Ben Franklin's World is a production of the Omohundro Institute, and production of this episode was made possible by a grant from the Roller Bottom War Foundation of Richmond, Virginia. Hello and welcome to episode 279 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present-day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.
As the first president of the United States, George Washington set many precedents for the new nation and for the presidents who would follow him. One of the biggest precedents that Washington set came in the form of the cabinet. a body of advisors from across the United States government who can advise the president on how to handle matters of foreign and domestic policy. Today, we're going to investigate Washington's creation of the cabinet and how the cabinet became a government institution with Lindsay Trevinsky, a scholar in residence at the Institute of Thomas Paine Studies, a senior fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and the author of the book, The Cabinet, George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Now, during our investigation, Lindsay reveals what the United States Constitution of 1787 has to say about advisory bodies for the president, the different institutions George Washington turned to before he created the cabinet, and why Washington ultimately created the cabinet and how the cabinet became an American institution.
But first, if you can believe it, August starts later this week, which means... We're just about ready to select our next book for the Ben Franklin's World Book Club. To join the book club and to help Holly White and I select the next book we'll read, you need to be a member of the Ben Franklin's World listener community on Facebook. To join the community is free.
Just visit benfranklinsworld.com slash Facebook. That's benfranklinsworld.com slash Facebook. And you can join the conversations we're having about history there and about the books we're reading in our new book club. Okay. Are you ready to explore the origins of the President's Cabinet?
Allow me to introduce you to our expert guide. Our guest is a scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies and a senior fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies. She's a historian of early American political history, and she specializes in the history of the presidency and federal government.
Prior to becoming a scholar-in-residence and senior fellow, she worked as the White House historian for the White House Historical Society. Today, she joins us to discuss the early history of the president's cabinet with details from her book, The Cabinet, George Washington, and the Creation of an American Institution. Welcome back to Ben Franklin's World, Lindsay Trevinsky. Thanks so much for having me back.
I'm thrilled to be here. So, Lindsay, you're back on the show because you wrote a book about the cabinet. And I wonder if we could start with a brief overview of the cabinet and the function it plays in the United States government. So the cabinet was originally created to be a private advisory body for the president and to really serve however the president needed it. to serve.
So whether it was advice occasionally or daily advice, it was really up to whoever was in office. Now, of course, today it has expanded and institutionalized in some ways. The National Security Council exists, and that took over some of the responsibilities of the original cabinet. But the same flexibility is still there, and the president can have really close relationships with the cabinet secretaries or not, depending on their personalities and their preferences.
How precisely did the cabinet function and who makes up the membership of the cabinet? Yeah, so the cabinet itself, when it comes together, is designed to provide advice to the president on big issues that sort of go beyond the purview of one department. So each department secretary oversees their own bureaucracies.
And in the 1790s, they were very small. They maybe had one or two clerks or a few if it was the Treasury Department. And today, of course, those are.
really gigantic institutions and oversee such important parts of the country and the government. So each department secretary oversees their own section, basically. And then when they come together, the idea is that war or diplomacy sometimes or constitutional questions often touch on several different departments.
And so they come together to provide different perspectives, different... opinions based on their experience and help the president in that way. Now, Jennifer wonders how and why the cabinet was created and how it received its name.
So could we talk about Article 2, Section 2 of the United States Constitution and about the different options it sets forth for the creation of an advisory body for the president? That is the perfect place to start. So the delegates to the Constitutional Convention actually really didn't want a cabinet.
The British government had a cabinet, and they were very distrusting of that institution because they felt like it really obscured responsibility and transparency at the highest levels of government. And they knew that it met behind closed doors, but it really wasn't clear who was calling the shots. And so they actually rejected proposals for an advisory body or a council that looked very similar to what ended up happening.
And instead, they put in two clauses into Article 2 to provide support and advice for the president because they understood that, of course, no one can, you know, have all of the answers or lead by themselves. And so those two options are the president can request written advice from the department secretaries on matters pertaining to their department. And this was very important because written advice would ensure that there is basically a paper trail. There is evidence about who said what.
and who advocated which position. And that would ensure American citizens that there was a person who was advocating good policies. And if someone wasn't advocating good policies, they could be removed from office.
So that was really crucial. The second option that they made available for the president was that the president would advise and consent with the Senate on treaties and foreign appointments. And from a 21st century perspective, it's kind of hard for us to understand this because we now see the Senate today sort of as either a rubber stamp for the president's policies or they veto treaties or appointments.
But the delegates really expected that the Senate would actually serve as an advisory body on foreign affairs and that the president would go meet with the senators and they would provide advice and support. And the Senate was considered a much more. responsible and safe advisory body because they were indirectly elected through the state legislatures.
So if they gave bad advice or if they advocated for a bad policy, they could be removed by the state legislatures. And therefore, they were sort of safe as someone to provide advice to the president. It's really great you mentioned the British cabinet because Susie is curious about the precedents Washington and those of the Constitutional Convention must have looked at for an advisory body. And In particular, Susie wonders whether we can trace the cabinet to earlier colonial governors' councils or some other British tradition. So, Lindsay, could you tell us a bit more about the British cabinet and why Americans seem to hate that institution so much?
Absolutely. So the British cabinet contributes a number of things to our American version. First of all, it contributes the name.
So the term cabinet actually comes from the King's Cabinet Council. Initially, the king had a privy council that would provide advice and support and sort of help the king manage the affairs of the kingdom. But then that started to get fairly large.
And anyone who sat in with a big meeting knows that the more voices you have, sometimes the harder it is to make a decision. And so the king started a meeting with a small group of advisors in a small chamber off of the room where the privy council met. And that little room was called the king's cabinet. That was just what they called it. And so this group of sort of favorites became known as the King's Cabinet Council.
And eventually the council part was dropped and it was just the King's Cabinet. So that was sort of a term that was already in the political lexicon for a small group of advisors that sort of met privately, maybe in secret, and advised the executive, whether it was a monarch or a president. But the reason the colonists were so distrusting of this group was exactly that, that it was secret.
It was private. They didn't really know what was going on behind closed doors. There weren't really records of what decision-making process took place.
