William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 to March 8, 1930) was the 27th President of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913, and the 10th Chief Justice of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1930.¹ He was a member of the Yale class of 1878 and of Skull and Bones. He was the first civil governor of the Philippines and then Secretary of War from 1904 to 1908.¹ He held the Kent Professorship of Law at Yale University from 1913 to 1921.²

Alphonso Taft and the family

His father was Alphonso Taft (1810 to 1891), born at Townshend, Vermont, on November 5, 1810, the only child of Peter R. and Sylvia (Howard) Taft. Alphonso Taft took the Yale degree of 1833, taught for two years at Ellington, Connecticut, and was a tutor at Yale from 1835 to 1837. He was admitted to the bar at New Haven in August 1838 and settled in Cincinnati in January 1840. He sat on the Cincinnati Board of Education for twenty-five years, ran as the Republican candidate for Congress in 1856, was appointed judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati in 1865, and resigned in 1871. He became a member of the Yale Corporation in 1872, when its members were first elected by the alumni, and held the seat until 1882. Yale gave him the LL.D. in 1867. In March 1876 he entered the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant as Secretary of War and two months later was transferred to the attorney-generalship, which he held until March 1877. Chester A. Arthur appointed him minister to Austria in April 1882 and he was transferred to Russia in 1884, where he remained until August 1885. He died at San Diego, California, on May 21, 1891.³

The Office of the Historian gives the Austria-Hungary appointment as April 26, 1882, with credentials presented on June 30, 1882 and a departure on August 25, 1884, and the Russia appointment as July 4, 1884, with credentials presented on September 3, 1884 and a recall presented on July 31, 1885.⁴

The Yale record of William Howard Taft names Alphonso Taft's parents as Peter Rawson Taft, a judge in Windham County, Vermont, and Sylvia (Howard) Taft of West Townshend, Vermont. His mother was Louisa Maria (Torrey) Taft, daughter of Samuel Davenport and Susan Holman (Waters) Torrey, of Millbury, Massachusetts.⁵ Alphonso Taft's first wife, Fanny (Phelps) Taft, was the daughter of Charles Phelps of Townshend; she died on June 2, 1852. He married Louisa M. Torrey on December 26, 1853.³

Alphonso Taft is named as a co-founder of Skull and Bones. David A. Richards named him as a cofounder with William Huntington Russell in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015.⁶ Antony C. Sutton wrote that the American chapter "was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration."⁷ Sutton also wrote that Alphonso Taft was Attorney General in 1876 and 1877, then minister to Austria from 1882 to 1884, and ambassador to Russia from 1884 to 1885.⁸

Sutton's chart of old-line families gives the Taft family a settlement date of 1679 at Braintree.⁹

The half brothers, the brothers and the two Charles Phelps Tafts

The Yale record lists two half brothers of William Howard Taft, Charles P. Taft (Yale 1864), who was editor of the Cincinnati Times-Star, and Peter R. Taft (Yale 1867).¹⁰ The elder Charles Phelps Taft was born on December 21, 1843, in Cincinnati and died there on December 31, 1929. His Yale entry lists as his nephews Peter R. Taft's son Hulbert Taft (1900), Walbridge S. Taft (1907), William Howard Taft 2d (1909), Robert A. Taft (1910) and "Charles P. Taft, 2d, '18."¹¹

William Howard Taft's own entry in the same volume lists his children as Robert Alphonso (B.A. 1910, LL.B. Harvard 1913), Helen Herron (B.A. Bryn Mawr 1915, Ph.D. Yale 1924) and Charles Phelps, 2d (B.A. 1918, LL.B. 1921).¹² The Yale class of 1918 therefore contained one Charles Phelps Taft, the President's son and the nephew of the elder Charles Phelps Taft. Sutton's book names "Charles Phelps Taft (The Order '18), nephew of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft" in a passage on the Twentieth Century Foundation and Evans Clark.¹³ The relationship Sutton gives as nephew of the President is, in the Yale record, that of son of the President and nephew of the older Charles.

