WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON accepted the presidency, the Constitution articulated few details of the daily functions of the executive branch. When he retired in 1797, he had created precedent for how the president would interact with Congress, the Supreme Court, the public, and the department secretaries. The cabinet, however, remains one of Washington’s most influential creations. He crafted the cabinet to serve as a private advisory body at the president’s pleasure, which had several important ramifications for his successors. Rather than following a written guide or legislative direction, each president would decide how his or her cabinet operated. The flexibility of the institution offered an excellent opportunity for strong leaders but could serve as a liability for weaker presidents. If a president managed the cabinet with diplomacy or exerted firm management, the secretaries served as indispensable aides and powerful spokesmen for the administration. If a president lacked authority within his cabinet or failed to control the agenda, the cabinet undermined the administration. Lastly, the public accepted the cabinet because Washington, the father of the country, had created it. Although the scope of the cabinet has changed, the character of the institution remains the same. Each president determines his own relationship with his advisors free from public or congressional oversight.
John Adams’s and Thomas Jefferson’s cabinets demonstrate the consequences of Washington’s cabinet precedent. Both Adams and Jefferson willingly adopted Washington’s cabinet structure. No constitutional clause or congressional legislation obligated them to consult with a cabinet, but neither Adams nor Jefferson ever experimented with an alternative method for obtaining advice. They also retained several of Washington’s key practices: submitting questions prior to group meetings, requesting written opinions after a cabinet gathering, including cabinet members in the creation of the president’s annual address to Congress, and fostering an official family environment. Their cabinet experiences demonstrated the potential strength and volatility of the new institution. Adams struggled with hostile secretaries who followed Hamilton’s marching orders, undermined his agenda, and challenged his bid for reelection. In his final year in office, Adams finally asserted presidential control over the executive branch and affirmed the cabinet’s subservience to the president. Jefferson created an effective cabinet formula that co-opted the strengths of Washington’s and Adams’s administrations while avoiding their partisan divisions. Adams’s and Jefferson’s relationships with their department secretaries reflected the private, idiosyncratic nature of the cabinet—just the type of institution Washington intended.
In the summer of 1796, Washington decided to retire to private life at Mount Vernon. Washington had originally wanted to leave the presidency after his first term in 1792, but Madison, Jefferson, Knox, and Hamilton prevailed upon him to stay in office for one more term. However, 1796 was a different story. He was finished with public service and no amount of persuasion could convince him otherwise. He was tired of the constant criticism in the press, tired of the public events in Philadelphia, and tired of the responsibility. No matter how earnestly Hamilton, Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry begged him to remain in office, Washington would not budge. On September 19, 1796, he published a Farewell Address in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser. Other newspapers quickly reprinted the address, and it spread throughout the states. Washington selected publication in a newspaper so that he could speak directly to the American people, rather than through Congress or some other official channel. The final message combined a draft from 1792 that Madison had written when Washington first threatened to retire and a draft that Hamilton wrote in September 1796. The message encouraged the American people to put aside their partisan and sectional differences and focus on the emotional, economic, and national ties holding them together. The message also encouraged future leaders to avoid alliances with foreign nations that would drag the United States into international conflicts. Finally, Washington assured the American people that he had served the nation to the best of his abilities and humbly requested they assess his shortcomings with indulgence.1
Washington’s immediate successor faced an impossible task. No other statesman could match his reputation, and every candidate would inevitably fall short in comparison. The issue of the cabinet was practically absent from the 1796 and 1800 presidential elections. Washington’s precedent was so powerful that no one seriously considered abandoning the cabinet as an integral part of the executive branch. No popular protests, petitions, or legislative proposals emerged to replace the cabinet with an alternative advisory body. Neither Adams nor Jefferson ever mentioned abandoning the cabinet when they assumed office, though in a private letter to Dr. James Currie, Benjamin Rush speculated that Adams would “govern without a Council, for he possesses great knowledge, and the most vigorous internal resources of mind.”2 Contrary to Rush’s expectations, however, Adams retained the secretaries from Washington’s administration.
In Washington’s administration, the secretaries had played a central role in crafting the president’s message. For his inaugural address and his first annual address to Congress, Washington requested James Madison’s input. Congress did not create the executive departments until September 1789, and Thomas Jefferson finally took office as secretary of state in January 1790. Once the secretaries were up and running, he requested that they submit items to be included in the address. After he compiled the first draft, Washington shared certain sections of the draft with the cabinet and requested feedback. He then incorporated much of this feedback into the final message.
