Alphonso Taft

Alphonso Taft served as attorney general of the United States from 1876 to 1877, under President Ulysses S.Grant.

Taft was born November 5, 1810, in Townsend, Vermont, to pioneers Peter Rawson Taft and Sylvia Howard Taft. He was well aware of his family's long history and tradition of public service in the American colonies. His father was a descendant of Edward Rawson, a 1636 settler who had served as secretary of the Massachusetts Province. Other Taft family members held positions of responsibility and influence in communities all along the eastern seaboard.

Although Taft's parents were of modest financial means, they had a strong commitment to education, and Taft was well schooled. Taft left Vermont to attend Yale University in 1829, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1833 and his law degree in 1836.

Like many young men of his day, Taft saw his future in the West. In 1839 Taft moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and opened his law practice. On August 29, 1841, he married Fanny Phelps, the daughter of family friends Charles Phelps and Eliza Houghton Phelps. Fanny died in 1852. Taft remarried in 1853, to Louise Maria Torret. They had three sons and one daughter, including William Howard Taft, who became the twenty-seventh president of the United States and the tenth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Taft played an important role in organizing his influential friends to support the national Republican effort, and he is personally credited with the birth of the Republican party in Cincinnati. He was chosen to represent Hamilton County at the first Republican National Convention, in 1856. He later sought to represent Ohio's first district in the Thirty-fifth Congress. He ran as a Republican candidate, but was defeated. He remained active in Republican party politics for most of his life.

In 1865 Taft was appointed to fill the remaining term of a Cincinnati superior court judge. Later that year, he was elected in his own right, and he served as a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati from 1865 to 1872.

In 1872 Taft left the bench to practice law with his grown sons. He took an active role in the establishment and organization of the Cincinnati Bar Association, and he was elected the first president of the new organization in March 1872. Taft's political, judicial, and legal activities during the late 1860s and early 1870s elevated him to national attention, so few were surprised when President Grant appointed him secretary of war in March 1876. (It was a position his son William Howard Taft would also hold thirty years later, under President Theodore Roosevelt.) Only two months later, Grant named Taft to be attorney general.

Taft served as attorney general from May 1876 to January 1877. In November 1876, the government's policy of suspending pay to sailors who were jailed or removed from duty was challenged. Taft rendered an opinion finding "nothing in the law of the naval service which justifies the view that confinement or suspension from duty under sentence of court-martial is attended by forfeiture or loss of pay" (15 Op. Att'y Gen. 175, 176).

Following his term as attorney general, Taft made several unsuccessful bids for elected office. He was defeated in his run for a U.S. Senate seat in 1878. And he was defeated in two attempts at the Ohio governor's seat, in 1877 and 1879.

In April 1882, he was named U.S. ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1884 Taft was offered the ambassadorship to Russia. He accepted, and served until August 1885.

At the close of his foreign service, Taft settled in California. In retirement, he devoted his time to a number of educational institutions, including Yale University, where he was a fellow of the college, and the University of Cincinnati, where he was a charter trustee. After his death on May 21, 1891, in San Diego, the University of Cincinnati's Alphonso Taft School of Law was named in his honor.

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Alphonso Taft
31st United States Secretary of War
In office March 8, 1876 – May 22, 1876
President	Ulysses S. Grant
Preceded by	William W. Belknap
Succeeded by	J. Donald Cameron
35th United States Attorney General
In office May 22, 1876 – March 4, 1877
President	Ulysses S. Grant
Preceded by	Edwards Pierrepont
Succeeded by	Charles Devens
Born	November 5, 1810(1810-11-05) Townshend, Vermont, U.S.
Died	May 21, 1891 (aged 80) San Diego, California, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Fanny Phelps Louise Taft (1827-1907)
Children	Charles Phelps Taft (1843-1927) William Howard Taft (1857-1930) Henry Waters Taft (1859-1945) Horace Dutton Taft (1861-1943)
Alma mater	Yale University
Profession	Lawyer, Tutor, Politician

Alphonso Taft (November 5, 1810 – May 21, 1891) was the Attorney General and Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant and the founder of an American political dynasty.