There weren't really records of what the king thought or what Lord North thought, who was one of the more hated British ministers. And so they didn't know who to blame when a policy came up like the stamp tax or the sugar tax. And they hated this policy and they didn't know who to blame for that decision. And so that was really why they were so distrusting of this process.
Furthermore, these ministers, while they were technically elected through parliament, they gained this position of authority because they were favorites of the king. And so that sort of cronyism. or corruption, colonists and then eventually Americans were really eager to try and prevent that sort of system from taking place. And so in a lot of ways, the British cabinet was almost an anti-origin because Washington and the other secretaries were very wary of being compared to the British cabinet.
They knew that Americans were very distrusting of this institution, and they didn't want to appear to be operating in the same way. And I would say that the governor's counsels also sort of served as an anti-origin because the governor's councils were actually intended to limit executive authority. Most of the state constitutions that were passed during the revolution created a very weak executive or a very weak governor, and they created a council that was in theory intended to advise the governor, but in practice was appointed by the legislature, was paid by the legislature, and the governor was really...
obligated to follow their advice. So it had incredible limiting power on the governor's ability to act. And so Washington and the secretaries, many of whom, like Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph, had served as governors of states with these sort of councils, did not want to recreate that sort of system.
I think what's really interesting here is that there is this big precedent of British Americans and people in Great Britain thinking that their executive really needs to have some sort of advisory body in order to perform as a good executive. That the executive really shouldn't be expected to make all of the important decisions for their people and nation by themselves. Yeah, that's right. I mean, even today, we know that issues that come up that face the president, they're really challenging and they're really complex. And that was certainly true with Washington.
He was essentially creating the framework of a government from scratch. I often encourage students and listeners to actually look at the text of Article 2, which is the section in the Constitution that pertains to the president. And it is remarkably short, which means that so many details about how the president is supposed to conduct himself or hopefully herself in the future are not actually written down. And so Washington had to. figure out all these sort of fuzzy details himself.
And he needed advice to do so because he only knew his experience and his perspective. But for example, he had never been to Europe. He had only been to Barbados when he was a teenager.
And so he didn't really know much about diplomacy or foreign policy. And while he certainly understood the financial plans that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton put forward, he didn't have that same sort of really creative experience. financial mind. And so he knew that there were limitations in his own training and intellect.
And so he sought out people that could supplement that information with their own expertise and knowledge. And I think that's been true of great leadership really across the history of humanity is they know what they're good at and what they're not. And they recognize that they often need help. Earlier, you mentioned that the Constitution in Article 2, Section 2 lays out some ideas for how and where the president might seek advice.
And one of the bodies that the Constitution set up so that the president wouldn't have this hated secretive cabinet was the Senate. And Washington seems to have really experimented with seeking advice from the Senate, you know, at least for a time. So, Lindsay, would you tell us about Washington's experiments with using the Senate as an advisory body?
So this is one of my favorite stories from Washington's presidency. You're absolutely right. When Washington first entered office, he really intended to follow the guidelines that were written down in the Constitution.
And it's important to remember that he had served as the president of the Constitutional Convention. He was good friends with many of the delegates. He had socialized with them daily after the end of each session. So he had a very clear understanding what the expectations were in terms of who he was supposed to consult with as president. So in the summer of 1789, Washington had only been in office for a couple of months, and he was planning to send delegates to a peace convention between several Native American nations and representatives from North and South Carolina.
And they were going to try and figure out some sort of solution to the conflict and violence on the border of the states and the Native American nations. And Washington had never done something like this before. He had never organized a peace commission on behalf.
of the new nation. He had never written instructions to guide the commissioners as they're trying to come towards a peaceful solution. And so he planned to meet with the Senate in August, and he sent them.
all of the existing treaties so that they would have all of the information at hand. He let them know he was coming. This was not a surprise.
And on the day of the appointment, he arrived and he brought Secretary of War Henry Knox, who had been in charge of overseeing those treaties and who could provide any additional information or answer any questions that the senators might have. Washington arrived and he brought this address with him that had a series of questions at the end. And he handed it to John Adams, who was the vice president and therefore the president of the Senate. And Adams read this address. Now, the windows were open because it was summer and it was really hot.
And the room where the Senate was meeting was on Wall Street, which looked, of course, a little different than it does today. But it was still a very busy part of town. And so there were horses going by and carriages and people were hawking their goods and having conversations. And so it was incredibly loud. and none of the senators really heard Adams.
So they asked them to close the windows, and they asked Adams to repeat this address, and so he did. And then they were met with silence. Some senators sort of twiddled their thumbs, some shuffled papers, some avoided eye contact, and Senator William McClay of Pennsylvania hypothesized that maybe some of the senators were intimidated by Washington because he was one of the most famous men in the world, and certainly incredibly popular and so well-known and respected that maybe some of the younger senators didn't want to say anything.
So he stood up and he said, you know, could we refer this issue to committee to discuss it further? And can you come back next week? And Washington absolutely lost it. He stood up and he yelled, this defeats every purpose of my coming here.
Except, you know, louder and he is taller and sort of scarier and it must have been incredibly intimidating. And He eventually calmed down and agreed to come back the following week. But on his way out of the chambers, he reportedly said that he would never again return for advice. Now, we don't have a whole lot of evidence about whether or not he actually said that. But in this case, actions definitely speak louder than words because he never again returned for advice.
And so there was this one moment where the Senate had an opportunity to prove itself as a really valuable advisory body. And they were coming at this issue like a legislative body. They wanted to discuss it privately in committee and then make a recommendation.
And Washington was coming at it from the perspective of he wanted them to have the conversation in front of him so he could hear the different perspectives. He wanted them to debate answers to the questions he had put before them. And so it was really a case of just mismatched expectations.
You know, we've heard a lot of stories about Washington's famous self-control, except when it came to his temper. And. I think your story about his frustration with the Senate really gives us a pretty good idea of Washington's personality and his temper and what they may have been like.
Yeah, he really tried to not show emotion on his face. He really tried to be in control of his temper at all times, as sort of a virtuous Republican gentleman would do. And most of the time he was successful. But apparently when he did lose his temper, it was quite a sight to behold.
Now, it seems like. another office that Washington could have turned to for advice would have been the office of his vice president, John Adams. So why don't we see Washington having sought advice from Adams and using Adams more of a sounding board for his ideas about policy and governance?
