As we are all working from home and joining you in your home we are trying out the new mode of communication, it is perfectly fitting with our historic mission, as all of you know we were founded in 1961 by first Lady Jacqueline kennedy who had the vision at such a young age and a short period of time as first lady to create an organization like the White House Historical association to get nonprofit, nonpartisan support to the work of maintaining the Museum Standard of the white house and also in Education Mission to teach him to tell stories of the white house in history going back to 1792 when George Washington who were talking about today actually selected that piece of land in the young architect to build the white house, creating education materials as a core part of our mission and thats what we do every day through the wonderful books that we publish, are programs that we host and around the country and our online social media content and website content, this is an example of not, were doing more and more during this time when were all at home looking for interesting things to do, i would really encourage you to check our website white house history. Org and you can find all kinds of information and materials particulate on wonderful new part of our website which combines educational material from over 100 president ial sites across the country, we become one stop shop for president ial and white house history. At the end of the days program i will remind you to go to shop white house history. Org you can order lindsays book, we have it on sale at a lesser price than anywhere else you can find it in i think after you hear her talk today you will want a copy of your own. So now all turnover the program to doctor who is a Senior Vice President , my colleague at the association and also directs the rubenstein National Center for white house history, she will be talking with lindsay the author of the book that we are celebrating today. The cabinet George Washington in the creation of an american institution. Calling, it is all yours. Thank you stuart, im so delighted to be here with everybody this evening to celebrate my colleague lindsays book launch of the cabinet, i have it right here in front of me. It is a terrific book, i want to remind everybody who is listening tonight and tuning in on Facebook Live if you have questions for lindsay, we will take questions from the audience at the end of the program, type your questions into the Comment Section, the facebook feed and will get to as many questions as possible at the conclusion of our program, without further delay i want to Start Talking to lindsay about the terrific book the cabinet. Tell us, theres been many books written about George Washington, books about his time of revolutionary war general time, books about his time as president of the United States and there has been a lot of scholarship on his precedent setting activities. However, there has never been a book treatment of washingtons creation of the cabinet. Why do you think that is. It is such a great question, i think most people really assume that because washington created the cabinet and every president since washington has had a cabinet that was inevitable or just there from the very beginning. Thats very much not the case, washington held the first Cabinet Meeting to a half years into the administration and it was very much the product of an organic and development to respond to domestic pressures as they came up. I think because the history has evolved the way it is, people assume that was was going to be the case. Tell us why washington decided to create the cabinet and tell us a little bit about the earlier models that he utilized when he was trying to seek advice when he was president. Most people dont know that the cabinet is not in the constitution and article two section two of the constitution lays out two options for the president to obtain advice. First the president can request a written advice from the Department Secretary about issues pertaining to the department or the president can consult and advise with the senate on Foreign Affairs. This had a very different meaning back in 1787 when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention first crafted this clause, they were intended to senate to serve as a council on Foreign Affairs. The intended the senate to be active participants in the process of diplomacy and so this picture that i put appear for you to see is of federal hall in new york city and when washington first went in to office, he intended to use the two options that the constitution laid out for him, he went to federal hall, he visited with the senate, he requested their advice and it went very badly, he was expecting immediate answers, he wanted their opinions and the senators really wanted to act like legislators, they wanted to refer the issue to committee, they wanted to debate and discuss in private and they asked him to come back the next week, that frustrated washington, he got angry in the urban legend is that he swore on the way out he would never again return and im not sure if that is actually true if he said that but he never went back to the senate for advice. Regardless of what he said he certainly meant to. That was one option that he experimented with and really dismissed, the other option requesting a written advice was something that washington did from the very beginning and we think about today when were sending emails back and forth, we often forget to ask something or something is not clear and we need to have a followup because someones tone is not necessarily conveyed well, imagine trying to do that, it was incredibly complicated and it took a really long time and cumbersome and you had to wait for it to dry in the letter to be delivered and wait for