Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free William Howard Taft trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
William Howard Taft never really wanted to be president. He wanted to be chief justice, turned down the Supreme Court three times because the work in front of him seemed more important, and finally got the centre seat from Warren Harding in 1921 — making him the only person to have led both the executive and judicial branches. In between he governed the Philippines, ran the War Department and the Panama Canal, won the White House as Theodore Roosevelt's hand-picked heir, and then lost it in a three-way race after Roosevelt bolted the party. These 50 questions cover the whole career: Cincinnati, Yale wrestling and Skull and Bones, the confession-of-error policy he invented as solicitor general, the Payne-Aldrich tariff, Dollar Diplomacy, the Ballinger-Pinchot affair, the 70 antitrust suits, Nellie's cherry trees, the eight electoral votes of 1912, the Judges' Bill, the Supreme Court building he fought for but never saw, and a burial at Arlington that was a first for any president. Easy questions stick to the two jobs and the famous size; the expert tier asks about court cases, cabinet secretaries and the doctor who ran his diet for twenty years. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Taft is the only person to have held the presidency and which other office?
Chief justice of the United States
He was the 27th president (1909–13) and the tenth chief justice (1921–30).
Q 02In which city was Taft born in 1857?
Cincinnati
The family lived in the suburb of Mount Auburn; his birthplace is now a National Historic Site.
Q 03Taft's father Alphonso held which two cabinet posts under Ulysses S. Grant?
Secretary of War and Attorney General
Alphonso also co-founded Yale's Skull and Bones society, which his son later joined.
Q 04At which university was Taft an intramural heavyweight wrestling champion?
Yale
He graduated second in a class of 121 in 1878 and later returned as a law professor.
Q 05Which Yale secret society, co-founded by his father, did Taft join?
Skull and Bones
George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are the other two presidents who were members.
Q 06What long-standing policy did Taft introduce as solicitor general in 1891?
Confession of error
The government concedes a case it won below if the solicitor general thinks it should have lost.
Q 07Which president appointed Taft solicitor general in 1890?
Benjamin Harrison
Taft won 15 of the 18 cases he argued before the Supreme Court in the role.
Q 08Taft's federal appeals judgeship was on which circuit?
The Sixth
Based in Cincinnati, it covered Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Q 09Which president sent Taft to the Philippines in 1900 to set up a civilian government?
William McKinley
McKinley promised him the next Supreme Court vacancy in return; Taft became civilian governor on July 4, 1901.
Q 10Which general, military governor of the Philippines, regarded Taft's commission as a nuisance?
Arthur MacArthur Jr.
MacArthur, father of Douglas, had to cooperate because McKinley gave the commission control over funds.
Q 11Which department did Taft head in Roosevelt's cabinet from 1904?
War
The War Department ran the Philippines and the Panama Canal, so Taft kept both portfolios.
Q 12In 1905 Taft signed a memorandum with which Japanese prime minister?
Katsura Tarō
It reaffirmed that Japan had no designs on the Philippines, a month before the Portsmouth peace talks.
Q 13Which island nation did Taft travel to in September 1906 to impose a US provisional government?
Cuba
President Tomás Estrada Palma had asked for intervention amid election fraud and factional fighting.
Q 21Which constitutional amendment, permitting an income tax, was sent to the states during Taft's term?
The Sixteenth
Taft preferred an amendment to a statute, fearing the Supreme Court would strike a tax down again.
Q 22Which country did Taft try, and fail, to sign a free-trade reciprocity accord with in 1911?
Canada
Britain still handled Canada's foreign relations; Canadians feared being dumped as in 1866.
Q 23Why did Taft veto Arizona's statehood bill in 1911?
Its constitution allowed the recall of judges
Arizona dropped the clause, became a state in February 1912, then promptly put it back.
Q 14Whom did Taft defeat in the 1908 presidential election?
William Jennings Bryan
It was Bryan's third losing run in four elections; Taft won 321 electoral votes to 162.
Q 15What did humorists say the letters TAFT stood for during the 1908 campaign?
Take advice from Theodore
Roosevelt even warned him against being photographed playing golf.
Q 16Which temperance crusader confronted Taft in 1908 and then called him irreligious?
Carrie Nation
Taft and Roosevelt had agreed the platform would take no position on prohibition.
Q 17Why was Taft inaugurated inside the Senate Chamber in March 1909?
A winter storm coated Washington in ice
His wife Nellie suffered a severe stroke two months later and he spent a year teaching her to speak again.
Q 18Who was Taft's secretary of state?
Philander Knox
Knox had been attorney general under McKinley and Roosevelt; he and Taft reorganised the State Department by region.
Q 19What name was given to Taft's policy of using US investment to extend influence abroad?
Dollar Diplomacy
It was unpopular with Latin American states that did not want to become financial protectorates.
Q 20Which 1909 tariff act raised rates when most Americans expected cuts?
Payne–Aldrich
Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich loaded the House bill with rate-raising amendments.
Q 24Which state became the 47th in the union under Taft in January 1912?
New Mexico
Arizona followed a month later as the 48th, completing the contiguous United States.
Q 25Roughly how many antitrust suits did the Taft administration bring in four years?
70
Roosevelt, the famous trust-buster, had brought 40 in seven years.
Q 26Which antitrust suit in 1911 offended Roosevelt by implying he had been "duped" by industrialists?
U.S. Steel
Taft had not even reviewed the pleadings; the rift with Roosevelt widened further.
Q 27Which conservation controversy pitted Taft's interior chief against the chief forester?
The Ballinger–Pinchot affair
Richard Ballinger had acted as a lawyer for claimant Clarence Cunningham between government jobs.
Q 28How many Supreme Court justices did Taft appoint as president?
Six
Only George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt appointed more.
Q 29Whom did Taft make the first associate justice promoted to chief justice, in 1910?
Edward Douglass White
Taft had hinted the job would go to Hughes; he waited five months before choosing White.
Q 30Which New York governor did Taft put on the Supreme Court in 1910?
Charles Evans Hughes
Hughes later resigned to run for president in 1916 and returned as chief justice in 1930, succeeding Taft.