Exciting conversation with the head of the center for history and one of our historians on a brandnew book the cabinet, George Washington and the creation of an american institution. Ordinarily we would be doing this at the Historical House which is our base of operations on Lafayette Park at as we are all working from home and we are joining you in your home, we are trying out this new mode of communications that is perfectly fitting that were historical initiative. As you know we were founded in 1961 by Jaclyn Kennedy who had the vision at such a young age and a short period of time to create organizations like the White House Historical association. We were talking about today actually selected piece of land and hired a young irish architect to build the white house. While creating educational materials and content, it is a core part of the mission and that is what we do every day with the books we publish and our programs around the country. And our online social media content. This is an example of that. We are giving more and more of that during this time looking for interesting things to do. I encourage you to check out the website, white house history. Org and you can find all kinds of informational material particularly a wonderful new part of the website which combines educational materials from over 100 president ial signs across the country as we become onestop shopping for president ial and white house history of the David Rubenstein National Center for white house history she will be talking with doctor lindsey the author of the book that we are celebrating in wall street today. It is all yours. Thank you. Im so delighted to be here with everybody this evening to celebrate my colleagues book launch of the cabinet i want to remind everybody that is tuning in on facebook that if you have questions, we will be taking questions from the audience at the end of the program. Type your questions into the comments section of the facebook feed and we will get to as many questions as possible at the conclusion of the program. Without further delay i want to Start Talking about this terrific book the cabinet. Thereve been many books written about George Washington, books about the time in the revolutionary war general and books written about his time as president of the United States. Theres been a lot of scholarship on the precedentsetting activities. However, theres never been a treatment of washingtons creation of the cabinet. Why do you think that is . Guest most people assume that because washington created the cabinet and every president since washington has had a cabinet that it was sort of inevitable or it was just there from the very beginning. And it is very much not the case. Washington held his first Cabinet Meeting two and a half years into his administration, and it was very much the product of an organic development of him needing to respond to international and domestic pressures as they came up. People assume that is always going to be the case. Guest tell us why washington decided to create the cabinet and tell us about the earlier models that he utilized when he was trying to seek advice when he was president. Guest most people dont know the cabinet actually isnt in the constitution first, the president can request from the Department Secretaries about issues pertaining to use their department or the president can consult and advise the senate on Foreign Affairs we used these two options the constitution laid out and went to federal hall and visited with the senate and requested their advice and it went very badly. He was expecting immediate answers and wanted their opinions and the senator is really wanted to act like legislators. The data is one option he sort of experimented with and then quickly dismissed. The. Washington quickly revised he needed to hav have a in personal conversations to deal with the complex issues that were facing this administration. As to what he did as he would send a letter to the secretary y and they would write back and forth once or twice a and that worked for about the first year and a half until diplomatic dipc issues started to boil to the surface and washington decided he needed to bring all of his advisers together to consult and a group. You are giving her book that washington was influenced from the time of the revolutionary war. Can you tell us about those and how about this in the creation of the cabinet . Washington was very much a military man. I put two pictures of what the council might have looked like, the depending on whethe where te meeting in a larger home or in washington. So, washington was a military man. Man. His prior leadership experience had come at the context of the military. It was how he thought and how he approached issues. It had 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 sort of debate and it was a way for him to stress test the different positions. Then he could go home and read them and consider his own time and make a final decision. He concluded that the process was helpful because it allowed him to get expertise and advice and perspectives different than his own. And he was making a controversial decision. You argue in the book that washington was an efficient and effective administrator think of genitals into someone decisive and not as a talented administrator. Can you talk about that and also explain why that was so [inaudible] kean was dealing with some really big personalities. They like to bring in his pack of hounds which i as a dog lover personally think its great that anyone that knows how know they can be quite loud and not conducive to a good meeting environment, so he was dealing with a really colorful and boisterous environment and had to manage all of those personalities. When washington was president he had fewer people he had to manage in a small space. But anyone that has seen hamilton knows hilton and jefferson really didnt like each other and get along. With the secretaries or how to interact with congressman, how to respond to an average person on the street, what sort of social events take place. So someone who was capable of managing these details and the people beneath him and talking about building up a governing structure that isnt in the constitution and doesnt pass the legislation so that daytoday management becomes essential washington understood the importance of developing close social relationships between his advisers. In a modernday terms that washington had a high iq . Absolutely this is another one of his strengths that isnt usually appreciated. Washington understood when you were going to spend eight years fighting a war