Taft, William Howard, the twenty-seventh president of the United States. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 15, 1857. He was graduated at Yale in 1878 and studied law in Cincinnati College. A short term of practice was followed by a course of officeholding. He was county attorney, 1881; collector of revenue, 1883; judge of the superior court, 1887; United States solicitor general, 1890; United States circuit judge, 1892; chairman of a commission to organize civil government in the Philippines, 1900; civil governor of the Philippines, 1901; secretary of war in Roosevelt's cabinet, 1904. In 1908 Mr. Taft was nominated by the Republicans for the presidency. He was elected over William J. Bryan, his Democratic competitor, by a popular vote of 7,637,676, a plurality of 1,233,494. Taft had 321 electoral votes to 162 for Bryan.