History of the Collection
[From Index to the William H. Taft Papers. (Washington, D.C.: 1972), pp. v-x]
At noon on March 4, 1913, the administration of William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, came to a close. Later that day he and Mrs. Taft left Washington for an extended rest in Augusta, Ga. For the first time since 1887, when at the age of 29 he became a judge of the Superior Court of Ohio, Mr. Taft was free of the responsibilities of public office. Still in the future was the crowning glory of his life, his service as Chief Justice. In the meantime an active private life was at hand. Before leaving the White House President Taft had accepted a professorship at his alma mater, Yale University. On April 1, welcomed by some 3,000 students and faculty, he arrived in New Haven to assume his duties as Kent Professor of Constitutional Law.
Mr. Taft's teaching schedule at Yale afforded him ample opportunity for outside lectures and writing. He would engage heavily in both activities. There were also thoughts of an autobiography. For these purposes the great mass of personal papers which he had accumulated during the years of public service were indispensable. These were still in the White House. Once established in his new residence, the former President wrote to Rudolph Forster, executive clerk at the White House, requesting that the papers be sent to New Haven. His letter supplies the first general description of the scope of the collection:
I have just written to Will Herron and Major Rhoads about having the thirty boxes of law books, which I understand are in the attic of the Executive Office, shipped to me. In addition to these, I also wished shipped to me the boxes of files in the attic containing the letters written by me while I was Secretary of War up to the time I came to the White House on March 4, 1909, as also the boxes containing the letter press books in which my letters during that time were press copied. Hendricks is very familiar with them and can help out a good deal. Then I want sent to me the correspondence I received during the time I was President, together with the letter press copy books in which my replies were copied.
Mischler tells me that he had placed in the attic, temporarily, a box containing the thirty volumes of my speeches. These can be easily located, as they are properly tagged. I wish you would have these sent to me separately, as I do not want to get them mixed up with the rest of the shipment. I shall make room for them here at the Hotel Taft, while most of the remainder of the shipment I can have stored at a storehouse here in New Haven. I do not think I ought to burden the White House with these things, and therefore want them sent to me. Please see that all of these boxes are properly marked as to their contents, so that I can get anything out of storage here that I may desire from time to time and will have no difficulty locating it. 1
In due course the papers arrived safely. An accompanying inventory showed that Taft family correspondence was also included. The papers remained in New Haven until 1919-1920, when they were returned to Washington to be deposited in the Library of Congress.
I
Throughout his life William Howard Taft was systematic in retaining his correspondence and working papers. Taft family tradition and his own sense of history impressed upon him the importance of the written record as the most reliable guide to an understanding of past events and personalities. Indeed, his own experiences as lawyer and judge made him skeptical of oral accounts, especially those recalled long after the event. Addressing the American Antiquarian Society in October 1912, President Taft reminded his scholarly audience that evidence in documentary form was an essential ingredient in establishing the facts. In the same speech he also supported the idea of a National Archives Building to house the public records of the National Government, not merely for preservation but for classification and indexing in the interest of historical investigation. 2
Other actions during his Presidency stand as testimony to Mr. Taft's concern for the proper management and preservation of the evidentiary sources of the Nation's life. Notable in this connection was the President's Commission on Economy and Efficiency, appointed in 1910. Extensive studies and recommendations were made by the Commission on such subjects as maintaining Government archives, paperwork management, and the disposal of useless files. One result of the Commission's work was the institution of a new filing system in the White House and reorganization of the papers there.
Indicative too of Mr. Taft's interest in establishing correct archival procedures is his Executive order of March 16, 1912, requiring:
. . . . that before reporting to Congress useless files of papers to be disposed of . . . . lists of such papers should be submitted to the Librarian of Congress in order that several Executive Departments may have the benefit of his views as to the wisdom of preserving such of the papers as he may deem to be of historical interest. 3
Among the numerous academic lectures which Mr. Taft gave in the postpresidential years, one in particular sheds light on the making of a Presidential collection. In the second of a series of lectures delivered at Columbia University in October 1915, Mr. Taft explained:
The Executive office of the President is not a recording office. The vast amount of correspondence that goes through it, signed either by the President or his secretaries, does not become the property or a record of the government, unless it goes on to the official files of the Department to which it may be addressed.