the response, washington really quickly realized that he needed to have in person conversations in order to deal with the complex issues that we are facing in his administration. What he did, he sent a letter to the secretary, they would write back and forth once or twice and they would have an individual meeting after words, that worked for about the first year end a half of the administration until diplomatic issues started to boil to the surface in washington decided that he needed to bring all of his advisors together to console in a parade you are influenced on his time as a revolutionary war general for his service in the war, it influenced the creation of the cabinet in particular you talk about the Work Councils that he conducted in the Work Councils of the cabinet. Absolutely, washington was a military man and i put two pictures appear of what the councils mightve looked like depending on whether or not they are meeting in a larger home or in washington, washington was a military man, his prior leadership experience had come in the context of military, is how he thought and how he approached issues in the councils of war have been incredibly helpful to him because it was an opportunity to bring together the officers to ask for the different opinions to allow them to debate all these issues and duke it out and it was a way for him to stress test the different positions and see where the weaknesses were in the arguments and to consider all of the facts at one time he would often ask for written opinions after words that he could go home and read them and consider him in his own time and make a final decision. He concluded that this process was really helpful because it allowed him to get expertise and advice and perspective that were different than his own, that was very important to him as a general and as a president and allowed him to build unity among his officers and even to get Additional Support so if you make it a controversial decision. Those were really the building ground for his leadership skills and when washington did conclude that he needed a cabinet it was a model he drew upon. You argue in the book that washington was an efficient and effective administrator, you dont often think of George Washington when you think of George Washington you think of general and somebody who is very decisive and you dont think of him as a talented administrator. Can you talk about that and explain why that was so important when he was made president of the United States. Sure, washington as you pointed out he does not get enough credit for being politically savvy for having Global Leadership skills for being actively involved in the president ial process. As a sort of mention with the council were leadership, he was dealing with really big personalities, they were loud, they were arrogant, they have their own ambition, they had their own ideas of how to do things including charles lee who like to bring in his pack of hounds the council of wars which i as a dog lover personally think its great but anyone who knows hounds know that they can be quite loud and not conducive to a good meeting environment. So he was dealing with a really colorful boisterous environment and he had managed all the personalities, when washington was president he certainly had fewer people that he had to manage in a small space, anyone who has seen hamilton knows that hamilton and jefferson really, really did not like each other and really did not get along. That management was crucial. The other reason management was so important is because washington was studying president in every single action heres taking from how to correspond with the secretaries or how to interact with congressman, how to respond to an average person on the street, what social event to take place, someone who is capable of managing the details and managing the people beneath him was crucial when you are talking about a governor structure o not in the constitution or not passing legislation, the daytoday management becomes essential. Following up on your observation, you talk about that washington understood the importance of developing close social relationships between his advisors, in modernday terms, did washington have a height eq. Absolutely, this is another one of the strings that is not usually appreciated so washington understood that when youre going to spend eight years fighting a war or eight years in the presidency there will be disagreements, of course people will disagree but if you have a bond that is existing beneath the disagreements you can usually get through them or if you have a common cause you are working towards you can usually smooth past disagreements or tensions. So he hosted the social events, everything from private dinners to horseback rides, on the countryside to balls and dances in Winter Quarters when the officers wives would come to visit, they would have festivities around the holidays so he did try to build the corso officers understood they were all fighting for the same cause, as president he did do the same thing with the secretaries and he would often invite them to what he called a family dinner because he referred to the secretaries as his official family, he would invite them to a family dinner after a Cabinet Meeting or perhaps in the middle if it was dragging on for several hours as a little bit of a break to try to smooth over the fathers that had gotten ruffles by hamilton and jeffersons debate and try to remind them that they were all working towards the same goal. I would maybe suggest that work better in the war than the presidency because hamilton and jefferson were so opposed to each other, im not sure any amount of socializing wouldve fixed it but he certainly tried and had the awareness that he needed to try to keep the cabinet