William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) was an American politician, the twenty-seventh President of the United States, the tenth Chief Justice of the United States, 42nd Secretary of War (1904-1908) and scion of a leading political family, the Tafts, of Ohio.

William Howard Taft was an avid golfer. He was overweight for much of his adult life.

William Howard Taft in Southern Victory
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) was a Democratic Congressman representing the state of Ohio in the United States House of Representatives. In the 1910s, he was Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, the first committee assignment of freshman Socialist Congresswoman Flora Hamburger. He found Hamburger exasperating, particularly for her opposition to the Great War, and the two quarelled from time to time. He continued to do so after the Socialists won control of Congress in 1918 and he was stripped of his chairmanship. In 1919, he bitterly opposed a resolution she called for condemning the Freedom Party's violence against blacks in the Confederate States.

Despite their differences, Hamburger would remember Taft with respect years later. She spoke fondly of him to his son, Robert Taft, when she and the younger Taft--against whom she'd campaigned in the Presidential election of 1940--became allies in calling for a hardline foreign policy during the Second Great War.