This is one of the great sort of perplexing questions of Washington's presidency, and I suspect that if Martha Washington hadn't burned her correspondence with George, we might have a little bit of a better sense of why that didn't happen. Early on in the presidency, Washington did write letters to John Adams and sort of ask for his advice on issues of social etiquette, how the president should entertain people, what sort of invitations he could accept himself, how he should be seen out in public, that kind of thing. But there's definitely a break.
There's not They don't have a fight. There's no evidence that there was one sort of falling out moment. It just seems like they exchange less correspondence and Washington never invites him to a cabinet meeting.
My hypothesis is that Adams sort of burned his social capital when there was the title controversy, when the Congress was trying to figure out what to call the president. And Adams advocated a very long and elaborate title. And a lot of people thought it was sort of monarchical in nature.
And so he sort of lost some of his credibility. And I think Washington thought that perhaps in that moment he showed poor judgment and so perhaps didn't trust him as much going forward. They also just weren't necessarily as close as some of the other people that Washington corresponded with or were in his social circle. And so I don't think there was. a really close personal relationship to sort of overcome those challenges.
It sounds like early on that Washington was really trying to honor the Constitution and all the advice it set forth for where he could seek advice from. We know he tried out the Senate as an advisory body, which didn't work out well. It seems like he must have tried John Adams, the vice president, as an advisory body.
But for whatever reason, we don't know. You know, that relationship didn't work out. And now I'm curious.
Did Washington ever give the House of Representatives a chance to serve as the advisory body that he was looking for? When I share this story, sometimes people don't believe me because it's so outlandish to consider in today's world. But initially, James Madison almost served as sort of a pseudo prime minister in Washington's administration. And so, for example, when Washington wrote his first address after his inauguration to Congress, Madison was.
instrumental in drafting that address. Madison then went and wrote Congress's response to the inaugural address. And then he helped Washington write his response to Congress's response.
So he was essentially writing both sides of the correspondence and having a conversation with himself. And he was also very instrumental in making sure if Washington felt strongly about a certain issue. Madison could sort of advocate it without revealing what Washington's thoughts were on that particular issue.
So it is possible that that sort of prime minister type relationship could have developed. Unfortunately, Madison and Washington's relationship sort of started to fracture and cool as Madison opposed some of Hamilton's financial measures. And so as they grew less close and even at times sort of had a hostile relationship, that possibility for that type of advisory body receded. Wow.
I mean, Washington really scoped out the different offices of government searching for that advisory body in 1789 and 1790. We've talked about how he tried out the Senate, how he tried out the vice president and the House of Representatives. So by the end of his exploration, he only really has one more government body left to turn to for advice, and that would be the Supreme Court. Lindsay.
Did Washington ever seek advice from the Supreme Court and try that government body out? Yeah. So John Jay was one of Washington's closest advisors, and they got along very well. They had the utmost respect for each other. And initially, John Jay had been the Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Confederation Congress.
And there's some evidence to suggest that Washington asked him to stay on in that position, and he decided that he would prefer to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And so he and Washington corresponded quite regularly when Washington first took office. Jay basically served as the acting Secretary of State until Jefferson came on and took office in early 1790. And he continued to provide really important advice to Washington, but also to the other secretaries, even while he was serving as Chief Justice. In fact, Washington encouraged the other secretaries to sometimes get Jay's opinions on various issues. And Jay seemed to have no problem playing both of these roles.
So in 1793, when the neutrality crisis breaks out because France has declared war on Great Britain, Washington again wants to get Jay's advice on how the United States can remain neutral in that particular issue. And so he goes and he consults with Jay and Jay seems more than happy to provide that sort of support. But he says that he should really confer with his other co-justices.
And. speak with them about their opinions so that the Supreme Court can kind of speak with one voice. And when they all get together, they write back to Washington and the cabinet and they basically say, no, we really can't speak to these issues.
That would be inappropriate and would be a problem in terms of separation of powers. So to me, that sort of suggests that Jay was more than happy to play that role individually, but couldn't get the institution involved in official advice. And so because the Supreme Court said no, they never took up sort of a role as an unofficial advisory body.
So Washington really made a good faith effort to follow the letter of the Constitution. We've heard how he sought advice from the Senate, perhaps from the vice president, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. But in each of his experiments, he failed to receive reliable, timely advice. So in the end. Washington convened what would become known as the first cabinet meeting on November 26, 1791, which was really two and a half years after he became president.
Lindsay, would you tell us about Washington's cabinet? Lydia would really like to know who served in the first cabinet. And how Washington went about selecting the different officers and advisors in that cabinet?
Washington's cabinet was primarily made up of four men. There was the attorney general, the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the secretary of treasury. The attorney general didn't have a department like the Department of Justice today, but Washington really treated that person as an equal to the other secretaries. And so I generally just refer to them as the cabinet secretaries.
because that's how Washington viewed them. Washington was very careful about how he selected his appointees, especially with the cabinet. First, he needed to have a close relationship with all of them.
He had to know them and he had to trust them, which makes sense, because if you're asking advice of these people in moments of crisis, you want to trust that they will lead you in the right direction. He then wanted to make sure that they had knowledge and expertise that he did not. So, for example, Edmund Randolph, who was the first attorney general, was a brilliant legal mind. He had served as the attorney general for the state of Virginia. He had served in the Virginia legislature.
He had served as the Virginia governor. He was so well respected for his legal insights that the other secretaries, even if they had a legal education, still consulted with him on the constitutionality of certain measures. Secretary of War Henry Knox had served as the...
Secretary of War under the Confederation Congress. He had been Washington's Major General of Artillery. He had served as the commander of West Point. And so he had essential military experience, but also experience with Native American nations that Washington really valued.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was, again, a brilliant financial mind and sort of really creative about ways that they could salvage the economy and help put the nation's credit on the right foot. And Thomas Jefferson had served as the minister to France for several years. He understood diplomacy.
He had traveled all across Europe. He could provide firsthand insight as to what was happening in these European courts and the places that were potential allies or enemies of the new nation. Critically, he was also fluent in French, which was the language of diplomacy and something that Washington did not have. So that was a really essential trait for the secretary of state position.