The retiring President takes with him all of the correspondence, originals and copies, which he carried on during his administration. . . . It is a little like what Mr. Charles Francis Adams told me of the diplomatic records of the British Foreign Office. It has long been the custom for the important Ambassadors of Great Britain to carry on a personal correspondence with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, which is not put upon the files of the department, but which gives a much more accurate and detailed account of the diplomatic relations of Great Britain than the official files. The only way in which historians can get at this is through the good offices of the families of the deceased Ambassadors and Foreign Secretaries in whose archives they may be preserved. 4
This statement represents the accepted customary law, so to speak, on Presidential papers. The corpus of papers produced, received, and retained in the Executive Office may be taken by the President at the end of his administration. Although Mr. Taft was unaware of it at the time of his Columbia lecture, not all the papers belonging to his administration had in fact left the White House. Two years later his secretary, Wendell M. Mischler, received an interesting piece of news from Rudolph Forster, still in his position at the White House:
We have just had a thorough house-cleaning here at the Executive Office and a lot of President Taft's personal papers came to light, among them his father's commission as Secretary of War or Attorney General, his own commission as Governor General of the Philippines and the like. These papers evidently were mixed in with a lot of our permanent records at the time the office was rebuilt in 1909, and hence they were not at hand when Mr. Taft's belongings were collected and sent to New Haven. 5
The newly discovered group of Taft papers was dispatched to New Haven to join the original shipment. As will be seen, future housecleanings by the same Mr. Forster were to yield even further treasures under the White House eaves.
Library of Congress officials were naturally interested in adding the Taft papers to the Presidential collections already in their custody. A formal solicitation of the papers came in 1919. As early as 1915, however, Gaillard Hunt, chief of the then Division of Manuscripts, had invited Mr. Taft to place his father's papers in the national library:
I don't know whether I should send this letter to you or to one of your brothers, but I presume it will make no difference. My object is to ascertain whether your father, the Hon. Alphonso Taft, left any collected papers—correspondence, etc.— and, if so, whether they cannot be deposited with the National Library, as a monument to his memory and a contribution to the truth of history. The deposit, I may add, may be under such rules as the owners of the papers choose to prescribe. 6 He was not yet ready to make a commitment:
I have yours of April 27th. I wish to get my father's papers together, but I have not had time as yet to do so. When I do gather them, I shall bear in mind your kind suggestion, and thank you for making it. 7
Mr. Hunt left the Library of Congress during World War I for service in the Department of State and Charles Moore, Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, was appointed acting chief of the Division of Manuscripts. On January 6, 1919, Mr. Moore made a direct appeal to the former President for his papers:
The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress contains all the public papers of Theodore Roosevelt and Benjamin Harrison. These papers were deposited with the provision that they should be consulted only on the order of the responsible representatives of the persons named. The collection of Washington papers is the largest in existence, and the Jefferson, Madison, Monroe papers must be consulted here by students of American history.
I am suggesting that you place your public papers in the Library, subject to any conditions you may see fit to impose.
My connection with the Library is temporary, and has to do with getting a building for government archives. It is needless to say that to secure your papers, for the use ultimately of historical scholars, would be a great satisfaction to me, as well as a great benefit to the Library. You will appreciate the suggestion that the poorest place to erect a monument is in a cemetery, and the best place, in the case of a public man, is a library open to scholars. 8
The response was distinctly encouraging:
I have your letter of January 6th in which you suggest that I place my public papers in the Library of Congress, subject to any conditions I may see fit to impose. The question of my papers has been one of considerable difficulty for me. I hoped that I might myself look over them after I left office, and instead of having leisure, I am busier than ever. I have no doubt that I have in my correspondence a lot of truck which is good for nothing. I have thought that possibly there were experts who could run the papers through and make a digest of what I have. I would like to talk with you about it. 9
Four days later the two men discussed the disposition of the papers in Mr. Taft's National War Labor Board office in Washington. An agreement was reached to deposit the papers in the Library of Congress and instructions were given for their transfer from New Haven. A week later Mr. Moore acknowledged receipt of 34 boxes. The first large installment of the William Howard Taft Papers was now in the Library of Congress.