together. Tell us who the original members in the team of rivals were in washingtons president ial cabinet and talk a little bit about the backgrounds of these individuals, the geographic origin, their opinion, was this a heterogeneous group of advisers or homogenous group. This picture shows the original cabinet in washington is to the left and secretary of war henry knox, secretary treasury alexander hamilton, secretary of state Thomas Jefferson and attorney general randolph into a certain extent there similar, all white men, of course but in terms of the idea that they represented in the experiences and expertise they brought to the cabinet they were very, very different. Henry knox had been the Major General of the artillery during the war, he then served as the commander of west point in the secretary of war underneath the confederation congress. He had indispensable military experience and indispensable experience negotiating with american nations which was under the purview of the secretary of war at the time. Hamilton had a brilliant financial mind and while washington certainly understood the plans that hamilton came up with he did not necessarily have the same creativity and the ability to come up with complex solutions. So he needed somebody that could come up with those ideas. Thomas jefferson had extensive diplomatic experience and fluent in french which was the language of the diplomacy while washington had been to barbados when he was a teenager, that was the only time he left the country, he needed someone who is in the art of diplomacy and what it was like to be in france and Great Britain. In Edmund Randolph who frequently goes over well was equal mind, he had been the attorney general for the state of virginia, he had been washingtons private lawyer for many decades so he was a really, really important part of the cabinet especially when they were talking about constitutional questions because he would provide advice for all the secretaries and not just washington. So in addition to their background in the training they also came from different regions of the country, jefferson and randolph were both only in virginia, hamilton made his home in new york and kobe up to the merchant trading leads and mocks had been selftaught, self trained in boston and made his home in maine, so washington understood when the nation was new and the ties that bound the different states together were quite tenuous, he understood a few broader people to the administration that represented the different region and different interest in factions and all the different parts of the nation as long as they are white men, that would help people feel that they belonged in the federal government, it would help them feel like they spoke for them, that was a really important part of his nationbuilding agenda. The original cabinet was diverse in several critical aspects as you just described, however, they were unified in homogenous in their belief that washington needed to bolster his executive authority as president , why did they agree on the one principle. This is a really important argument that a try to make in the book that it goes against what people have to say especially against ideas about jefferson, people think jefferson who was sometimes critical of washington and he was opposed to executive power surely he did not support that. Actually what i found that the cabinet Work Together handinhand to try and boost executive power because they observed during the articles of confederation. And during the work what happens when there was a strong federal government and what happens when there was not one person pushing an agenda and get things done and congress had been woefully inefficient and powerless to try and levy taxes, powerless to negotiate diplomacy, powerless to defend the nation agains agat domestic and foreign threat, they had experienced what happened when there was a Week Congress in a week executive, they believed in order for the nation to survive, they needed to be a strong president that could articulate policy and go about implementing it in a very energetic way. And the cabinet as they envisioned was not supposed to take away authority from the president or compete with the president but rather to bolster the president s authority and help the president get things done. When did the first Cabinet Meeting take place and wide did washington call it. The first Cabinet Meeting took place on november 26, 1791 which was over two and half years into washingtons presidency, these pictures show the president s house in philadelphia into the right was contemporary in the 3d model shows the house wouldve looked like at the time, it was the largest home in philadelphia and it was really quite agree in residence. Washington invited the secretary over on november 26 because jefferson had gone bad news from the british minister and they really felt like it was time to establish a new strategy for trying to figure out the trade agreement with france and Great Britain. So they basically had a meeting with a laid all the existing policies and what the future goals were going to be. And not too much actually came from that meeting but it was interesting that those issues, the relationship with france and Great Britain, they continue to dominate washingtons presidency and also cabinet deliberations for the remainder of his administration. How did washington handle this agreement within the cabinet, you alluded to the fact that jefferson and hamilton did not always see eye to eye, how did washington handle disputes that mightve gotten heated during Cabinet Meetings. Yes, there were significantly heated Cabinet Meetings and they wouldve met in a place that was a little bit like this, this wouldve been similar to what washington study wouldve looked like at