Adams continued Washington’s precedent by including the secretaries in drafting the annual addresses to Congress. He developed a formula that he utilized for all four of his addresses. First, while still at home in Quincy, Massachusetts, for his summer vacations, he sent letters to his cabinet soliciting papers on topics he should mention in his address. Next, he requested the secretaries prepare drafts of the speech. Finally, he compiled the suggestions and produced a final product. Adams’s addresses always included contributions from each secretary but packaged in his own words. For example, in 1799, Wolcott and Pickering submitted drafts that included vitriolic language against France. Rewriting the draft, Adams kept the substance of their suggestions but adopted a much more conciliatory tone.3 In 1800, the new secretary of state, John Marshall, created the first draft of the annual address. Adams adopted much of Marshall’s prose but added important provisions offered by Attorney General Charles Lee and Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott Jr. on topics including judiciary reform, disbanding the Provisional Army, and improving the manufacture of arms.4
Jefferson also used his annual addresses to Congress as an opportunity to stress the importance of cabinet teamwork. Unlike Washington and Adams, who asked for drafts from their secretaries and then compiled their speeches privately, Jefferson typically wrote an outline or first draft himself, circulated it to his secretaries, and then called a cabinet meeting to discuss any final revisions. Gallatin and Madison crafted entire sections on fiscal and foreign policy to fit into the final version, but the lower-ranking cabinet members also put their stamp on the final product. With all of his secretaries, Jefferson accepted some of their ideas and rejected others. For example, in November 1801, Jefferson sent a draft of the address to the department secretaries. Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith replied to Jefferson’s draft with six full pages of suggestions, including specific recommendations on proposed immigration legislation. He counseled Jefferson to avoid making a specific recommendation about the length of a residency requirement for new citizens. According to Smith, so much division existed within the Republican ranks that no matter what position Jefferson adopted, he would offend a section of the party. He preferred to encourage Congress to draft the legislation and take responsibility for the decision. Jefferson followed this advice, and the final version of the address recommended a revision of the naturalization laws but did not suggest any particulars.5
Adams also relied on official family dinners, another of Washington’s practices, to foster amicable relationships with the department secretaries and to make them feel included in the process of governing. In November 1798, he reported to his wife, Abigail, “We had the Ministry & General Officers to dine on Monday and all agreeable.”6
Jefferson, too, approved of the practice of dining with his cabinet secretaries as an official family. As a widower whose two daughters were often home in Virginia, Jefferson used official family dinners to help fill the void in the White House. In June 1803 when Albert Gallatin first arrived in the District of Columbia, Jefferson invited him to dinner at the White House: “Th: Jefferson asks the favor of mr & mrs Gallatin to dine with him today; and requests that while they are arranging matters at their new quarters they will dine with him every day. It may give them more time for other arrangements, and will be conferring a real favor on Th:J.”7 These dinners served a dual purpose: they provided much-needed social interaction for Jefferson, and they solidified the relationships between the secretaries and the president. Intimate social gatherings helped foster a sense of esprit de corps within his cabinet, which prevented divisions between the secretaries and encouraged the secretaries to feel invested in the success of the administration.
