William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft, born September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and died March 8, 1930, served as the twenty-seventh President of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and remains the only person to have also served as Chief Justice of the United States, an office he held on the Supreme Court from 1921 until shortly before his death. As president he continued the antitrust enforcement associated with his predecessor and one-time mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, but a growing rift between the two men over the direction of the Republican Party split the party's vote in the 1912 election and cost Taft reelection to a second term.