the time, its a fairly small room, 15 by 21 feet, for a furniture and they were pretty large men meeting in the space. I think probably under the best of circumstances even if they all did get along, they were meeting up to five times per week for several hours a day in the middle of the summer with no air conditioning in the cramped space that probably wouldve been hot. But because jefferson and hamilton were opposed on so many issues, the tension in the Cabinet Meeting quickly flared into much more than just a little agreement in washington did his best to keep things calm, he often would go back and forth between siding with jefferson, siding with hamilton, siding with hamilton, siding with jefferson or try to find a middle ground that merged both perspectives. He held the family dinners which i mentioned which helped and maybe did not, he assured both of them how valuable they were to him in the cabinet and pleaded with them to stay and not retire because not that he wanted the different perspectives but ultimately he felt the disagreements and the differences of opinion were really helpful to him, it was important to hear all of the different sides of the issue and so while jefferson was really uncomfortable with the complex and wrote about how annoying it was that hamilton would go one for three quarters of an hour so he would give 45 minute speech in the space, washington was okay with it and willing to let them battle it out because he thought it made him in the presidency in the nation better. You argue in the book in several chapters that the cabinet, the institution of the cabinet, washingtons cabinet greatly affected some of the most critical important leadership decisions that he made as president. One of those had to do with the dunay controversy and why was it so important for washington to have humanity in his cabinet about the expulsion of jenae. In 1793 france declares war on Great Britain and it quickly expands into basically in international conflict, the United States was nowhere near prepared to get into another war, they were just starting to recover physically, emotionally, financially from the revolution, not to mention they did not have a navy or an army so if they had wanted to fight, they had nothing to fight with. They all knew when this war broke out that they needed to maintain neutrality and what neutrality met may be different because you couldnt forg enfora strict neutrality which would help the british or you can enforce a looser neutrality which jefferson favored and that would in favor the french, but what really threw a wrench and all these plans is when citizens who was the new french minister arrived and really ignored the United States neutrality, he started hiring private hears were essentially private citizens that were hired to take shifts out under french letters basically and go attack british ships, then they would bring those ships back into u. S. Ports, cello the good in turn the new ship into another. Obviously the british were really pissed that this was happening and they did not want the ships brought into u. S. Ports because that did not seem very neutral and jenae disregarded orders to stop doing the activity and in fact was doing in the port of philadelphia which is about six blocks from washingtons house, literally under the president s nose and he ignored so many orders again and again, four months to stop the activities, finally he was in an argument with jefferson and he was basically disagreeing with jefferson about who had the power to issue diplomacy policy in the United States and jenae was saying it was congress and jefferson was saying you are wrong, it is the president. Jenae threatened to appeal the American People and that was hugely disrespectful to washington and very disrespectful to the new nation so when the threat came out, when it was revealed that he said this, washington convened a Cabinet Meeting and they decided to request the recall of jenae from france, this is a big moment because the United States had never requested a recall of a foreign minister before and in france disagreed or refused, that was basically going to be denying the right of the United States to establish its own Foreign Policy and to require that Foreign Ministers adhere to that Foreign Policy. So when they made the decision washington wanted to make sure that everyone agreed otherwise that was going to be problematic when they took the huge step for so they all did agree, they sent a letter to france and france did recall jenae and that was a passive agreement that the United States had the right to set its own Foreign Policy. Calling out the militia during the socalled whiskey rebellion was another important precedent that washington set, how did his cabinet influence his decisionmaking during the whiskey rebellion. Absolutely, the cabinet was really important at this moment and in 1794 violence broke out in western pennsylvania in a number of rebels burned down the home of a Tax Collector and it had been content for quite some time but this was a real moment when it became a violent situation in washington gathered his cabinet and ask for their advice on what they should do and basically there were four options that were available to him. He could leave it to the states to deal with in their own way, pennsylvania could deal with their own discontent, North Carolina could deal with theirs, he could wait until congress came back into session in the fall and allow congress to deal with it, he could request an emergency session and asked them to come up with a policy or he could use a new law that had been passed that said that the president could call the militia from several states in the event of a Foreign Invasion or domestic rebellion. In the cabinet really urged him to do the fourth