II
In his Annual Reportfor 1919, Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, seized upon the acquisition of the Taft Papers as the occasion for further observations on the subject of Presidential papers:
The right of an official to his personal correspondence, even on matters of public concern, has not been questioned. It is these communications, however, which form the basis of history, because they account for and explain public acts. The Government at first made no provision for collecting and making accessible such materials; and a very large sum, in the aggregate, has been paid for papers, Presidential and otherwise, that would have been deposited freely had systematic provision been made for handling them. The papers of several of the Presidents are still in the hands of individuals, whereas they should be in the Library of Congress. This for many conclusive reasons, one of which is the reputation and fame of the particular President, both of which suffer from the neglect of historians who lack available materials. The example set by Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, it is hoped, will become a governing precedent. 10
With the Taft Papers came the inventory prepared in 1913 by Rudolph Forster. Upon examination certain omissions in the collection were noted. These were called to Mr. Taft's attention:
We have almost finished indexing the papers you have turned over to us. The letters to you come down to the inauguration of President Wilson, and your letter books stop with your entry into the White House. Will you not add those covering your administration at this time? You know you have absolute control of this material, and now that we are on the job we would like to finish it up. 11
He responded affirmatively, calling special attention to a group of Theodore Roosevelt letters:
I have your letter of January 30th. I agree with you that it would be well to have everything since the beginning of my Administration turned over to you for indexing, even down to near the present time. I am not sure that I can distinguish between correspondence during office. I have the Roosevelt letters, so far as I have been able to cull them from the files, in a separate box, and I would be willing to have you digest those as well. What do you want me to do? Will you superintend the transportation of all these letters to your library at Washington? Next Sunday I am going to leave on a long trip. I shall be here Friday and Saturday, and would be glad to hear from you by mail or telephone and to leave the proper authority for the delivery of these files to you. 12
Following this exchange Mr. Taft directed that all except the Roosevelt letters be sent to the Library. With respect to these he insisted:”. . . . I think you had better send some one to my office in New Haven to get them. They are not sufficiently bulky to prevent carrying them, and I would not like to run the risk of losing them.” 13 Mr. Moore, taking the Roosevelt letters as his personal responsibility, went to New Haven for them. He reported with a touch of humor to Mr. Taft:
On Wednesday I called at your office in the Taft Hotel, and received the Taft-Roosevelt correspondence, which has been brought in safety to the Library of Congress, and is now being carded, though not combed.
You will be reassured to know that in box No. 18 of the Taft Papers was a live match, which is preserved in this Division as a memorial. 14
The jovial Taft replied in the same spirit:
I am glad to know that you got the Roosevelt correspondence and am glad that the match did not become alive. 15
The Taft Papers were doubled in size by the first addition. In June 1921, William Howard Taft became the 10th Chief Justice of the United States, a position he was to hold until his retirement in February 1930. During these nine years he regularly deposited in the Library significant installments of his papers. One of the most important additions in this period, however, came from the White House. The circumstances surrounding it afford an interesting sidelight in the history of the papers.
In late 1924, at the request of a publisher, Mr. Mischler inquired about Lord Bryce letters in the Taft Papers. 16 Although some such letters were found in the Library's collection, a card index which had come in with the papers indicated that considerably more correspondence existed. 17 The search took Mr. Mischler to the White House, where he located more Bryce-Taft correspondence.
This discovery naturally excited Library officials. Mr. Moore promptly got in touch with the Chief Justice:
When Mr. Mischler found some of Lord Bryce's letters to you at the White House, the fact naturally created a disturbance here, and led to an investigation of White House files. This morning I was assured that there are no files of importance in the White House.
