50 Fun Facts About William Howard Taft

Pauline Wayne, who lived at the White House during Taft's presidency, was what kind of animal?

A cow: Pauline Wayne, a gift from a Wisconsin senator, grazed the White House lawn and kept the Tafts in fresh milk; when the presidency ended she was shipped back to Wisconsin.

In which city was Taft born in 1857?

Cincinnati is also where Taft learned the law, studying at its law school while covering the local courts as a reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial.

Taft's father Alphonso held which two cabinet posts under Ulysses S. Grant?

Secretary of War and Attorney General came less than three months apart: Grant named Alphonso Taft to the War Department in March 1876, then moved him to head the Justice Department that May.

Archibald Butt, the trusted military aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, died in which disaster?

The sinking of the Titanic killed Major Butt on his way home from a rest in Europe, taken because he felt torn between Taft and Roosevelt as their feud grew.

Which secret society, co-founded by his father Alphonso, did Taft join in college?

Skull and Bones picks just fifteen students a year and meets in a hall known as the Tomb; when its members voted to admit women, a group of alumni went to court to try to stop them.

Which sport did candidate Taft retreat to at a Virginia resort in the summer of 1908?

Golf drew Taft to Hot Springs, Virginia, that summer, and once he was president his frequent rounds brought complaints that he belonged at his desk.

Which president appointed Taft solicitor general in 1890?

Benjamin Harrison had been lobbied to put the young Ohioan on the Supreme Court itself; he made Taft the government's advocate before the Court instead.

Which post did Taft hold from 1892 to 1900?

Federal appeals judge on the Sixth Circuit, which covered Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee: Taft was content there and saw the seat as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.

Which president sent Taft to the Philippines in 1900 to set up a civilian government?

William McKinley summoned Taft to Washington in January 1900; Taft hoped the call meant a Supreme Court seat and only reluctantly agreed to lead the Philippine commission instead.

Which general, military governor of the Philippines, clashed with Taft's civilian commission in 1900?

Arthur MacArthur Jr., father of Douglas MacArthur, resented sharing power with civilians; once Taft became civil governor in 1901, the general was replaced.

Which department did Taft head in Roosevelt's cabinet from 1904?

War was the department that ran the Philippines, so Taft could keep overseeing the islands he had governed; Roosevelt also gave it charge of building the Panama Canal.

In 1905 talks with Japan's prime minister, Taft accepted Japanese control of which country?

Korea came up alongside the Philippines: Prime Minister Katsura Tarō assured Taft that Japan had no designs on the American colony, and their memorandum stayed out of public view until 1924.

Where did Taft travel in September 1906 to impose a US provisional government?

Cuba's president had asked for American intervention as a disputed election turned to revolt; Taft named himself provisional governor and held the post for two weeks.

Which Democrat did Taft defeat in the 1908 presidential election?

William Jennings Bryan lost his third and last presidential race, 321 electoral votes to 162; he later became secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson, the man who unseated Taft.

What did humorists say the letters TAFT stood for during the 1908 campaign?

Take advice from Theodore mocked a candidate who disliked campaigning and leaned on Roosevelt for speeches, advice and energy; that backing was still enough to win.

Nellie Taft vowed to become first lady after a teenage stay in the White House with which president?

Rutherford B. Hayes, once her father's law partner, hosted the teenage Nellie Herron at the White House; she later pushed her husband toward the presidency when he would rather have been a judge.

Why was Taft inaugurated inside the Senate Chamber in March 1909?

A winter storm coated Washington in ice and ten inches of snow, toppling trees and telephone poles; it took 6,000 men and 500 wagons to clear the parade route.

Who was Taft's secretary of state?

Philander Knox, a former attorney general and senator, reorganised the State Department into regional divisions and extended merit promotion to its diplomats.

Which name is given to Taft's foreign policy toward Latin America and East Asia?

Dollar Diplomacy meant backing American loans and investment abroad, 'substituting dollars for bullets' in Taft's phrase, though it stirred resentment across Latin America.

Which 1909 tariff act, signed by Taft, failed to deliver the cuts that reformers expected?

Payne–Aldrich began as a House bill of modest cuts, then Senator Nelson Aldrich's amendments pushed many rates back up; Taft signed it and called it the best tariff bill his party had ever passed.

Which constitutional amendment, permitting an income tax, was sent to the states during Taft's term?

The Sixteenth Amendment was Taft's own suggestion: sure the Supreme Court would strike down an income tax law as it had in 1895, he urged Congress to amend the Constitution instead.

Which country's voters sank the free-trade reciprocity deal Taft pushed through Congress in 1911?

Canada turned against the deal after House Speaker Champ Clark said he hoped to see the American flag fly over British North America all the way to the North Pole; voters ousted the government that had made it.

Why did Taft veto Arizona's statehood bill in 1911?

Its constitution allowed the recall of judges, which Taft, a former judge, would not accept; Arizona struck the clause, won statehood, then voted four to one to put it back.

Which state became the 47th in the union under Taft in January 1912?

New Mexico had been a US territory since 1850; its admission shared one resolution with Arizona's, so Taft's 1911 veto held up both until Congress passed a revised bill.

Taft's many antitrust suits were brought under which 1890 law?

The Sherman Antitrust Act had made Roosevelt famous as the trust-buster, yet Taft brought about twice as many cases and refused to spare the trusts Roosevelt considered good ones.

Taft's 1911 antitrust suit against which company implied that Roosevelt had been deceived by its bosses?