The final factor that Washington considered was geographic and factional balance. So, of course, all four of these guys are white men. And so the concept of diversity in the 1790s was somewhat limited. But as much as they were aware of the concept of diversity, Washington tried to honor that.
So he made sure that they were people represented from different parts of the country. He made sure that there were people that spoke for different interests. So Thomas Jefferson was a plantation-owning slave owner, whereas Alexander Hamilton sort of cozied up with the merchant elite in New York.
And so they represented different economic interests, different religious interests, different parts of the country in a way that allowed the nation to sort of see themselves in the administration. It's important to remember in 1789 when Washington is making these appointments. that nationalism really wasn't a thing.
The flag didn't have the same sort of symbolic importance that we think of it today. And so Washington was the closest touchstone that people had for a national symbol. And he worked really hard to try and get the different states to build emotional bonds with each other, to feel as though they are tied to the nation, to feel as though they are a part of one country as opposed to 13. And so one way that he did that was by making sure that there were appointments from different states and different interests, whether it be the cabinet or the Supreme Court or other positions, to help states feel that they had a stake in how the country went.
So it sounds like Washington really put some thought into how he could make his cabinet represent the different geographies and cultural views of the nation. Yes, absolutely. And that is a precedent that he set that most presidents have really tried to follow.
And of course, our definition of what diversity means and who should be included in those considerations has expanded to include women and people of color and different sexual orientations and religions. But that concept that the nation should be represented is a very important precedent that Washington left in his cabinet. Okay, but here's where I get a little stuck with Washington's early American ideas about American diversity.
Of the four men that Washington appointed to his cabinet, you have Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, Alexander Hamilton from New York, and Henry Knox from Maine and Massachusetts, which... before 1820 was all Massachusetts. Did Washington ever think about reducing the number of Virginians in his cabinet to appoint someone from the Deep South, which in this case was not only the underrepresented region, but the non-represented region in his cabinet? It's a great question.
I don't know if he... really thought about including someone from the Deep South for the cabinet. There's some speculation that maybe he sought out Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, who was from South Carolina, maybe to serve as the Secretary of War, the Secretary of State. I think in that case, the personal relationships tended to serve as a more important factor for that decision-making. That being said, he did have James Iredell of North Carolina on the Supreme Court.
And so he made sure that the Deep South was sort of represented in other ways through other appointments. And later on, once people started to retire, he did try and get Pinckney back into the cabinet. He offered him the position of Secretary of State, and he actually turned him down.
Now, if we count Washington, three of the five members of Washington's cabinet were from Virginia. And I wonder, was there any impact or specific contributions that these Virginians had? on the institution of the cabinet.
In other words, Lindsay, is there something distinctly Virginian about the cabinet? It's a great question. I don't know that there is anything distinctly Virginian because all three played such different roles in the cabinet.
What I find particularly fascinating is the different perspective that Jefferson and Hamilton brought to the cabinet and Washington's role in making them come together. So Washington did not mind conflict. He actually found pretty contentious debate to be a very helpful tool because it allowed him to see both sides of an issue. It allowed him to almost stress test those different positions and see what the weaknesses and the strengths of each side were. And so he would sit back and sort of let them go at it and fight with each other.
Jefferson, of course, really hated this type of conflict, and he presented himself in one form of masculinity that was informed by his time as a diplomat, where if you are coming to an argument or if you're coming to blows or if you're, you know, really yelling at each other, then diplomacy has broken down. Whereas Hamilton had, you know, really made the name for himself on the battlefield, and he had served in Washington's headquarters and had been there when there were councils. war that were also incredibly contentious sometimes and headquarters or meeting in Washington's campaign tent was dirty and smelly and there were bugs and it was the scene of battle.
And so he was used to a much more sort of militarized version of masculinity. So I do think there are these two perspectives, these two ways to be virtuous Republicans. And then Edmund Randolph is kind of trying to find the middle ground.
He really saw himself as an unbiased observer and tried to go with each side depending on how he felt about a particular issue. I know we want to talk about the Hamilton-Jefferson cabinet feud, but before we get there, I'd like for us to talk about the cabinet and how it worked. Eugene would like to know what role Washington saw his cabinet and its members as playing in his administration, and how Washington ran his cabinet meetings. The cabinet was really intended to provide advice and support when there were really big issues. So Washington, even when the cabinet was meeting regularly, Washington primarily dealt with department issues and department business one-on-one with the secretaries.
And so in that capacity, whether they were exchanging letters or they were meeting one-on-one, they were really bureaucrats that were reporting on their department to their superior. When they came together in the cabinet, it was because there was an issue that... was so big that Washington could not afford to just have one voice, or it was so big that it dealt with matters of the War Department and the State Department and the Treasury Department, and so he couldn't exclude certain people from the conversation.
And so in that instance, Washington would convene a cabinet meeting. He would usually send out a letter ahead of time with maybe some questions or the topic they were going to consider so that they could prepare and have their information ready. Once the secretaries gathered in his private study in the president's house, they would usually use those questions as the agenda to sort of guide the conversation.
And Washington would allow the secretaries to make a case for their position. Washington very rarely came to a cabinet meeting with a decision about what the administration should do ahead of time. He really reserved cabinet meetings for issues when he didn't know what to do.
And so he wanted this advice. Then if the secretaries disagreed, which frankly was more often than not, he would ask for written advice so that he could make sure he fully understood each side, make sure he fully understood what the secretaries were saying, would allow him to make a decision sort of in his own time more slowly. And it also provided sort of written.
evidence of who had supported what. And so that's really how he managed each cabinet meeting and the very fiery personalities that often came with it. So Lindsay and I have had conversations over the years at conferences and in the course of being early American historians together about the spaces in which Washington held his cabinet meetings.
And I've really found her points about the physical space of these cabinet meetings to be fascinating. So right after we take a moment to talk about our episode sponsor, we're going to ask Lindsay to tell us about the physical space in which Washington convened his cabinet meetings. Can you imagine trying to manage the strong personalities and ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson? I imagine cabinet debates must have been very interesting to watch and to hear.
Now, one way Washington sought advice from his cabinet was to write his cabinet members questions that he wanted responses to. And recently, A lot of you have been writing to me posing questions about our new Ben Franklin's World Subscription Program. So I'd like to take a few moments to answer one of your great questions about this program.