A request from you that any papers relating to your Administration be transferred from the White House to the Library of Congress will accomplish the purpose. Also, it will lead to a general examination of the White House files, with a view of transferring all Presidential papers of past Administrations to the Library. 18
The Bryce letters were sent to the Library by Taft himself with an accompanying admonition:
Mr. Mischler has found quite a number of letters from Lord Bryce in the White House files, and I am sending them to you herewith. I wish you would go with the authority from me, to see what other papers are there of mine. I would like very much to have them all in one place. 19
On December 22 Mr. Moore went to the White House, where he found extensive office files not only from the administration of President Taft but also from the administrations of President Wilson and Harding. 20 A memorandum on the subject prepared by C. E. Ingling, chief file clerk in the White House, helps to account for the Presidential papers remaining there:
During the administration of President Taft, as was and is the custom, we kept what we termed the President's Personal File, and the General File. In the former, we filed such personal matters as it was thought would be of interest to the President or which were of a private nature. This file was turned over to him at the expiration of his term.
The General-official file of March 1909-1913, now stored in the attic, consists of fifty-three drawers (2 ft. deep) full of material made up mostly of the routine work of the office and while there may be a few letters there which would be considered more or less of a private nature, viewed in the light of the present time, it would be necessary to go through the entire file to locate them. 21
The simultaneous discovery of the office files of Presidents Wilson and Harding leads to the conclusion that White House filing procedures were based on the theory that routine correspondence belonged to the Presidential office rather than to the particular occupant. This was in contradiction, of course, to what Taft had said in his Columbia lecture. Fortunately for the integrity of Presidential collections, that theory did not prevail. Here a request from Taft himself was sufficient to retrieve the office files. Authorized agents were able to achieve the same result for those of Presidents Wilson and Harding. 22
Mr. Moore concluded that it would not be feasible to go through these voluminous files to extract any intermingled personal correspondence. Undoubtedly, he also realized the historical value of what the White House office staff considered routine material. Chief Justice Taft readily followed his suggestion and requested that all of the files be sent to the Library. 23
III
With this accession a large gap in the Taft Papers was filled. Notable additions, however, continued to come. Taft himself was faithful and persistent in gathering papers. A remodeling of his residence on Wyoming Avenue in 1926 brought more letters to light. He described these to his son Robert and also suggested that there were even more letters in the Cincinnati house of his half-brother, Charles P. Taft:
Among other things we find in the cellar are letters. We have letters of Grandpa Taft, letters apparently written to Uncle Charley's mother, Father's first wife. If they turn out to be of interest, I think I shall send them to your Uncle Charley. The other letters we are turning over to the Congressional Library for examination. They include a good many of my letters to your mother. That leads me to say that I am quite sure there are a great many boxes of letters in the garret of your Uncle Charley's house on Pike Street, which I would be glad to get hold of and have them sent here, because the Manuscript Division of the Congressional Library will examine them all and put them in my collection in that place. 24
Taft then informed both Charles and his sister Fanny Taft Edwards that he was turning over the family correspondence to the Library. At the same time he supplied Charles Moore with a fuller description of his latest discovery. Surprisingly enough, it included letters from the Presidential years and an important memorandum concerning the indictment against the steel trust. There were also a good many letters from the State Department with reference to Taft's action in sending troops to the Mexican border.