U.S. Steel had absorbed a Tennessee coal and iron firm during the Panic of 1907 with Roosevelt's consent; offended by the suit's references to him, he broke with Taft and within months was running against him.

Which conservation row led Taft to fire the nation's chief forester?

The Ballinger–Pinchot affair saw forester Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt's close friend, sacked for attacking Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger over Alaskan coal lands; the firing drove a wedge between Taft and Roosevelt.

Besides Washington, who named more justices than Taft?

Franklin D. Roosevelt made nine appointments in twelve years; Taft, who longed to sit on the Court himself, filled six of its nine seats in a single term.

Which sitting justice did Taft elevate to chief justice in 1910, a first for the Court?

Edward Douglass White was a Louisiana Democrat promoted by a Republican president; when he died in 1921, the man who had appointed him took over his chair.

Which New York governor did Taft put on the Supreme Court in 1910?

Charles Evans Hughes quit the Court in 1916 to run for president, lost narrowly to Woodrow Wilson, and came back in 1930 as chief justice, succeeding Taft.

Under what banner did Roosevelt run against Taft and Wilson in 1912?

The Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party, was born when Roosevelt led his followers out of the 1912 Republican convention; that November its ticket finished ahead of Taft's.

Which two states did Taft carry in the 1912 election?

Utah and Vermont gave Taft only eight electoral votes; he and Roosevelt together outpolled Woodrow Wilson, but the Republican split handed Wilson 435.

Nicholas Murray Butler, who took the late James Sherman's place on Taft's 1912 ticket, was president of which university?

Columbia's president was the Republican National Committee's choice to receive the electoral votes won for Vice President Sherman, who had died six days before the election.

Who presided over the 1912 Republican convention as temporary chairman, helping Taft win?

Elihu Root had served in Roosevelt's own cabinet, yet he sided with Taft, beat Roosevelt's candidate for the chair, and oversaw the seating of the disputed Taft delegates.

After leaving the White House, Taft became a professor at which law school?

Yale made him Kent Professor of Law in 1913; presidents then left office without a pension, so he also earned his living on the lecture circuit.

Taft was president of which organisation campaigning for an international body to prevent war?

The League to Enforce Peace wanted nations to band together against aggressors, and Taft kept backing the idea when Woodrow Wilson turned it into the League of Nations, against the Senate leaders of his own party.

Which Wilson Supreme Court nominee did Taft organise opposition against in 1916?

Louis Brandeis had humiliated Taft's administration in 1910 by proving that a report clearing an Interior official was backdated; five years after the fight over his nomination, the two were colleagues on the Court.

Which president appointed Taft chief justice in 1921?

Warren G. Harding had placed Taft's name in nomination at the stormy 1912 Republican convention; nine years later he gave him the seat, and the Senate confirmed Taft the same day.

In 1922 Chief Justice Taft's Court struck down a federal tax that Congress had designed to end what?

Child labour: in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture, Taft wrote for an 8–1 Court that a 10 percent levy on the profits of firms employing children was a penalty in disguise, not a real tax.

In the 1926 Myers case, Chief Justice Taft upheld the president's power to do what without Senate approval?

Remove appointed officials: the case began with a fired postmaster, and Taft used it to condemn the old Tenure of Office Act, the law behind Andrew Johnson's impeachment.

The 1925 'Judges' Bill' Taft lobbied for let the Supreme Court do what?

Choose its cases: the Judiciary Act of 1925 made most of the docket discretionary, so a congested Court could turn away minor appeals and cut its workload.

Where did the Supreme Court sit when Taft became chief justice?

In the Capitol: since 1860 the justices had sat in the Old Senate Chamber, with offices so cramped that Taft campaigned for a separate building, which Congress authorised in 1929.

Which architect designed the Supreme Court building that Taft championed?

Cass Gilbert, architect of New York's Woolworth Building, was asked by Taft for a building of dignity and importance; neither man lived to see it finished in 1935.

How did the London diet doctor Taft hired in 1905 mainly treat him?

By letter: Taft weighed himself daily, kept a food diary and posted his progress to Dr Nathaniel Yorke-Davies, whose courses of treatment came back across the Atlantic by mail.

According to a popular but unproven story, President Taft got stuck in what at the White House?

A bathtub: the tale surfaced only decades later and nothing shows it ever happened, though Taft did have a specially large tub installed at the White House.

Which Washington landmark did First Lady Nellie Taft arrange, with a gift from the mayor of Tokyo?

The Potomac cherry trees came at the second attempt: the first 2,000 arrived from Tokyo in 1910 so infested that they had to be burned, and 3,020 replacements were planted from 1912.

Taft was the first president buried where?

Arlington National Cemetery has only two presidential graves, Taft's and John F. Kennedy's, because most presidents choose to be buried in their home states.

Which Taft son became Senate Majority Leader and thrice sought the GOP nomination?

Robert Taft, known as 'Mr. Republican', lost his third bid for the nomination to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, became Senate majority leader in 1953 and died later that year.

Which commission did Taft lead from his presidency into his years as chief justice?

The Lincoln Memorial Commission chose Taft as its president in 1911; eleven years later, as chief justice, he dedicated the finished memorial and presented it to the nation.

In 1909 Taft became the first sitting US president to visit which country?

Mexico: Taft and Porfirio Díaz exchanged visits across the border at El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, only three years after Theodore Roosevelt made the first presidential trip abroad.