Both Adams and Jefferson also retained Washington’s structure of cabinet deliberations. They frequently submitted a topic of conversation, or questions for consideration, and then called an in-person meeting, but they always reserved the final decision for themselves. For example, in early 1797, Adams learned that France rejected Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as a special envoy. Rumors also abounded that the French ministry had forced Pinckney to leave the country or suffer imprisonment. Adams sent a list of fourteen questions to his cabinet asking them to consider whether the administration should send another mission to France. If so, Adams asked, under what conditions and terms should negotiations take place?8 On March 19, Adams put to paper several of his own observations in preparation for the cabinet meeting.9 At the meeting the next day, he used his initial list of questions to guide the conversation. Afterward, he drafted additional questions based on the discussion and requested written opinions from the secretaries.10 In late April, McHenry and Wolcott wrote back in response.11 On May 1, Pickering sent his own written replies.12
Jefferson employed the same method of convening and managing cabinet meetings. For example, on December 31, 1802, Jefferson sent a letter to his secretaries requesting a consultation the next day at eleven in the morning. He indicated that he wished to discuss “the subject of N. Orleans & the Floridas.”13 After deliberating with his secretaries, on January 11, Jefferson nominated James Monroe as minister extraordinary to France. Monroe’s mission was to partner with Robert Livingston, the current minister to France, to purchase New Orleans and secure permanent American access to the Mississippi River.14
Finally, Adams and Jefferson followed Washington’s model of nominating secretaries who offered diverse geographic, economic, and social representation in the cabinet. Washington had selected two secretaries from Virginia, one from Maine, and one from New York, each of whom offered differing diplomatic, economic, legal, and military experience. Finally, Washington’s secretaries shared ideological affinities with different interest groups. Hamilton cozied up to the merchant and banking elite, Knox remained involved in the military community, and Jefferson represented the slave-owning southern elite. Washington tried to retain balance when nominating replacements for open positions. Timothy Pickering was from Massachusetts, James McHenry was from Maryland, Oliver Wolcott, Jr. was from Connecticut, William Bradford was from Pennsylvania, and Charles Lee was from Virginia. While they were all Federalists, they still brought differing backgrounds and experiences to the cabinet.
Adams inherited this balance when he retained Washington’s secretaries for his cabinet. After removing McHenry and Pickering in 1800, he sought to retain an equilibrium among regional and factional interests. John Marshall of Virginia became the next secretary of state, and Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts filled the role of secretary of war.
While Jefferson dismissed Adams’s secretaries and nominated his own Republican candidates, he followed the model of representing different parts of the nation. He first selected James Madison as secretary of state. Madison served as Jefferson’s closest confidant for most of his adult life, and they frequently enjoyed extended stays at each other’s homes—which was relatively easy, as Madison owned a large plantation not far from Jefferson’s home at Monticello. Next, Jefferson chose Albert Gallatin as his secretary of the treasury. An immigrant from Switzerland, Gallatin had made his home in western Pennsylvania. He was known for his more radical positions, sympathy for the rebels during the Whiskey Rebellion, and affiliation with western territories. Both Madison and Gallatin had led partisan attacks on the previous Federalist administrations and possessed unassailable Republican credentials. Federalists disliked Gallatin so much that Jefferson delayed his nomination as secretary of the treasury until Congress adjourned, out of fear that the Federalist senators would wreak havoc on the confirmation process.15
For the lesser departments, Jefferson selected Henry Dearborn, a Revolutionary War veteran from New Hampshire, as his secretary of war. Jefferson tapped Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts as his attorney general. Prior to Jefferson’s administration, Lincoln worked as an attorney, served in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, and even defended his home state as a member of the Minute Men. For his secretary of the navy, Jefferson approached Samuel Smith of Maryland. When Smith repeatedly turned down the offer, Jefferson settled for Samuel’s brother, Robert, to maintain ties to the powerful mid-Atlantic family. An ardent Anglophile, Robert provided important ideological diversity to Jefferson’s cabinet. Jefferson followed Washington’s example by selecting political leaders who represented various economic, regional, religious, and political interests. These appointments strengthened Jefferson’s position as the head of the Republican Party and shored up support among different regions of the country.16
For the next 207 years, presidents adhered to this precedent. Until the election of Donald Trump in 2016, presidents have followed Washington, Adams, and Jefferson’s example of representing the nation through their cabinet secretaries. Abraham Lincoln famously stitched together a coalition of different factions of the nation by selecting secretaries from Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New England, and New York. Over the course of two centuries, presidents have also expanded their ideas about who should be represented in the cabinet. Barack Obama kept registered Republicans from the Bush administration in his cabinet, and also appointed female, African American, Asian American, and Latinx secretaries. On the other hand, Trump has nominated few women or people of color to secretary positions, instead relegating them to lower-level posts, and has tapped former businessmen and friends who all appear to support his views. He also selected nominees, such as Stephen Bannon and Jeff Sessions, who risked alienating racial, religious, and ethnic communities. Perhaps as a result, Trump’s cabinet has seen frequent, protracted vacancies and the highest rate of turnover in US history.