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Lindsay, would you describe for us the physical space in which Washington held his cabinet meetings and what it was like for these five fiery personalities as you described them to be in the same room with each other? Absolutely. The physical space was so important because it was a relatively small room. When the secretaries were gathering, they met at Washington's House, which was on the corner of 6th and Market or 6th and High Streets in Philadelphia. The site is still there today.
There's a National Park Service site. You can see where the home was. The room was not particularly large. It was only about 15 by 21 feet. And by 21st century standards, it was absolutely stuffed with furniture.
So Washington had a large French desk that was over five feet long. He had his uncommon chair, which swiveled. He had a large globe. He had three bookcases.
He had his dressing table. There was an iron stove in the corner. And then they probably brought in a small table and chairs when there was a meeting planned. So it would have been a very tight fit.
It was definitely a personal space. It was where Washington... Thank you.
dressed in the morning. It was where his enslaved ballet helped him shave and do his hair. And it was also where he did all of his correspondence and his work. When the secretaries gathered, they probably would have sat around the table, although Hamilton was known for sort of pacing and gesticulating wildly when he got onto a particular subject.
But it's important to remember that these five men were not particularly small individuals. Washington was very tall for his time. Knox was a little bit shorter, but he was sort of notoriously rotund.
And this space, they would meet for hours and hours, sometimes up to five times per week. Most of the meetings took place in the summer. without air conditioning in Philadelphia.
And we know, for example, that the summer of 1793 was incredibly hot and humid because there was a really bad yellow fever outbreak that fall. So imagine being stuffed in a room without air conditioning for several hours with people you hate. And Hamilton and Jefferson at this point hated each other. And so it must have just been an incredibly uncomfortable experience and very tense. Washington sort of tried to smooth over the hurt feelings by inviting the secretaries to have a family dinner with him after a meeting, or if a meeting was taking so long that they needed a break, they would sometimes have dinner in the middle.
But I think that this space is crucial to understanding the animosity in the cabinet and to understanding Hamilton and Jefferson's other political activities, because I think they're... insistence that the other side was trying to destroy the country and their efforts to sort of build up the early beginnings of political parties can sort of be directly attributed to the fact that they simply could not get away from each other and were stuck in this room, almost like a hothouse of political tensions. This is really quite the scene, isn't it?
You know, to have these five grown men, one Washington being particularly tall and large, one Knox being particularly, you know, rotund, as you put it. all hanging out in this small, cramped, furniture-filled space that was also really hot and humid. Plus, it really sounds like Hamilton and Jefferson added lots of tensions, given their political animosity and perhaps personal animosity towards each other. And this topic of animosity between Hamilton and Jefferson is something that Jeremy would like to know more about.
So, could you tell us more about Hamilton and Jefferson's relationship and... When and why they started adding tension to important cabinet meetings? Absolutely.
So initially, they were never friends, but I think they initially certainly respected each other and respected the other person's service and commitment to the nation. The problem really was, as I previously said, they had completely different ways of presenting themselves and the way that they sort of embodied masculinity and virtuous Republican behavior. They also had completely different visions for what the nation should be.
Jefferson really thought that the future of the country was a nation of human farmers that could have independence by taking care of themselves and their family on family farms. Whereas Hamilton really advocated for a future that was more based in cities with merchants and trade and a strong military. So they were already sort of set up to be diametrically opposed.
And then I think to a certain extent, their personalities just probably annoyed each other. And sometimes that just happens where personalities clash. And when they're stuck in this space, we can see in their various notations, their frustration with each other.
And at one point, Jefferson writes that Hamilton gave a jury speech for three quarters of an hour in a cabinet meeting, which means that in this tiny space, Hamilton spoke for 45 minutes uninterrupted. And Based on the other sort of descriptions we have of him, he was probably pacing. He was probably waving his arms wildly. And he was probably really invading the other secretary's personal space or their sense of personal space.
And so you can kind of just see Jefferson's head starting to explode in this meeting. And then they come back the next day for another meeting. And Hamilton does it again.
He speaks for another 45 minutes. And so I believe that. Their clash was sort of inevitable because of their wildly different perspectives on the world and what the country should be. But because they were confined so often together, that exacerbated the issue.
And so their tensions start in 1791, when Hamilton is introducing this financial legislation, which Jefferson opposes. And then it just really gets worse from there. And especially in 1793, where The United States is sort of stuck between France and Great Britain as there's an international war. They both agree that neutrality is essential, but Jefferson sort of prefers a pro-French neutrality and Hamilton prefers a pro-British neutrality.
And they just are doomed to be enemies. Understanding this context really changes how I'm viewing Hamilton and Jefferson, because we can now see that. these cabinet meetings are in small rooms, that Jefferson and Hamilton's animosity towards one another really fills that small room with tension. And then there would be these really big moments, these big moments that Washington designed the cabinet to help them deal with, like the neutrality crisis of 1793, which just added its own level of tension on top of everything else going on. Now, speaking of the neutrality crisis, would you tell us more about this crisis and how Washington looked to his tension-filled cabinet to steer the young nation through that moment?
Absolutely. So in February of 1793, France declared war on Great Britain, and it very quickly escalated to an international conflict that included their allies and their colonial holdings. And Washington learned about the conflict in early April.
and quickly announced, he was at Mount Vernon at the time, announced to the secretaries that he'd be coming back to Philadelphia earlier than he had planned, and that they would have a meeting to try and figure out what to do. And as I said, both Jefferson and Hamilton, and Knox and Randolph as well, agreed that neutrality was essential. The country was just beginning to recover from the Revolutionary War, both physically in terms of the land and the bodies, economically in terms of the market and credit. And then also emotionally, not to mention the country didn't really have an army or a navy. So even if it had wanted to get involved, there wasn't really any way for it to do so.
But what neutrality meant and how the country would implement it and whether or not it would be respected by foreign nations was a brand new challenge because the country had never done so and Washington and the secretaries had never done so. And while those questions in theory might seem kind of simple. they actually bring up a ton of legal questions. So for example, if you declare neutrality, who's going to enforce it? If citizens decide to go off to war with one country or the other, who is in charge of making sure they're brought back?
Who is in charge of trying them for breaking the law? What court is that decision going to be made in? What is the punishment?