Taft's attitude about the value of some of the family letters was curious:
. . . . They cover a period—at least I hope they do—from 1882 to 1886 when I was practicing law in Cincinnati and my father and mother were in Austria and in Russia, when Father was Minister to Austria and subsequently Minister to Russia. There are letters written by the various members of the family, including myself. I think it would be well to keep my own letters in the collection. It is possible that in the letters received in Vienna and St. Petersburg there may be family matters of interest commented on which ought to be in a collection of mine. In addition to this there are a lot of letters that I wrote to Mrs. Taft while I was in the Philippines and while she was visiting in China and Japan. Then there are a lot of letters that I wrote to Mrs. Taft while traveling on lecture tours between 1913 and 1921. The letters of my father and grandfather I have concluded not to send, because as I glance at them I don't think they would have much interest in a collection of my letters. 25
Mr. Moore promptly disagreed:
. . . . As for your father and grandfather letters, let me remind you of the value we would attach to letters of Washington's father and grandfather. There are none. The family life of a President and Chief Justice of the United States is a matter of high historical concern, and will be increasingly so as the Republic grows older. 26
Before his death Taft added the correspondence with his children to the collection, and ultimately, through the generosity and cooperation of the family, that of his father and grandfather reached the Library. In 1933 the last large group of Taft Papers was deposited by the estate. Smaller but valuable additions were made from time to time by the Taft family. Significant among these were four journals given in 1962 by Helen Taft Manning. One was kept by the Tafts on their wedding trip to Europe in 1886; three were kept by Mrs. Taft recording trips to Europe, around the world, and experiences in the Philippines. Over the years also, the Library acquired important items by purchase such as a Philippine diary and a bench notebook from the period of Taft's tenure on the Superior Court of Ohio.
Segments of the Taft Papers left the Library in the 1930's on loan to the authorized biographer, Henry F. Pringle, and during World War II part of the collection was removed to Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., for safekeeping. Until 1952 the Taft Papers were only on deposit in the Library of Congress. In February of that year the deposit was converted to a gift by Robert A. Taft, Charles P. Taft, and Helen Taft Manning. By this public-spirited act, typical of the Taft family, the William Howard Taft Papers, numbering some half a million items and constituting an extraordinarily rich source for a study of American political and constitutional history for over half a century, became a permanent part of the national manuscript collections. 27
Note: This essay was written by Paul T. Heffron, specialist in 20th-century political history, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
1. William H. Taft to Rudolph Forster, April 5, 1913. William Howard Taft Papers, Library of Congress (thereafter cited as Taft Papers).
2. Speech to American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., October 16, 1912. Taft Papers.
3. Executive Order No. 1499, March 16, 1912. Taft Papers.
4. Lecture at Columbia University, October 13, 1915. Taft Papers.
5. Forster to Wendell M. Mischler, June 25, 1917. Taft Papers.
6. Gaillard Hunt to Taft, April 27, 1915. Taft Papers.
7. Taft to Hunt, April 30, 1915. Taft Papers.
8. Charles Moore to Taft, January 6, 1919. Taft Papers.
9. Taft to Moore, January 14, 1919. Taft Papers.
10. Report of the Librarian of Congress . . . . 1919, p. 33-34.
11. Moore to Taft, January 30, 1920. Taft Papers.
12. Taft to Moore, February 4, 1920. Taft Papers.
13. Taft to John C. Fitzpatrick, February 7, 1920. Taft Papers.
14. Moore to Taft, June 14, 1920. Taft Papers.
15. Taft to Moore, June 14, 1920. Taft Papers.
16. Mischler to Moore, November 13, 1924. Taft Papers.
17. Moore to Mischler, November 17, 1924. Taft Papers.
18. Moore to Taft, December 11, 1924. Taft Papers.
19. Taft to Moore, December 16, 1924. Taft Papers.
20. Moore to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, December 23, 1924. Edith Bolling Wison Papers, Library of Congress.
21. Memorandum of C. E. Ingling, March 27, 1925. Taft Papers.
22. See Ray Stannard Baker, The Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (New York, 1927), vol. 1, p. xvii-xviii; and Francis Russell, Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York, 1968), p. 646-647.
23. Taft to Moore, March 28, 1925. Taft Papers.
24. Taft to Robert A. Taft, October 17, 1926. Taft Papers.
25. Taft to Moore, October 19, 1926. Manuscript Division files.
26. Moore to Taft, October 20, 1926. Taft Papers.
27. For a description of the scope and content of the Taft Papers see Kate MacLean Stewart, "The William Howard Taft Papers," Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, vol. 15, November 1957, p. 1-11