For all of their similarities, Adams’s and Jefferson’s cabinet experiences also demonstrated the flexibility, potential, and peril of the cabinet legacy that Washington left behind. Adams struggled with the legacy that each president would determine his own relationship with his secretaries. This flexible arrangement worked when the president supervised the secretaries in a diplomatic manner or when his reputation and stature ensured complete loyalty. When the president could not match Washington’s management skills or did not command the respect of his secretaries, the system failed. Adams discovered the hard way how difficult it was to recreate Washington’s leadership.
Eager to provide continuity between the first two administrations, Adams elected to retain Washington’s department secretaries. He knew that the department secretaries enjoyed close relationships with former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, but he initially believed that the secretaries would be loyal to the office of the president. He even defended their actions in the 1796 election, assuring his friend Elbridge Gerry: “I believe there were no very dishonest Intrigues in this Business. The Zeal of some was not very ardent for me but I believe none opposed me.”17 This trust proved misguided. A few months later, he wrote to his wife, Abigail: “From the Situation, where I now am, I see a Scene of Ambition, beyond all my former suspicions or Imaginations.—An Emulation which will turn our Government topsy turvy. Jealousies & Rivelries have been my Theme and Checks and Ballances as their Antidotes.”18 Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry turned out to be staunch Hamilton allies and actively colluded to undermine Adams’s foreign policy, weaken his administration, and prevent his reelection. They also conspired to thwart Adams’s attempts to pursue peace with France, encouraged his absences so they could plot undisturbed, and leaked private government documents to Hamilton for publication.19
In the summer of 1798, the cabinet challenged Adams’s right as president to seek peace and prepare for war simultaneously—a situation Washington never experienced. Adams’s first peace commission, led by John Marshall, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Elbridge Gerry, had brought the United States and France to the brink of war. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, had demanded bribes and embarrassing concessions from the commissioners before summarily throwing them out of the country. Outraged, Federalists in Congress passed legislation authorizing the expansion of the army, navy, and local defenses.
In August 1799, Talleyrand sent assurances to Adams through diplomatic back channels that a new delegation would be received by the French Directory. Without consulting his cabinet or leaders in Congress, Adams nominated William Vans Murray as a new envoy extraordinary. Under significant pressure from members of his own party, Adams agreed to also send Oliver Ellsworth and William Richardson Davie—two staunch Federalists—to join Murray in Paris. As the commissioners moved forward with preparations for their mission, Adams vacationed in Quincy. Taking full advantage of the president’s absence, Pickering and the other Hamiltonian Federalists worked to prevent the commissioners’ departure. Such blatant disloyalty never occurred in Washington’s administration. Jefferson may have naively trusted French minister Edmond Charles Genêt during the Neutrality Crisis in 1793, but he never intentionally undermined the president’s final decision. Adams’s inability to control his secretaries demonstrated the potential downside of a flexible cabinet.20
When Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry failed to change Adams’s mind about sending the commissioners, they called in reinforcements. Sometime between October 19 and 21, 1799, Hamilton arrived in Trenton and called on the president. Hamilton’s presumption that he could lecture on Adams on foreign policy enraged the president. Not only had Hamilton treated Washington with the utmost respect, but a private citizen would never have stormed into Washington’s study and challenged his authority. The cabinet divisions had taken their toll on Adams’s administration and his stature as president.21
Despite Hamilton’s best efforts, Adams’s diplomatic efforts produced the Treaty of Mortefontaine in 1800, which addressed many of the lingering issues from the Jay Treaty and preserved peace between the United States and France. News of the treaty returned too late to influence the election, however. Convinced that they could not control Adams, many of the leading Federalists threw their support to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a reliable Federalist from South Carolina. Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for first place in the electoral college, with Adams coming in a distant third. After thirty-six rounds of balloting, the House of Representatives selected Jefferson as the third president of the United States.22
Jefferson had observed Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry conspire with Hamilton to undermine Adams’s peace mission and sabotage his reelection chances. Once in office, Jefferson intended to keep a close eye on his secretaries. Based on his observations of the two previous administrations, Jefferson also pursued two additional goals: avoid confrontation with his cabinet in order to preserve a harmonious, effective working environment, and preserve and strengthen presidential authority by limiting cabinet meetings and controlling the flow of information so that the cabinet secretaries could not pursue their own agendas.