In 1930 the survivors of William Howard Taft were two brothers, Henry W. Taft (Yale 1880) and Horace D. Taft (Yale 1883), and a sister.¹⁴ The Yale record also names Henry W. Taft as one of four authors, with George W. Wickersham, A. Lawrence Lowell and William Howard Taft, of the 1919 book The Covenanter, an American Exposition of the League of Nations.¹⁵ Henry W. Taft joined the New York law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 1889, and the firm took that name in 1914; Wickersham had joined it in 1883.¹⁶

Yale, 1878, and Skull and Bones

Taft attended Woodward High School in Cincinnati and then Yale. The Yale record describes him as salutatorian of the class of 1878, its class orator, and a member of Linonia, Delta Kappa, Phi Theta Psi, He Boule, Psi Upsilon, Skull and Bones and Phi Beta Kappa.¹⁷ The membership index in Antony C. Sutton's 1983 book lists "Taft, William Howard" in the class of 1878, and his list of Yale faculty members who were in the society gives "TAFT, William H. 1878 Professor of Law (1913)."¹⁸ Sutton wrote that eight Tafts had been members of the society and that "the great contribution of the Tafts to The Order" was "on the world court system and world law."¹⁹

Taft took the LL.B. at the Cincinnati Law School in 1880 and was admitted to the Ohio bar that year. He worked in his father's law office in 1880 and 1881 and then in partnership with Harlan P. Lloyd as Lloyd and Taft from 1883 to 1887. He was assistant county solicitor of Hamilton County from 1885 to 1887, judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati from 1887 to 1890, solicitor general of the United States from 1890 to 1892, and United States circuit judge for the Sixth Circuit from 1892 to 1900.²⁰

The Philippine Commission and the governorship, 1900 to 1904

Taft was president of the United States Philippine Commission from March 1900 to July 1901, and then the first civil governor of the Philippine Islands from July 1901 to February 1904.²¹ In June 1902 he was sent to Rome by President Theodore Roosevelt to confer with Leo XIII about the purchase of church lands in the Philippines, and he returned to the islands in July.²¹ The Yale record says that while governor he went to Washington in December 1901 to testify before the Senate Committee on the Philippine Islands and the House Committee on Insular Affairs.²¹

The printed hearings of the Senate Committee on the Philippines, chaired by Henry Cabot Lodge, are Senate Document 331, 57th Congress, first session, Part 1, "Affairs in the Philippine Islands." Taft's statement runs over several sessions, and the session of February 4, 1902 opens with the committee's roll of Senators Lodge, Allison, Hale, Proctor, Beveridge, Burrows, McComas, Dietrich, Culberson, Dubois, Carmack and Patterson.²²

The water cure before the Lodge committee, 1902

In the session of February 4, 1902, Senator Patterson asked Taft for information on the use of the so-called water cure to obtain surrenders of guns. Taft said he had intended to speak of the charges of torture "which were made from time to time, and have been made in letters written from the Philippines by soldiers and others," and that such charges would, "if they were true," be "the basis for proper charges against the management of the Army."²³

Taft first took up the insurgent side. He said that the captured correspondence between the insurgent leaders showed "that the policy of terrorism adopted toward the Filipino people by the insurgent leaders in this guerrilla warfare was recognized by them as necessary," naming the correspondence of Sandico, whom he described as a brigadier general. He described the fighting as "chiefly ambushing," with a great deal of shooting into towns at night.²⁴ Later in the same session he said that "warfare which depends upon terrorism and murder is a crime."²⁵

Senator Culberson asked what Taft had heard of cruelty by American soldiers. Taft answered "Never of the mutilation of bodies," and said: "I have heard charges of whippings and charges of what has been alluded to as the water cure. They were rife in Manila."²⁶ Culberson asked about a case in which a Filipino prisoner was shot after surrendering; Taft said he had not heard of it. Taft then said that "individual instances of water cure, that torture which I believe involves pouring water down the throat so that the man swells and gets the impression that he is going to be suffocated and then tells what he knows, which was a frequent treatment under the Spaniards, I am told," were among the things that "are true."²⁷

