Joseph B. Foraker - Final Years and Death

Final Years and Death

As with his defeat for governor twenty years earlier, Foraker returned after losing re-election to Cincinnati and the full-time practice of law. He found a number of well-paying corporations willing to retain him as counsel; he represented the American Multigraph Company before the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn a Taft-backed law imposing an excise tax on corporations. Several cases were consolidated into Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. (1911) in which the Supreme Court upheld the law.

Although he expressed bitterness upon leaving office, wishing he had never left the farm in Highland County, he soon resumed his involvement in politics, speaking for the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor, Harding, in 1910. The gubernatorial candidate had long been a Foraker supporter, though he had backed Taft in 1908. In 1912, Foraker made speeches in support of Taft's re-election bid, although he felt he had been badly treated by Taft in 1908. He refused, however, to attack the third-party candidate, former president Roosevelt, whose candidacy split the party and led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

In 1913, ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution changed the method of choosing senators from legislative vote to election by the people. Buoyed by positive reviews of his participation in the 1912 campaign, and wishing to avenge his defeat for re-election, Foraker entered the 1914 Republican primary against Senator Burton and former congressman Ralph D. Cole. Burton's withdrawal transformed Foraker into the favorite. A number of Foraker enemies, and those who believed that his "old guard" Republicanism was out of date, called on Harding to enter the primary. Harding was reluctant, but was eventually persuaded. Although Harding did not attack Foraker, his supporters, including Cleveland publisher Dan R. Hanna (son of the late senator), had no such scruples. Harding was victorious in the primary with 88,540 votes to 76,817 for Foraker and 52,237 for Cole, and subsequently won the general election. Harding sent Foraker a letter regretting the primary result, but Foraker was more bitter towards the electorate, feeling they had taken his long public service and returned ingratitude.

With his political career at an end, Foraker began work on his memoirs, Notes of a Busy Life, published in 1916. The issuance of the autobiography led to a letter from Roosevelt, stating that after reading Foraker's memoirs, he regretted his attacks. Roosevelt concluded the letter with an invitation to visit him at his home in New York. Foraker treasured this letter, which he felt re-established his friendship with Roosevelt, although the two men did not meet in the short time remaining to Foraker.

Foraker supported President Wilson as he moved the nation closer to intervention in World War I. In April 1917, Foraker was one of a group of Cincinnatians who organized to support Wilson when the President asked Congress to declare war on Germany. The former senator's ill-health (he had suffered several heart attacks during the preceding winter) limited his participation, and on May 7, he was stricken with another attack in downtown Cincinnati. Taken home, he lapsed in and out of consciousness for three days before dying on May 10, 1917. Hundreds of prominent Cincinnatians attended his interment at Spring Grove Cemetery on May 13.