option to take action himself and they disagreed that they could do that and randall thought he should send a key commissioner first to negotiate and come up with a solution and hamilton and knox were in the military right away in the new attorney general William Bradford suggested to do a middle approach where he would send out a Peace Commission especially for optics to look as though he had not done everything he could to avoid a military solution, but then get the militia ready while that was happening just in case it failed. So washington pursued the last option, he thought it was a good idea to build up the public favor and Public Opinion before sending out the troops but then he did end up calling the militias from maryland, virginia, pennsylvania and new jersey and before doing so they really had to work with the pennsylvania officials to try to get their compliance, this is where the cabinet is really crucial because they basically bullied the pennsylvania officials into agreeing to comply, they really did not want to, they thought that it should be a state issue and that washington was overstepping his authority in the cabinet officials work through a series of letters and negotiations to essentially beat them into submission. In this amazing moment when the cabinet and the president worked to sideline state authority inside then congress and carveout the sphere of influence for the president with domestic issues which in theory is supposed to be more the purview of the states for congress. At the very end of the washington administration, you argue that washington reinforces the notion that the cabinet will be led by the president in a personal way and the president has to take his or her own approach to how they leave the cabinet. What did you mean by that. In the last couple of years in washingtons presidency there is a lot of turnover, some of the new people that come into office i affectionately referred to the b team, i think thats because washington did not really trust them as much, he did not think that they were up to snuff, he did not think that they were really worth counted as his first team and so based on purely the numbers, there are far fewer Cabinet Meetings in the last couple of years and he really reverts to individual consultation to oneonone meetings into written correspondence because he does not want to convened a group of individuals into by doing so he ensures he does not have a right to participate in decisionmaking process and he determines that the president gets to decide when and how hes going to meet with the cabinet and thats a very important legacy for Going Forward and the president xi came after him. I want to ask her last question and remind all of our viewers out there that we can ask lindsay questions for the conclusion of our program by typing in the question in the Comment Section of the facebook feed, the very end of your book you argue that the management of the cabinet by the president can be an nearly Impossible Task. Can you tell us why you wrote that, why you call it the nearly Impossible Task and what are some president historically other than washington who have effectively managed and led their confidence. Sure, the cabinet can be the president s greatest asset and also be its biggest potential risk factor or really detrimental to the president s legacy and success. The reason i say that, if our president has put together a good cabinet, that means they are putting together a group of people who are incredibly experienced, incredibly knowledgeable, operably full of opinions and maybe have their own ambition so managing that group of people and getting them to be the most effective tools for your administration, your best form of outreach, your best form of congressional liaison, that can be an incredibly tricky tool and task to try and manage without making them shut down were without having them undermine president ial ambitions or agendas. So we have seen some examples were president s do this incredibly well, fdr was really great about managing his cabinet and he had really diverse perspective including two republicans during the war years trying to make sure he had unity and diverse opinion in his cabinet, another example of a president that did very well with their cabinet wa would be lincoln, the team of rivals and he managed to have a number of different personalities by making them feel involved, making them feel welcome and heard in jefferson was great at this as well. And on the flipside, people like adam really struggled with the cabinet because he thought they would be loyal to him for the office as opposed to working hard to manage the relationshi relationships. When they have good cabinets they tend not to be too visible in their successes give the president an extra boost and when they are not working well, they become very visible and they tend to detract from a president s mission. We have some really great questions, lindsay, knowing nothing about the first cabinet, have to ask, was there fierce competition to the positions once they were created, once people found out that washington was putting together this thing called the cabinet, did everyone want to get in and you have a chance to serve . No, its pretty remarkable, washington really struggled to get people to fill the positions especially in his final years and it makes sense when we think about the reality in these positions and the pay was pretty low and you had to put them in philadelphia most of the year and probably leaving their family and your home in your business and your farm in your plantation for many, many months at a time, communication was poor because it took a really long time for the mail to go in travel was really difficult and uncomfortable so you are not getting to visit all that often, you