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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Follow ChronAm by subscribing to email alerts and RSS feeds.
Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
Hand-picked by Theodore Roosevelt as his successor, William Howard Taft (1857-1930) won the Presidential election in 1908, defeating William Jennings Bryan. Taft would go on to sign the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which proposed a federal income tax. He also unexpectedly supported the Aldrich-Cannon tariff, earning him disapproval amongst some in the Republican Party. Taft lost reelection in 1912 to Woodrow Wilson, coming in third place after an insurgent Roosevelt Bull Moose party. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| November 3, 1908 | Taft defeats William Jennings Bryan and is elected President. |
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| July 30, 1909 | The Sixteenth Amendment, proposing an income tax, is signed and supported by President Taft. |
| August 25, 1910 | Taft received backlash from his support of the Aldrich-Cannon tariff. |
| November 17, 1911 | Roosevelt and Taft are reported to have fallen out over trust policies. |
| November 5, 1912 | Woodrow Wilson wins the Presidential election, with Roosevelt placing second and Taft placing third. |