Who is going to impose it? Those are just the domestic questions. Then if you get to the international ones, it gets even more complicated, especially when we think about the role of privateers. And privateers were basically private ships that were given a letter of mark or kind of like almost a license from a foreign country to fight on its behalf and to attack that country's enemies. And France and Great Britain were using privateers left and right in this war.
And they would often come into U.S. ports. either to sell the goods that they had stolen from other ships or to buy more food and supplies for their journey or to make repairs. So does U.S. neutrality prohibit those ships from coming into port?
Or are they allowed to come into port but not buy certain things? So these were all questions that the cabinet was really struggling with and trying to figure out how they were going to carve out a path for the new nation. And it was complicated by the arrival of the new French minister, citizen Edmond Charles Genet, who kind of disregarded all of Washington's rules that he had proclaimed about neutrality and was basically arming French privateers in the port of Philadelphia, which at the time was only about six blocks from Washington's house.
So he was literally thumbing his nose at the Washington administration. Washington... relied on the cabinet to basically discuss and provide advice for every single one of these issues, which is why we see a huge spike in cabinet meetings in 1793. Prior to that year, Washington had convened a couple of meetings in 1791, about six in 1792, and then somewhere between 49 and 51 meetings in 1793. The evidence is a little murky on a couple about whether or not they actually met.
So the huge spike in meetings was to try and deal with these issues and the new information that was constantly coming in and sort of the new provocations that were being demonstrated by Jeunet and other American citizens as well. And the cabinet basically guided the Washington administration through this year and ensured that one, the president would play a very active role in carving out diplomatic policy for the nation. In August, the cabinet advised Washington to request the recall of Jeunet from France, which was a huge moment because the United States had never requested the recall of a foreign minister.
And it wasn't really clear if France was going to agree. But when France did, in fact, agree, it sort of tacitly acknowledged that the United States had the right to set its own foreign policy and then the right to demand that it be respected by foreign ministers. In August, the cabinet also.
wrote down a list of rules of neutrality that would sort of guide their actions for the rest of the year. And then Congress codified them into law the following June. And that law actually guided periods of neutrality up to the Civil War. So it was a very important year for both Washington and the cabinet and the country.
And then, you know, right on the heels of this neutrality crisis, which presented, as you mentioned, a lot of foreign policy questions, the United States experiences a crisis of domestic policy in the Whiskey Rebellion. So, Lindsay, would you tell us more about the Whiskey Rebellion and how it added to the work and tensions of... Washington's cabinet? Absolutely.
So if the neutrality crisis was essential in helping the cabinet in Washington carve out authority over diplomatic issues, the whiskey rebellion was essential in helping the cabinet in Washington carve authority over domestic issues. So the whiskey tax had been passed several years earlier, and there was a number of incidents of resistance and protest, but none of them had been particularly violent. Kentucky just ignored the law altogether and simply refused to honor it, refused to bring cases against people who didn't comply. And Hamilton and Washington kind of decided to ignore that. Pennsylvania was a little bit different, one, because of its historic importance as sort of the seat of government, and because of its very important role as a size and the wealth of the state.
And in July of 1794, in the summer, there was an outbreak of violence in Western Pennsylvania, and the protesters burned down the home of a tax collector. Washington and the cabinet learned about this incident and had to decide what they were going to do. And I think it's really interesting to recognize and to notice that at this point, Jefferson had already retired. So Edmund Randolph is the new Secretary of State, and Washington has appointed a new Attorney General, William Bradford, who happened to be from Pennsylvania.
When the cabinet met to figure out how they were going to handle this situation, there were a couple of options that they could consider. One, they could wait for Congress to come back in the fall and figure out, you know, how to handle this insurrection because it was a domestic issue. Washington could convene an emergency session of Congress and ask them to come back sooner. Washington could basically leave the issue to the states and say, you know, it's a Pennsylvania issue.
The Pennsylvania government should deal with it. Or. Washington could use a law that had been passed the previous year that allowed the president to call up the state militias in the event of an insurrection or an invasion by a foreign country.
And what was really important about this law is that the president would have to submit evidence that this sort of action was necessary to a justice of the Supreme Court and get their approval. So Washington and the secretaries decided to use this last option, this law, and they did so in one meeting, which means in one meeting, they decided to completely sideline Congress and to ignore the Pennsylvania state government. They then met with the Pennsylvania state government and said that they were planning on doing this.
And some of the Pennsylvania officials, including Thomas Mifflin, who was the governor, was absolutely outraged because they felt like they hadn't really been given the opportunity to put down the insurrection. So over the course of the next couple of months, the cabinet essentially like it. bullies the Pennsylvania officials into complying.
And this process sort of happened slowly because Washington and the secretaries were very attentive to public opinion. And so they sent out a peace commission to Western Pennsylvania to meet with the rebels to try and come up with a peaceful solution to demonstrate that all peaceful options had been considered and utilized first. And while that was taking place, they started to organize the state militias.
And there is a series of letters between Hamilton, Randolph, and Mifflin that are simply extraordinary because Mifflin sends these letters to Washington complaining about the administration, complaining about their behavior. Hamilton writes the replies, but then Randolph edits them and sends them under his name. And I don't know if that's because Randolph was more Republican leaning and so maybe they would be a little bit more palatable. or because Mifflin and Hamilton didn't have a good relationship. But it's a very interesting example of the cabinet working together to enforce Washington's policy.
It really seemed like the neutrality crisis followed by the Whiskey Rebellion brought an end to Washington's first cabinet, which, you know, has gone down in history as one of the most famous cabinets in United States history. Would you tell us about the retirements of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox, and why those men chose to retire during and after these crises? Yeah, the turnover in Washington's administration definitely changes the character of the cabinet going forward. Jefferson had initially wanted to retire in early 1792. I think that he felt like he wasn't being heard.
He felt like he had lost Washington's ear, that Hamilton had gained more influence, and he really hated the conflict that he was seeing within the administration. Washington convinced him to stay until early 1793, and then once the neutrality crisis broke out, he agreed to stay through the following year just to make sure that they could sort of wrap things up. So he stayed almost two years longer than he intended and retired on December 31st, 1793. At the end of 1794, Henry Knox, the Secretary of War, retired because he was in really bad financial situation.