Patterson then described Macabebe troops enlisted in the American Army who would throw natives on the ground, pour buckets of water down their throats "till they swelled up to an abnormal size," and jump on their stomachs, with the result that guns were produced "with the knowledge of American officers." Taft answered: "I have no doubt there were such instances, of course, a great many more than there ought to have been, but if the Senator will excuse me, dependence on private letters from private individuals as to what occurred is dependence on a very broken reed." He added that he "did not realize the unreliability of such letters until I had experienced what it was," and that he had been at Manila throughout, in daily conference with General Arthur MacArthur.²⁸

Taft pointed to the efforts of the military commanders, "especially General MacArthur," in ordering courts-martial and investigations and in issuing orders to the troops that such methods "would be condemned and must not be adopted." When the chairman asked whether any men had been punished, Taft said he knew that courts-martial had been ordered and that "some courts-martial were lectured for not punishing more heavily than they did men whom the evidence showed had been guilty of that method of securing evidence."²⁹

Secretary of War and the Isthmus, 1904 to 1908

Taft was Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt from February 1, 1904 to June 30, 1908.³⁰ The Yale record says he was placed in charge of the Isthmian Canal project in 1904 and visited the isthmus in November and thereafter.³⁰ Under the order of the Secretary of War of June 24, 1904, the Canal Zone was declared open to the commerce of all friendly nations, with customs districts at Ancon and Cristobal and the governor of the zone as head of the customs service.³¹

John Barrett, the American minister at Panama, reported on December 6, 1904 on the Secretary's visit. He wrote that the method of negotiation was to lay each day before the Panama officials the proposed order, which the Panama officials considered and returned, and that Taft then laid it before Admiral Walker, General George W. Davis, Judge Charles E. Magoon and Barrett in conference. Barrett added that "Mr. Nelson W. Cromwell, assisted by Mr. Farnham, has acted as an Intermediary between the two Governments, and as an adviser of Panama."³² Taft told President Amador on November 27, 1904 that the United States "has no desire to exercise any power except that which it deems necessary under the treaty to insure the building, maintenance, and protection of the canal."³²

On November 5, 1905 the Liberal leaders of Panama presented Taft with a memorandum on the coming elections. Their representatives were Pablo Arosemena, then vice president of the Republic, Belisario Porras, Eusebio Morales and General Domingo Diaz. The American minister and governor of the Canal Zone, Charles E. Magoon, reported the meeting in a despatch of November 10, 1905. He quoted the leaders' questions, including whether the American government guaranteed "public order and constitutional succession in this Republic."³³ The Panama Journal printed Taft's reply, that "no government which, in order to remain in power, needed to have recourse to fraud and violence at the polls had the right to exist."³³

The July 1905 conversation with Katsura

Taft was in Tokyo in July 1905 with a congressional party, a journey the Yale record dates to July through October 1905 and describes as a visit to the Philippine Islands, Japan and China.³⁴ On July 27, 1905 he held a long conversation with Katsura Taro, then prime minister of Japan and temporarily in charge of the foreign ministry in place of Baron Komura, who was on his way to the Portsmouth peace conference. Taft reported it to Secretary of State Elihu Root in a memorandum dated July 29, 1905 and in a cable from Tokyo of the same date; both are in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division and are catalogued by the Theodore Roosevelt Center. The catalogue describes the memorandum as the account Secretary of War Taft gives of a conversation he had with Count Katsura about Japan's desires in regard to the Philippine Islands and Korea, and the cable as an "agreed memorandum of conversation" between the prime minister of Japan and Taft on the Philippine Islands, Korea and the maintenance of peace in the Far East.³⁵

Tyler Dennett printed the text of the agreed memorandum in Current History in October 1924 with the American's name replaced by asterisks. In the first part Katsura observed that Japan's only interest in the Philippines would be, in his opinion, "to have these islands governed by a strong and friendly nation like the United States," and stated that "Japan does not harbor any aggressive designs whatever on the Philippines." The second part records Katsura's proposal for a good understanding among Japan, the United States and Great Britain. It records the statement that the President could not enter into even a confidential informal agreement "without the consent of the Senate," and the view that the people of the United States were so fully in accord with the policy of Japan and Great Britain that appropriate action "could be counted on by them quite as confidently as if the United States were under treaty obligations." In the third part Katsura said Japan was constrained to take definite steps to prevent Korea from falling back into her former condition. The American "fully admitted the justness of the Count's observations" and said that "in his personal opinion, the establishment by Japanese troops of a suzerainty over Korea to the extent of requiring that Korea enter into no foreign treaties without the consent of Japan was the logical result of the present war." He added that President Roosevelt would concur, "although he had no authority to give assurance of this," and that he would forward a memorandum of the conversation to Mr. Root and the President.³⁶