are probably taking an economic hit by being away from your main source of income and you are dealing with an uncomfortable reality so most people did not want these positions in washington really had to appeal to the sense of honor and duty to get people to going. The question about lincoln, you mentioned doors made a big splash with team of rivals trying to peg lincolns political genius into his foresight in creating his cabinet, to see lincoln as that unique in changing the mold of what the cabinet look like during the early republic were quite frankly was there a lot of clash of personalities in the early days . This is a great question because a team of rivals has changed how we think about cabinets and how we think about team of rivals, people know what we are talking about, its a beautifully written book in a phenomenal story, but as a question points out the concept of putting together your rivals in a cabinet was not that new, most president s put the leaders of their Political Party in their cabinet and if the president was lucky, they were not competing directly with them and only with each other so munroe is a great example, munroe did not have any trouble with the secretary trying to take over authority from him but they were all competing with each other about who was going to be the next president and that led to a lot of cabinet conflict, that was the standard model up through lincoln and he of course had his own political genius of getting the people to Work Together but that was definitely the standard cabinet model. The next question from claire on facebook, did washington see john j as an advisor in any way similar to how he saw his cabinet members . Claire, thank you for the question. John j was one of washingtons closest advisors, they had a good personal relationship from the very beginning, washington was asking for his advice especially on issues pertaining to diplomacy because he had been the secretary of Foreign Affairs underneath the confederation congress. Washington asked him for advice on everything from diplomacy to how washington should host social events to legal issues and jay had really no problem sharing that advice and sharing those issues with washington, he ran into a little bit of trouble when washington would ask him thientire Supreme Court for adve and they shut that down and said we cannot advise you on this issue because that would be a problem with separation of powers, but he continued to be a very important advisor to washington until the end of his presidency, he did not attend a Cabinet Meeting. The next question from stephen on facebook, this is a good one, who is your favorite cabinet member and why. Having to choose one,. I would say all say two, knox or randolph because i think this tend to be the two month enter most underappreciated cabinet members, i hate when people say knox did not do anything, he followed along with hamilton which directly comes from jeffersons writings by the way, jefferson thought because knox agreed with hamilton that almost everything that surely he was hamiltons but when when you reality knox had all these incredible experiences and was in the army for so many longer years than hamilton and is really not appreciated enough in the cabinet and same goes for randolph, hes gotten a bad rap, those are my two favorite, i kind of feel bad for their legacies. What are the primary ways washington engagement with his cabinet affects how cabinets work today. Great question. Obviously the cabinet has changed a lot, it is bigger, has institutionalized, the National Security council has taken over a lot of the responsibilities of the original cabinet but when we think about washingtons legacy which is every resident gets to decide who their closest advisors are going to be and how they are going to relate to them, when they will ask him for advice and what form they are going to ask for advice, whether or not they will listen to that advice, those relationships all take place outside of congressional and public oversight. Which means that some president s can be really close with their Vice President like obama and biden were really close, some president s can be really close with cabinet members and some prefer to rely on family members like kennedy whose brother was in the cabinet and they were very close or friends or other people that they happen to know and that legacy affects how modern president s work because they still do not have much oversight on those advisory relationships. This is from sean, did George Washington offer hamilton his choice of treasury or state and if hamilton had chosen state, who wouldve been our first treasury secretary. He did not, depending on the events that you look at, some people say that washington first offered treasury to Robert Morris which makes sense because they were and Robert Morris was a treasury secretary during the confederation. And according to the decline he encouraged washington to pick hamilton for the treasury secretary which probably wouldve been his second choice anyway and was a natural fit. Washington knew that he needed somebody had diplomatic experience and had relationships with people in foreign nations to serve as the secretary of state and hamilton had not had that experience, had not been in those positions, that definitely would not have happened. Actually it was really madisons encouragement that washington listened and he picked jefferson to be the secretary of state. The next question from caitlin, why was it the creation of the cabinet written into the constitution. That is a good question because the british had a form of the cabinet in the british system influence, so why did they not write the cabinet into the constitution. Caitlin thank you for answering asking that question, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention were very concerned about there being a group of advisors around the president that obscured responsibility at the highest level, their varied worried it be cobol and corruption and that it would not be clear who was advising what, who is taking different positions, who is making the final decision. That was very much the concern that they had inherited from the british system because it really was not clear what the british cabinet who told the king what and who is making the decision, who they can hold responsible for bad policies and the delegates rejected that option and refuse to put into the cabinet because they were concerned about responsibility and transparency. Thats why they insisted they provide written advice because then there would be a paper trail of evidence of who said what and it would be very clear who to blame if something went poorly. From megan, was there some story or source that you loved but you cannot include in your book . That is a very creative question. Yes, there is not i mentioned it briefly but i dont talk much about in the books type sensor and other things about her. There is a thing called the articles of confederation the acts of congress, was thinking of something different. There is an article of confederation, its the act of congress and its a volume that washington had ordered, its basically a copy of the constitution and a copy of all the bills that were passed by the First Federal congress, he had them bound into a volume and printed and then he wrote notes and emergent and basically these notes revealed his ongoing thinking of executive power and what hes contemplating that hes going to do because the senate has not worked out and written advice is not efficient enough so these notations are incredibly important and the reason i love this so much is that it was in private hands until 2012 in mount vernon acquired it, most did not know about until 2012 and these are really rare because washington was not a scribbler in his book so you can actually see it if you go to mount vernon and ive done a podcast on this in the article as well, if youre interested on more of the information i share it because its a fascinating document. We dont have much record of what washington thought because he did not speak very many times during the Constitutional Convention. That is right, he only spoke once at the end and he really preferred to listen during the actual debate but its also really important to note two things, one, he was there every day and he voted with the virginia delegation so people knew how he was voting in his opinion was very powerful, the second, after the end of each session, a lot of the delegates would go to dinner, listen to music, go to the theater, visit local philadelphia families, they were socializing together almost every day and you can bet that they were talking about what they had discussed earlier so i think he was probably having more private conversations about his opinions and working with the virginia delegate to get certain things passed, he does prefer to work in smaller groups as opposed to speak in front of the entire convention. The next question is from brian, can you tell us more about washington philadelphia home where some of the Cabinet Meetings took place, what was the homelike, the neighborhood and how did that affect the meeting. Thats a great question, i think it is so important and something we dont often consider about how our surroundings affect us on a daytoday basis, the home as i said was one of the largest private homes in philadelphia, it was in the heart of a very nice elite district on market six street, to go to philadelphia today, there is a memorial on half of the floorplan on the first floor, all of the secretaries lived basically within six blocks of the president s house, so did many of the elite homes and it was a very people say washington, d. C. Is a small world today, has nothing on philadelphia in the 1790s because it was a very small community, they all went to the same shops, they all went to the same market, the same merchants, they attended the same theaters, they intended the same social clubs, library and they went to each others homes in that network in that neighborhood was really important because not only could jefferson not escape each other in the actual study that i showed, when i left the home, they probably were running into each other fairly regularly at social events and other things, i know we had records that they use the same taylor to say th tailor their seats, the likelihood they were running into each other was pretty good and they just could not escape each other, philadelphia really became a hot house for Political Tension and exacerbated these existing divisions and i think it led to the acceleration of the first Political Party. The next question from andrew which i think you like this, the musical hamilton an accurate representation of alexander hamilton. Yes and no, first of all it is art, phenomenal art but not history and thats okay because it has inspired so many people to learn more about the subject and read more and thats a wonderful thing, im a huge fan, theres certain things that are absolutely correct, the reynolds affair was true, his unbelievable marriage was true, elishas efforts to preserve his memory and his legacy after he died 100 correct, the dual absolutely, there are things that are sort of built out for a dramatic effect so theres no record that he had a romantic flirtation with elijah sister, they certainly had a robust correspondence but it did not appear to be inappropriate. Similarly he certainly did support some abolitionist sentiments, he supported the creation of the first school in new york city for freeing africanamericans but he was not much