After admission to the Ohio bar, Taft devoted himself to his job at the Commercial full-time. MacArthur, until then the military governor, was relieved by General Adna Chaffee, who was designated only as commander of American forces.Taft sought to make the Filipinos partners in a venture that would lead to their self-government; he saw independence as something decades off. When Justice Henry B. Brown resigned in 1905, Taft would not accept the seat although Roosevelt offered it, a position Taft held to when another seat opened in 1906. Edith Roosevelt, the First Lady, disliked the growing closeness between the two men, feeling that they were too much alike and that the president did not gain much from the advice of someone who rarely contradicted him.Alternatively, Taft wanted to be chief justice, and kept a close eye on the health of the aging incumbent, Melville Fuller, who turned 75 in 1908. Taft believed Fuller likely to live many years.
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