Dennett wrote that at Katsura's request the agreement was regarded as so secret that it was not disclosed even to Lloyd C. Griscom, the American minister at Tokyo. Roosevelt replied on July 31, 1905: "Your conversation with Count Katsura absolutely correct in every respect. Wish you would state to Katsura that I confirm every word you said."³⁷ The conversation is the one later called the Taft-Katsura agreement.

In November 1905 the American legation at Seoul was withdrawn, and Katsura wrote that the Imperial Government was "profoundly satisfied with the prompt and just steps" taken. The American chargé at Tokyo, Huntington Wilson, reported that the fact that the United States "has been the first to take this step" was "esteemed as a very graceful and friendly act."³⁸

Cuba, 1906

In September 1906 Roosevelt sent Taft and Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bacon to Cuba as commissioners. They arrived at Havana on the morning of September 19 on the U.S.S. Des Moines, during a cessation of hostilities arranged by Roosevelt's public letter to the Cuban minister at Washington, and set up their offices at the residence of the American minister at Marianao. After a week of interviews they drew up a compromise that kept Palma as president, with a coalition cabinet and new congressional elections; the Liberals agreed and the Moderates refused. Palma's resignation, which he declared irrevocable, left the republic without an executive, and on September 29, 1906 the commissioners established a provisional government under the authority of the President of the United States.³⁹

Taft signed the proclamation of that date as "Secretary of War of the United States, Provisional Governor of Cuba." It stated that the provisional government would be maintained "only long enough to restore order and peace and public confidence," and that the heads of all departments, including the commander of the rural guard, would report to him for instructions.⁴⁰ The American minister, Edwin V. Morgan, reported on October 13, 1906 that political prisoners were set at liberty, that the disbanding and disarming of the rebel forces was the chief concern of the provisional government, that Taft issued a general amnesty proclamation on October 10, and that on October 13 he transferred the provisional governorship to Charles E. Magoon, who had succeeded him.³⁹ Root wrote to the Cuban minister on October 1, 1906 that "you will perceive in the terms of Secretary Taft's proclamation" that the purpose of the United States was the preservation of Cuban independence.⁴¹

Dollar diplomacy and Nicaragua, 1909 to 1912

In his first annual message, dated December 7, 1909, Taft told Congress that the government had terminated diplomatic relations with the Zelaya government of Nicaragua. He said that "recently two Americans were put to death by order of President Zelaya himself."⁴²

Taft's annual message of December 3, 1912 has a section headed "Diplomacy a hand maid of commercial intercourse and peace." It says: "This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims. It is an effort frankly directed to the increase of American trade upon the axiomatic principle that the Government of the United States shall extend all proper support to every legitimate and beneficial American enterprise abroad."⁴³ The same message said that the "terrible events" of the revolution in Nicaragua in the summer of 1912 "might have been averted" had the Senate approved the loan convention. It said that "it became necessary to land over 2,000 marines and bluejackets in Nicaragua," and it recorded "with sorrow the death of seven American marines and bluejackets."⁴⁴

The message gave the reason for the Central American policy in terms of the Monroe doctrine: "the Monroe doctrine is more vital in the neighborhood of the Panama Canal and the zone of the Caribbean than anywhere else." It said the government had been "glad to encourage and support American bankers" who would help the Central American republics, because "the protection of their customhouses from being the prey of would-be dictators would remove at one stroke the menace of foreign creditors and the menace of revolutionary disorder," and that bankers "may naturally be loath to advance a loan adequate to set the country upon its feet without the support of some such convention as that of June, 1911, upon which the Senate has not yet acted."⁴⁵

