality melted practically all resistance.
Defeated in the 1912 Presidential contest, Taft elected to take a position in the Yale Law School. In that way he felt he could retire inside public eye most gracefully. But storm clouds hung more than Europe, and in 1914 World War I broke out. Peaceful by nature, Taft was shocked by the ensuing brutality and loss of life, and decided to act. In June of 1915, he became President in the newly-formed League to Enforce Peace. His subsequent efforts to promote some kind of association of countries have been unceasing; he traveled all over the region speaking for his cause. Finally, he gave what many might call that full measure of devotion as soon as he agreed to appear from the leader of "the other party" -- President Woodrow Wilson -- inside a joint appearance on behalf of the League of Nations.
The program was held within the Metropolitan Opera Residence on March 4, 1919, the day before Wilson was to sail for Europe with what he hoped would be an endorsement of his League plan. It was a genuinely gala occasion; Caruso sang, the house was packed (4,000), and thousands additional who had being turned away had been milling around in front with the building. Ex-President and President joined forces to defend the idea of the peaceful community of nations, and were warmly received. Wilson sailed for Europe the following day with high hopes of success.
These hopes, however, have been by no means realized. The us of The us never joined the company its leader so strongly advocated, and Wilson and Taft had been each greatly disappointed. But Taft's long support towards region in this along with other endeavors have been not forgotten by the next President, Warren Harding. In 1921, William Howard Taft had his one beneficial ambition in life fulfilled -- he became Chief Justice in the United States Supreme Court. The position came to him in the twilight of his life, but he filled it with rare dignity, integrity, and wisdom.
Unfortunately, his well being have been seriously impaired during his word as Governor General from the Philippines, and his life started out to ebb slowly away. Ironically, the League of Countries for which he had struggled so valiantly was at the same time growing weaker with every succeeding year. Possibly it's a tiny blessing that Taft never saw the inglorious collapse with the League, for definitely he would have been terribly saddened by it. This devoted American, named by quite a few historians the father of the League idea, passed away in 1930, mourned by the country he had so honestly served.
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