Clarence Denton, age 13, of Rock Island, I11., for his question:
WHICH AMERICAN PRESIDENT WAS THE LARGEST?
William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, was the largest man to serve in the nation's highest office. President Taft stood six feet tall and weighed well over 300 pounds.
President Taft was also the only man in the history of the United States who served first as President, and then served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857. He went to Yale College and later graduated from the Cincinnati Law School. He received his law degree and passed the bar in 1880.
Taft's career in politics was a dramatic one. After serving as an assistant prosecuting attorney of Ohio's Hamilton County, he was appointed as a Superior Court judge. He resigned his position to accept an appointment by President Benjamin Harrison as Solicitor General of the United States in 1890.
From there Taft was appointed by President Harrison as a judge in a federal Circuit Court of Appeals. He served as a judge for six years and also served as dean of the University of Cincinnati Law School at the same time.
President William McKinley appointed Taft the first civil governor of the Philippines. From this job he became Secretary of War in President Theodore Roosevelt's Cabinet.
When President Roosevelt announced that he would not seek re election in 1908, he recommended Taft for the job. Taft won the Republican nomination on the first ballot. The voters gave Taft a plurality of more than a million votes over William Jennings Bryan, who suffered his third loss as Democratic nominee for President.
Taft lost the presidential election of 1912 to New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson and became a professor of law at Yale University. In 1921 President Warren Harding appointed Taft Chief Justice of the United States. Taft regarded this appointment as the greatest honor of his life.
William Howard Taft married Helen Nellie Herron in 1886 and they had three children who went on to capture their own fame: Robert Taft, who became a famous U.S. Senator from Ohio and a leader of the Republican Party; Helen Herron Taft Manning, who served as professor of history and dean of Bryn Mawr College; and Charles Phelps Taft II, a lawyer who was mayor of Cincinnati from 1955 to 1957.
Taft's accomplishments as administrator of the nation's highest court were more important than his decisions.
The Supreme Court had fallen far behind in its work. In 1925, Taft achieved passage of the Judiciary Act. This law gave the court greater control over the number and kinds of cases it would consider, and made it possible for the court to function effectively and get its work done.
Taft was also instrumental in obtaining congressional approval for a new court building that was much needed.