The loan of September 1, 1911 was made by Brown Brothers and Company and J. and W. Seligman and Company to the Republic of Nicaragua. Customs receipts were pledged as security, and a collector general of customs was to be nominated by the bankers. On November 2, 1911 the bankers wrote to the Department of State that they had nominated Clifford D. Ham, who was at the time "Surveyor of the Port of Manila, in the Philippine Islands." They wrote that he had been "recommended to us as a person qualified for the position and worthy of our confidence."⁴⁶ Secretary of State Philander C. Knox approved the nomination on November 11, 1911. He wrote that "I therefore approve the selection of Mr. Clifford D. Ham as Collector-General of Customs of Nicaragua." His letter added that the approval "must not in any wise be understood as indicating that the Government of the United States will lend any other or further good offices" beyond what it would give "any legitimate American enterprise abroad."⁴⁷

The American minister in Managua wrote on February 14, 1912 that the legation "did not wish to take any official part in the business negotiations between the Nicaraguan Government and Brown Brothers et al." The minister also reported that the currency experts read the clause that put the government's lake steamers under the Pacific railroad option to mean that Brown Brothers "will on the exercise of the option acquire a franchise to navigate the lakes and San Juan River."⁴⁸

The 1912 split

Taft was renominated for president at the Republican convention in Chicago in June 1912, and he failed of election in November.⁴⁹ Henry L. Stimson, whom Taft had appointed Secretary of War in 1911, stayed in the administration through the break with Theodore Roosevelt that year.⁵⁰

Kent Professor and Chief Justice, 1913 to 1930

Taft held the Kent Professorship of Law in Yale College and the professorship of constitutional law in the Law School from 1913 to 1921. He had been a member of the Yale Corporation from 1906 to 1913 and again from 1922 to 1925.⁵¹ The Yale record lists him as president of the American Red Cross from 1905 to 1913, a founder and president in 1915 of the League to Enforce Peace, trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1906 to 1915, chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution from 1923, and an incorporator of the American Law Institute.⁵² It lists him as co-chairman of the National War Labor Board in 1918 and 1919, and as the arbiter in 1922 of the Amory oil concessions, at the joint request of the British and Porto Rican governments.⁵³

The Supreme Court's list of members gives Warren G. Harding as the president who appointed Taft, with service from July 11, 1921 to February 3, 1930.⁵⁴ The Yale record says he was Chief Justice from 1921 until his resignation on February 3, 1930, on account of ill health. He died on March 8, 1930 of cerebral arteriosclerosis and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.⁵⁵

Olmstead v. United States, 1928

Taft delivered the opinion of the Court in Olmstead v. United States, argued on February 20 and 21, 1928 and decided on June 4, 1928. The writ was limited to the single question whether the use of evidence of private telephone conversations, intercepted by wire tapping, violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The convictions were for a conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act, and the information leading to the discovery of the conspiracy "was largely obtained by intercepting messages on the telephones of the conspirators by four federal prohibition officers."⁵⁶ The syllabus records that the tapping connections were made in the basement of a large office building and on public streets, and that no trespass was committed upon any property of the defendants.⁵⁶

The opinion held that the evidence did not violate either amendment. Taft wrote: "The language of the Amendment can not be extended and expanded to include telephone wires reaching to the whole world from the defendant's house or office. The intervening wires are not part of his house or office any more than are the highways along which they are stretched." The opinion stated that Congress could protect the secrecy of telephone messages by making them inadmissible in federal criminal trials, and that it was not for the courts to do so by "attributing an enlarged and unusual meaning to the Fourth Amendment."⁵⁷ Justices Holmes, Brandeis, Butler and Stone dissented, and the judgments were affirmed.⁵⁸

The family in Sutton's chart

Sutton's chart places "THE ORDER" at the center of nine old-line families, with the Taft family listed at 1679 in Braintree.⁹ Sutton wrote that the "most influential Trustee of Antioch College was the co-founder of The Order," and he named that trustee as Alphonso Taft. Horace Mann was president of Antioch College from 1853.⁵⁹