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Epilogue Post #1:

Updated list of Chief Justices:

John Jay (1789-1795)
John Rutledge (1795-1795)
Oliver Ellsworth (1796-1800)
John Marshall (1801-1835)
Roger Taney (1836-1861)
Abraham Lincoln (1861-1879)
David Davis (1879-1889)
Stephen Field (1889-1895)
Horace Gray (1895-1903)
Rufus Wheeler Peckham (1903-1906)
Daniel Lindsey Russell (1906-????)[1]

And a list of the current composition of the Supreme Court as of 1912:

Chief Justice Daniel Lindsey Russell (Roosevelt, 1906)
Chester Alan Arthur (Edmunds, 1885)
Russell S. Taft (Edmunds, 1888)
Richard Olney (Cleveland, 1895)
Judson Harmon (Cleveland, 1895)
John Fitzpatrick (Cleveland, 1896)[2]
John Marshall Harlan (Bryan, 1900)
Henry Billings Brown (McKinley, 1903)
Fred Gorham Folsom (Roosevelt, 1910)[3]


And finally, the text portion of this post:

The Midnight Ride of Theodore Roosevelt:
When Edwin Warfield was elected to the presidency in 1912, one of the concerns for the nation soon became what would happen to Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. Roosevelt had already made his mark on history with his leadership of the United States during the Great War and putting the United States firmly in the position as the dominant power on the North American continent. However, with the war taking so much focus for the Roosevelt administration, his domestic legacy was more uncertain. Roosevelt had increased the power of the executive office and with William Howard Taft made the vice presidency more involved in actual policy and less of a ceremonial position. To cement his legacy, however, Theodore Roosevelt needed something that could continue long after his time in office had ended and was not in danger of being undone by Edwin Warfield or whoever succeeded him.

This moment would came in the eleventh hour of President Roosevelt's term, and only happened by chance. On December 11, 1912, Supreme Court Justice Richard Olney caught a severe case of pneumonia during an exceptionally cold winter in Washington. Olney died five days later. This Supreme Court vacancy was the third in Roosevelt's term, and the President as well as the Progressive members of Congress were determined to fill it before Warfield could take office and nominate his own candidate. This midnight appointment was unusual enough, and President Roosevelt could have made a routine nomination to keep it from becoming controversial. But Theodore Roosevelt was never that kind of man. Opting for a grand personal and political gesture, Roosevelt announced in a public address to an extraordinary session of Congress his intention to nominate Vice President William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court.

Taft had been dutiful while Vice President and Secretary of War, but all through his service in his administration, Roosevelt had known of Taft's discontent with being in the Cabinet and his personal aspiration to the Supreme Court. As such, Roosevelt took a final chance to give his colleague the position he so desired, and stirred up a controversy in the process. Several Congressmen spoke out in uproar at the clearly political appointment of a sitting Cabinet member - the Vice President no less! - to an august body of judges. Conservative Democrats in the southern United States decried Taft's positions to their constituents, calling on Warfield to nominate someone else to the Supreme Court once he took office.

However, more liberal northern Democrats and Republicans were more conciliatory toward Taft's appointment. Roosevelt ultimately made a pragmatic choice in William Howard Taft, for Taft himself was a Republican before joining the Progressive Party to be Roosevelt's War Secretary. Additionally, many Republicans felt that Taft would make a better Supreme Court appointment than any likely appointments President Warfield would make when he took office. Edwin Warfield for his part remained silent on the issue of the Court, preferring to not galvanize the opposition to act if he misspoke. Roosevelt announced the appointment on December 20, 1912, one day before the Senate went into its Christmas recess. When the new Congress began its session on January 6, one of the first orders of business of the new Senate was to officially nominate Taft. Taft had formally resigned from the Vice Presidency in the meantime to avoid any complications with holding that office. In the meantime, Progressive members of Congress and supporters had been busy lobbying other members of the Senate to support Taft's nomination in one of the more political Supreme Court appointments of the era.

The 1912 Senate elections had delivered a smaller plurality for the Republicans, but still a plurality. Thus, much of the lobbying for Taft took the form of convincing Republican Senators to support Taft out of the worry of potential Warfield appointments. At this stage, another oddity for the era occurred during Taft's nomination process. For the first time, a Supreme Court nominee was questioned in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Taft was questioned for 4 hours, primarily on whether he could maintain proper impartiality on the Supreme Court when he had so recently held the vice presidency. The Judiciary Committee ended up nominating Taft after the hearing, and the following week, the Senate held a full vote. With the support of all Senate Progressives, a slight majority of Republicans, and a smattering of Senate Democrats, William Howard Taft was confirmed with a vote of 55 to 41 and was sworn in the next day. Taft's appointment to the Supreme Court would soon have ramifications as a landmark case was brought up in the early months of President Warfield's administration.

[1] In OTL Daniel Lindsey Russell was the Republican-Populist fusionist governor of North Carolina who fought against the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898 and fought to protect the rights of blacks in North Carolina, unfortunately failing in the face of the Democratic machine and white supremacist riots. Here I decided to give him a more influential and lasting role as Chief Justice.
[2] John Fitzpatrick was a mayor of New Orleans from 1892 to 1896.
[3] More Colorado favoritism! Fred Folsom was CU Boulder's first athletic director and the university's football and baseball coach. Folsom Field, CU's football stadium, is named after him. He also taught law at CU from 1905 to 1943 and his son Fred Folsom Jr. was an attorney in the DoJ and played a key role in the department promoting civil rights.