Jefferson relied on a few strategies to achieve these goals. He drew on his years of diplomatic experience to manage his relationships with the secretaries. Averse to conflict, Jefferson promoted comity between the secretaries. In 1810, he wrote to his friend Dr. Walter Jones and reminisced about his success in maintaining cordial relationships between his cabinet members: “The harmony was so cordial among us all, that we never failed, by a contribution of mutual views, of the subject, to form and opinion acceptable to the whole.”23 He had observed how cabinet divisions and disloyalty disrupted both Washington’s second term and Adams’s administration, and he worked tirelessly to prevent any erosion of authority in the executive branch. In the absence of written rules to guide cabinet interactions, he knew how much personal relationships mattered.
Jefferson carefully organized cabinet meetings to ensure that he retained control over the administration’s policies and interactions. He meticulously managed the structure of cabinet discussions to create an inclusive cabinet environment. Rather than bringing up a general topic of discussion, he posed a series of questions in the meeting designed to find common ground among his department secretaries. Whereas Washington preferred to hear the secretaries’ conflicting opinions and then make a decision, Jefferson hated confrontation and feared its effect on cabinet interactions. Washington’s precedent and the lack of written guidelines afforded Jefferson the flexibility to create cabinet practices that suited his preferences and skills.24
By restricting interactions between secretaries, Jefferson ensured that he alone possessed all the facts and strengthened his position as the center of executive government. He turned toward group gatherings only when an unexpected situation required detailed advice. The unpredictable nature of cabinet meetings emphasized the role of the cabinet as an advisory body and an instrument of the president’s leadership to be used at his discretion. Jefferson’s cabinet noticed his efforts to underscore the president’s authority. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Secretary of State Robert Smith complained of Jefferson’s complete control: “Nay I … did not dare to bring forward the measure until I had first obtained his approbation. Never was there a time when executive influence so completely governed the nation.”25
Finally, Jefferson fostered loyalty among his cabinet members by convincing each secretary that he valued his contributions. He never forgot how powerless he had felt to influence Washington’s decisions in 1793, and he worked to ensure that his secretaries were heard. These efforts worked. Caesar A. Rodney, Jefferson’s second attorney general, believed that the president desired and respected his opinion, even though he was the lowest-ranking cabinet member. In July 1807, Rodney wrote to his brother that he needed to delay his trip to Richmond because “the President could not spare me from head-quarters.”26
Adams’s and Jefferson’s administrations demonstrate the legacy Washington left behind: that every president would have to create his or her own strategies to manage the cabinet. Regardless of how loyal secretaries have been to presidents, they are still a team of rivals who fight over resources, time, attention, and career advancement. Successful administrations require presidents to deftly handle the egos and ambitions of their secretaries, while not sacrificing their agendas to their subordinates’ demands. It can be a nearly impossible task.
Washington shaped the cabinet to serve his needs as president and left a legacy in which the president would select his own advisors and determine how they would interact. There were no rules or written guidelines for future presidents to follow. Each president crafted his own relationships with his secretaries—for better or for worse. Whether the cabinet would support the president’s agenda and provide meaningful advice, or undermine policy and create divisions within the executive branch, depended entirely on the president’s ability to manage his secretaries through a combination of leadership skills and diplomacy. Adams and Jefferson followed Washington’s lead with mixed results. Although the cabinet has grown and evolved in step with the expansion of the executive branch and the federal government over the last two centuries, Washington’s legacy remains.
In the twenty-first century, the American public well understands the potential influence of the advisors whom the president chooses for the cabinet. Advisors are considered such an important part of the presidency that presidential candidates are expected to name their foreign policy advisors during their campaigns. This expectation uniquely illustrates the power of Washington’s cabinet legacy. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention determined—and stated forcefully in the Constitution—that the Senate should serve as a council on foreign affairs. Nonetheless, each president has disregarded these expectations and instead chosen his own advisors. As long as Washington’s precedent endures, each president will start his or her term by appointing fifteen department secretaries with whom he or she can work closely, or largely ignore. Other individuals may play advisory roles as well. For example, unlike many of his predecessors, Obama enjoyed a close relationship with his vice president, Joe Biden. Trump has largely eschewed traditional advisor relationships, instead relying on his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, and on television personalities to guide his agenda. These are just two examples of how each president determines how, when, and where he or she will consult advisors or follow their advice. These interactions are hidden from Congress’s prying eyes and the public’s examination. This dynamic has become an accepted part of American political tradition largely because the cabinet was George Washington’s creation.