The pay for secretaries at the time was fairly low, and his estate in Maine was really struggling, and he really felt that he needed to go home and he needed to focus all of his attention on his business and his estate. I also think it's important to note that Knox had gone from a major general in the Continental Army. to commanding West Point, to serving as the Secretary of War under the Confederation Congress, to serving as Washington's Secretary of War.
And so for basically 20 years, he was not home. And so I do think that's an important measure to point out as well. So he retired at the end of 1794, and then Hamilton followed in January of 1795. For many of the same reasons, Hamilton desperately needed money.
And he wasn't really making good money as a secretary of treasury. And he knew that in private practice, he could make significantly larger sums, which he did. And so he returned to New York City to serve as a lawyer.
But he did continue to provide very important guidance and advice to Washington through letters. So right away, within basically a year's time, three of the four original secretaries are gone. And Edmund Randolph stays. He is the secretary of state. And he is, at this point, absolutely Washington's closest advisor.
He and Washington had known each other for decades. He had actually served as Washington's private attorney during the entire time Washington was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and then as president as well. And so he was an essential part of Washington's administration. And Washington really struggled to find people to fill office. It wasn't considered a particularly glamorous position.
As I said, the pay was relatively low. You were probably living away from your family, or at least you were living away from home and traveling back and forth was very difficult because conditions of the roads just weren't that great. It was very hard work.
You were probably going to be criticized by at least someone. So he had approached at least six people for the secretary of state position after Edmund Randolph left and really couldn't find anyone. And so I think that it's essential to sort of know that the people he did end up putting in the positions, Timothy Pickering was his Secretary of War and then became his third Secretary of State.
Oliver Wolcott Jr. was the Secretary of the Treasury. He went through a series of Attorney Generals. And James McHenry was his new Secretary of War. They were really the B team.
And he did not see them as equals to the original people he had put into office. And so... the number of cabinet meetings declines by a huge margin.
And he goes back to one-on-one consultations. He goes back to written advice. He goes back to asking for input from people outside of the administration.
And because the cabinet changed in this way, it really ensured that the cabinet didn't have a right to be a part of the decision-making process. There was no legal mechanism that ensured that the president had to consult with the cabinet. It was only if he felt like it. And that was a crucial part of Washington's cabinet legacy. It's really been striking to hear just how much of this cabinet operated on personal relationships.
And you didn't mention that earlier. You mentioned that Washington wanted men in his cabinets who he had personal relationships with. And as you were saying, a lot of what happened with the first cabinet seemed like these personal relationships just kind of broke down.
You know, As you mentioned, Jefferson didn't feel heard. He didn't feel like his personal relationship with Washington was working out. So he retired. And then, of course, you have Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton, where the personal relationship was working.
But it sounds like they really stuck around and did their jobs out of personal loyalty to Washington and that to do so, it cost them a lot personally, like both of them had finances that they were really struggling with. So. You had three of the four members of Washington's cabinet retire for those various reasons.
And then when he had to replace those three cabinet secretaries and add new bodies into his cabinet, Washington really just doesn't seem to have gotten along with his new advisors. Like they didn't have those personal relationships. And so. his cabinet turned into something that was dysfunctional or just didn't serve him well.
Yeah, absolutely. I do think that Hamilton and Knox and Randolph as well served out of a deep sense of duty and honor to the nation, but especially to Washington. They valued that relationship above all. And at one point in 1794, Knox asked for permission to go back to his estate because it is literally teetering on the brink of- bankruptcy. And it's right as the whiskey rebellion is breaking out.
And he says to Washington, if you need me here, I will stay. I'm paraphrasing. But he says, if you need me here, I will stay. So he will stay and risk losing everything if Washington wants him to. And Washington does give him permission.
But I think that that moment is extraordinary and shows the depths of their loyalty. Is this dynamic still at play today? Do presidents rely on personal relationships to make their cabinets work?
and to get the advice that they hope to get. This is one of the extraordinary things about Washington's legacy that I think is often underappreciated, which is that each president gets to decide who their closest advisors are going to be. And sometimes they're in the cabinet. Sometimes presidents do have really close relationships with cabinet secretaries. But sometimes they're not.
Sometimes they prefer the advice of the vice president. So, for example, Obama and Biden were incredibly close. Sometimes they prefer the advice of businessmen or people of industry and sort of consult with them separately.
Sometimes they prefer family members. So Kennedy, of course, his brother was his attorney general and was one of his closest advisors. And that flexibility and each president's ability to decide for themselves who they're going to listen to is a direct byproduct of Washington's decision to create the cabinet in this way.
Of course, there will be secretaries in the department and the cabinet meetings will take place, but the president really doesn't have to listen to anything they say and doesn't have to convene them regularly if he doesn't want to. You've mentioned a couple different legacies of Washington's first cabinet, but I wonder, what do you think the greatest or biggest legacies of Washington's first cabinet are? And which of those legacies do we still carry forth into the present? I think the biggest legacy is that the cabinet provides... incredible potential for good or for potential disaster.
And it really depends on each president to determine how those relationships are going to work. And if a cabinet is effective and successful, if a president is able to manage their personalities and get people to work together towards a common goal, then they almost fade into the background and we don't really pay attention to them. But they are such important tools for public outreach.
for coalition building, for working with Congress, for working with different aspects of the nation. But it can also be an almost impossible task because these people are probably very experienced. They're probably pretty opinionated. Sometimes they bring their own egos and ambitions. And so managing all of these different personalities is nearly impossible.
And we have seen several administrations throughout American history when the cabinet is not managed by the president and they kind of take over or they can become very divisive or they can undermine the administration, then we start to really focus on the scandal or the disruption or the conflict within the administration. And so I think that potential for good and for evil is one of the most important things that we are left with. I also think the other part of that is that, as we discussed in the very beginning of our conversation, The Senate was really supposed to be the advisory body on foreign policy, and it's not anymore. So there isn't really that much oversight between the president and their advisors, depending on who they are, whether it's cabinet or family or friends or other acquaintances.
There isn't really congressional oversight. There isn't really public oversight. And that is something that I think Americans grapple with all of the time and something that we really have to think about when we are evaluating.
