signed
24/12/1908
by William Taft
24/12/1908. After President Theodore Roosevelt determined he would not run for reelection, he gave careful consideration to potential successors. He finally threw his support behind William Howard Taft in early 1907. Taft was Roosevelt’s secretary of war and a trusted adviser, and the two had similar political ideas. Having been handpicked by the President, Taft easily won the Republican nomination on the first ballot when the Republican convention met in June 1908. Taft easily defeated William Jennings Bryan in the November election, and then began considering whom he should appoint to his Cabinet.Cornelius N. Bliss was a partner in one of the largest (truncated)