Born in Townshend, Vermont, the son of Peter Rawson Taft, he graduated from Yale College in 1833, where he also was a tutor. At Yale, he and his classmate William Huntington Russell cofounded Skull and Bones, the preeminent undergraduate club. He subsequently studied law at the Yale Law School, was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1838, moved to Cincinnati in 1839 where he was a member of the Cincinnati City Council, and became one of the most influential citizens of Ohio. He was a member of the boards of trustees of the University of Cincinnati and of Yale College.

He made an unsuccessful run for the United States House of Representatives in 1856. He was a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati from 1866 to 1872. He was the first president of the Cincinnati Bar Association, serving in 1872. At a famous 1874 Taft family reunion at Elmshade, at Uxbridge, Mass., Alfonso delivered an impassioned speech on his family history and his father's origins in this community, as recorded in his autobiography.^[1] Taft was appointed Secretary of War by President Grant in March, 1876, and three months later Attorney General of the United States.

After he left office as Attorney General in 1877 he returned to the practice of law. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1875 and 1879, first to Rutherford B. Hayes and the second time to Charles Foster. Taft was ambassador to Austria-Hungary from 1882 to 1884,^[2] and to Imperial Russia from 1884 to 1885.

Alphonso Taft died in San Diego, California, on May 21, 1891.

His son, William Howard Taft, was the 27th President of the United States and was a member of Yale's Skull and Bones like his founder father; another son, Charles Phelps Taft, supported the founding of Wolf's Head Society at Yale; both his grandson and great-grandson, Robert A. Taft I (also Skull and Bones) and Robert Taft Jr., were U.S. Senators; his great-great-grandson, Robert A. Taft II, was the Governor of Ohio from 1999 until 2007. William Howard Taft III was ambassador to Ireland; William Howard Taft IV worked in several Republican administrations, most recently that of George W. Bush.

The home of Alphonso Taft and family, in the Mount Auburn area, one mile north of downtown Cincinnati, has been restored to its original appearance. It is open to the public. It is now called the William Howard Taft National Historic Site. [1]

References

1. ^ Leonard, Lewis Alexander. "The Life of Alphonso Taft" by Google Books. ""Life of Alphonso Taft"". Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=LCVCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA308&lpg=PA308&dq=%22the+life+of+alphonso+taft%22+by+lewis+alexander+leonard&source=web&ots=oPnSgqCCBA&sig=ItrjVR1tAeXtoOKUMZX4KXjKiy4#PPA230,M1. Retrieved 2007-11-25. 
2. ^ "FORMER U.S. AMBASSADORS TO AUSTRIA". U.S. Embassy in Vienna. http://vienna.usembassy.gov/en/embassy/former_amb.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-31. 

• Army biography

Political offices
Preceded by William W. Belknap	United States Secretary of War March 8, 1876 – May 22, 1876	Succeeded by J. Donald Cameron
Legal offices
Preceded by Edwards Pierrepont	United States Attorney General May 22, 1876 – March 4, 1877	Succeeded by Charles Devens
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by William W. Phelps	United States Ambassador to Austria-Hungary April 22, 1882 – August 25, 1884	Succeeded by John M. Francis

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v • d • e Cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) Vice President Schuyler Colfax (1869-1873) • Henry Wilson (1873-1875) Secretary of State Elihu B. Washburne (1869) • Hamilton Fish (1869-1877) Secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell (1869-1873) • William A. Richardson (1873-1874) • Benjamin Bristow (1874-1876) • Lot M. Morrill (1876-1877) Secretary of War John A. Rawlins (1869) • William W. Belknap (1869-1876) • Alphonso Taft (1876) • J. Donald Cameron (1876-1877) Attorney General Ebenezer R. Hoar (1869-1870) • Amos T. Akerman (1870-1871) • George H. Williams (1871-1875) • Edwards Pierrepont (1875-1876) • Alphonso Taft (1876-1877) Postmaster General John Creswell (1869-1874) • James W. Marshall (1874) • Marshall Jewell (1874-1876) • James N. Tyner (1876-1877) Secretary of the Navy Adolph E. Borie (1869) • George M. Robeson (1869-1877) Secretary of the Interior Jacob D. Cox (1869-1870) • Columbus Delano (1870-1875) • Zachariah Chandler (1875-1877)

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