American history and the president's role in it. I'm glad you brought the Senate back up because it's the perfect transition into our time warp. This is the fun segment of the show where we ask you a hypothetical history question about what might have happened if something had occurred differently, or if someone had acted differently. In your opinion, what might have happened if Washington's initial experiments with seeking advice from the Senate had been more timely and smooth. Would Washington have created the cabinet if the Senate had been easier to meet with and obtain advice from in 1789?
I love this question, and I hadn't really considered it until you had posed it. I think that a couple of things would have happened. As the Senate grew larger, it would have become cumbersome and sort of impossible to work with in the way that Washington or future presidents may have wanted. So I think it's possible we could have seen something like a, you know, a committee of the Senate on foreign affairs like we have today. We have a committee that is focused on diplomacy and foreign policy, and that committee would have continued to play the role of advising the president.
I think it's likely, given the nature of power and the executive branch, that the president still would have had close relationships with certain secretaries and maybe consulted them. as advisors from time to time, depending on who was in office. I think Washington probably would have continued to do so with Hamilton and Randolph either way, because he was close with them, and Knox perhaps as well. But I don't necessarily think that the cabinet would have developed in the same way, because I don't think there would have been the same need to provide a comprehensive picture of how a foreign policy issue or a constitutional issue would influence the nation in the same way that...
there was once the Senate wasn't helpful. Now, Lindsay, you finished your research on Washington's first cabinet. So what aspect of history are you researching and writing about now? Well, I haven't quite gotten cabinets out of my system.
I have become convinced that they are one of the most interesting ways to evaluate presidential administrations and presidential leadership, and one of the most underappreciated because it is such a challenging task. So I'm going to be comparing one of the best cabinets and one of the worst cabinets in American history. I'm going to look at John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Adams had the best of intentions, but his cabinet was borderline treasonous. And Jefferson, while his cabinet put forth policies that weren't necessarily successful, like the embargo of 1807, was an incredibly effective cabinet and had the least turnover of any cabinet that followed. So I think that that comparison will be really fascinating for all of the extraordinary literature on those two men and their relationship and their presidencies.
There really hasn't been anything that has looked at that aspect of their administrations. And I think it will also have some contemporary relevance because it's really a story about power and ego and ambition and how presidents manage those things, which is, I think, an ever-present question in the American experiment. How can we get in touch with you if we have more questions about Washington and his cabinet or about the institution of the cabinet? I have a website, which is lindsaychervinsky.com, and you can contact me through the website. You can see some of my other work.
You can sign up for my monthly newsletter, which is called A Spot of Parchment. I'm also incredibly active. on Twitter.
So my handle is LM Trevinsky, and I would be happy to take any questions. I would love to hear from you, and I would love to learn more about what you find interesting about the cabinet. Lindsay Trevinsky, thank you so much for taking us inside Washington's first cabinet and for introducing us to the institution and work of the cabinet. Thanks so much for having me.
I really appreciate it. George Washington created the president's cabinet because he needed a reliable body of advisors to counsel him on big foreign and domestic issues. As Lindsay related, the United States Constitution really provides little by way of instruction for where the president should seek counsel.
Now, in Article 2, Section 2, the Constitution does note that the president should consult with the Senate on foreign policy issues. So George Washington tried that in August 1789. Washington informed the Senate that he needed to consult with them. on a new treaty or series of new treaties with Native American nations. To prepare for this meeting, Washington sent the Senate previous treaties and correspondence so that they could study up. Then, on the appointed day and time, Washington showed up in the Senate so that they could all discuss and debate the issues at hand.
The Senate met Washington with silence. The members of the Senate preferred to meet within committees and debate in private, where Washington really preferred to discuss and debate all together. So Washington left the Senate disappointed, and he never really again returned to the Senate for foreign policy advice.
Now, after the Senate, Washington may have sought advice from Vice President John Adams. We know he conferred with Congressman James Madison, at least until the two had a falling out, and he may have also tried to seek advice from the Supreme Court. In fact, we know he tried to seek advice from the Supreme Court, but all of this was to no avail. So when none of the existing institutions of government proved ready and capable of providing advice.
Washington gave in and created the cabinet. Now, as Lindsay noted, one of the biggest legacies of Washington's cabinet comes in the form of the institution's flexibility. In terms of this flexibility, the cabinet serves however the president wants it to serve.
The cabinet is made up of government department heads, who the president has the ability to nominate for Senate confirmation. If the president finds that he or she doesn't like those department heads, well, they don't have to take the advice offered by those people. The president can simply choose to appoint friends, family, and civilian leaders to a more informal cabinet of advisors.
And as we've seen throughout history, even in George Washington's own cabinet, this has happened. After the retirement of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox, Washington found that he didn't want to take the advice of the men who succeeded them. So, Washington wrote to Hamilton and others for their advice, even after they left government service. Now, I think what strikes me most about the cabinet is the fact that the framers had the ability to establish this institution in the constitution, but they passed on the idea because they hated the secrecy and cronyism of the king's cabinet.
But at the same time that the framers passed on the idea of creating a cabinet, they created the senate, a body of men appointed by state legislatures rather than directly elected by the people, who met and deliberated in secret so that they'd be less accountable to the people. Now, Today, the Senate is a much more open body and senators are elected directly by the people. But in the late 18th century, it seems to me that the framers created one secret institution.
At the same time, they opted not to create the cabinet for fear of just how secretive that body would be. This is just an interesting observation I've had throughout this episode. And as we close out here, I thought you might find it an interesting observation to think about, too.
You can find more information about Lindsay, her book, The Cabinet. plus notes and links for everything we talked about today on the show notes page. benfranklinsworld.com slash 279. The Omohundro Institute and I could really use your help to keep this podcast going, so please become a subscriber. It's quick and easy.
Just visit benfranklinsworld.com slash subscribe. Production assistance for this podcast comes from the Omohundro Institute's digital audio team. Joseph Adelman, Martha Howard, Holly White, and Karen Wolfe. Breakmaster Cylinder composed our custom theme music. Finally, I'm curious about how you would approach selecting members for the cabinet.
If you were president of the United States, what kinds of people would you turn to for advice? What kinds of people would you place in your cabinet? Let me know, Liz, at benfranklinsworld.com. Ben Franklin's World is a production of the Omohundro Institute, and production of this episode was made possible by a grant from the Roller Baltimore Foundation of Richmond, Virginia.