of an abolitionist as the musical makes amount to be, the family had enslaved people, he was often surrounded by slavery and did not appear to edge xray all that much. Yes and no to a certain extent. Was there talk amongst the early cabinet of who might be the next president , did jefferson make his intention to run known early. Great question. No, everyone really wanted washington to keep serving, they felt like he was a unifying figure and kind of the only person they could all agree upon at a time when agreeing with her to come by. So there was not all that much conversation, jefferson retired at the end of 1793 and went home to monticello and swore that he was done with politics. Everyone knew that that was not quite so but he never said anything about wanting to be president but at the time its important to remember you could not appear to want to be president because that would make you ambitious and a very bad way, you had to appear to be disinterested and called to serve from duty and honor. So jefferson tried to put that image out that he did not want to serve or be president he wanted to stay home and it was not until washington announced his intention to retire that people started talking about the other options. We come to our last question unfortunately, it is a good one, why is it called the cabinet and why not a counsel. Its a great question, the turn cabinet comes from the british like so many things in the american political system in the american culture, initially there had been a counsel that the king would meet with to discuss issues and get their advice and the council met in a very large or neat chamber and when the council got too big to be efficient as an advisory body then the king started pulling his advisers into a small room off to the side, the tiny room was called the kings cabinet, that was a description for really small rooms at the time. So this group became known as the kings cabinet counsel, eventually counsel was dropped and it became the cabinet. Cabinet signified a less official position within the Government Counsel tended to be written into legislation so virginia for example how to counsel that advised the governor same with new york, cabinet was intended to convey a private conversation and more private relationship and by 1792 americans were referring to washingtons meetings as Cabinet Meetings. Perfect, thank you so much. Once again, the book is the cabinet, Harvard University press, i cannot say enough about the book, i learned so much about George Washington and also about political institution, the creation of institutions and certainly about the creation of the cabinet. Were now going to go back to stewart for our conclusion for the evening. Thank you colleen and linds lindsay, i often say i work at the White House Historical association for the rest of my career and learn something new everyday and i learned a great deal just listening to the conversation this evening. This white house history is the First Edition of something we would like to continue so wed like to get your feedback if you enjoy this or have suggestions in the future send us a message to our website or through the comments on this Facebook Live session. We would like to invite you to an event we are hosting this thursday at 430 eastern 430 central, it is the third in the white house history happy hours, this thursday we will talk with president ial Truman Daniels who will talk about the truman renovation of the white house and many other aspects of the truman presidency and his son, the great grandson of president truman will missing a cocktail that i understand was a favorite of trumans and if you would like to order the book that weve been discussing today, it is available on the white house history historical website, go to shop. Whitehousehistory. Org it is discounted for pursuits and you can get your copy there today. Please stay safe and we look forward to seeing you on the next edition on white house history life, have a good evening. Recently counter expert david traced the threats americans face since the fall of the soviet union, in this portion of the program he explains the title of his book the dragons and the snakes. The title comes from jim who was president clinton cia director. He was the chairman. Yes thank you for pointing that out, and incredibly pressing guy, when you read his testimony and going through hearing in 1993, he was asked the cold war distended what do you think will be the environment that America Needs to face in the postcold war. And he said we slain a large dragon talking about the soviet union but now we find ourselves in a jungle field with a poisonous snake and in many ways the dragon was easy to keep track of and he goes on to lay out an incredibly detailed vision of weak states, feeling states and nonstate actors which im calling the stakes and suggest that the estate adversaries will not be a big deal for the immediate future which im calling dragons although im suggesting we had it. Of about nearly 30 years since his testimony where adversaries had adopted in evolved and im trying to trace the history of how that happened and where they are now. To watch the rest of this event visit our website booktv. Org and search for david or the title of his book the dragons in the snakes using the box at the top of the page. On behalf of seattle and the American Constitution Society is a pleasure to welcome you tonights lifestream presentation with the author david daily and conversation with chris, as you can and i dont want to acknowledge when were on her home that that institution stands on the traditional territory of the family people particularly the one he has tried, we thank them for her continuing use of the Natural Resources of their homeland. I want to thank you all for tuning in