in the presidency, there are going to be disagreements. Of course people are going to disagree. But if you have the bond that is existing you can usually get through them. Or if you have a cause you are working towards you can move past any sort of disagreement or tension. And so, he posted these social events. Everything from private donors to horseback ride out to the countryside to dance is in the Winter Quarters he would often invite them to what he called a family dinner. He would refer to the secretaries of his official family said they would invite into a familthem to a family dir after the Cabinet Meeting or perhaps in the middle one if it were dragging on for several hours as a bit of a break to try to smooth over the feathers that had gotten rustled by hamilton and jeffersons debate to remind them they were working towards the same goal. I would suggest that worked a little bit better than the more abandonefourabandoned the presie hamilton and jefferson were opposed to each other im not sure any amount of socializing would have fixed it but he tried and had the awareness he needed to keep the cabinet together. Host tell us the original team of rivals in washingtons president ial cabinet and also talk a little bit about the background of these individuals. And the attorney general Edmund Randolph the experience and expertise they brought to the cabinet and the secretary of the war and the military experience and indefensible experience negotiating with the nations which were under the purview of the secretary of war. And while washington understood the plans hamilton came up with him if he didnt necessarily have the same sort of creativity and ability to come up with complex solutions. That is the only time he ever left the country and what it was like to be in france and great britain. And mostly randolph was overlooked was a brilliant mind. The. There was a device for the secretaries and not just washington. They were both slave owning virginians and hamilton made his home in new york and cozy up to the merchant trade ely at and had been selftaught costal trained in boston and made his home in maine and so washington understood when the nation was new and the tide that bounded the different states together were quite tenuous they understood if you brought people to the administration that represented the different region and the different interests and factions and all the different parts of the nation as long as they were white men, that that would help people feel that they belonged in the federal government. It would help them feel like the federal government spoke for them and that was an important part of the building agenda they were homogenous and they believe that washington needed to bolster his executive authority as president. Why did they all agree upon this one principal . This is an important argument i try to mak make in the book tt it goes against what people have to say. Especially against ideas about jefferson. People think certainly jefferson who was sometimes critical of washington and who was opposed to executive power, certainly he didnt support that. But what i found is the cabinet worked together hand in hand to try to boost executive power because they have observed during the articles of Confederation Period and during the war what happened when there wasnt a strong federal government and what happened when there wasnt one person really pushing an agenda and trying to get things done. Congress had been woefully inefficient, powerless to try to levy taxes, powerless to try to negotiate and defend the nation against both domestic and foreign threats. So they had all experienced what happened when there was the Week Congress and the executive. They believe they are needed to be a strong presence to articulate the policy and go about implementing it in a very energetic way. The cabinet wasnt supposed to take away authority from the president or compete with the president but rather to bolster and help the president get things done. When did the first Cabinet Meeting take place and what did washington call it . It took place 1791 over two and a half years into washingtons presidency. These pictures show the house in philadelphia that came into the right of course of the contemporary and vintage three d. Model shows what else would have looked like at the time. It was one of the larger towns in philadelphia. Washington invited the secretaries over on november 26 because jefferson had gotten some bad news from the british minister and they felt like it was a time to establish a strategy to figure out the trade agreement with france and great britain. So they basically had a meeting where they leave out the existing policies and the future goals were going to be. Not too much actually came of that meeting. Bubut what is interesting is the issues and relationships with france and great britain. Those continue to dominate washingtons presidency and also the cabinet of the nation for the remainder of this administration. How did washington handle the disagreement . You alluded to the fac eluded ty didnt always see eye to eye. So how does washington handle the disputes that might have happened during the meetings . There were some significantly heated Cabinet Meetings. They would have met in a place that would have been similar to washington. Its a fairly small room, 15 by 21 feet. There were five pretty large men meeting in the space and i think under the best of circumstances even if they all did get along and 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 this space are probably would have been some hot tempers but because jefferson and hamilton were diametrically opposed on it so manaso many issues, but tenss quickly flared into much of the agreement and washington did his best to keep things calm. He would literally go back and forth between fighting with jefferson, fighting with hamilton, fighting a with hamilton at fighting with jefferson and try to find a middle ground that merged both perspectives. He held family dinners which i mentioned which may be helped or maybe different. He assured both of them how valuable they were to him in the cabinet. He wanted the different perspectives. But ultimately he felt the disagreements and differences of opinion were helpful to him. It was important to hear all of the different sides of the iss issue. Washington was okay with it and was willing to let them battle it out. They faced some of the leadership positions he made as president. Can you tell us a little bit about the controversy and why was it so important for washington to have anonymity and his cabinet about the expulsion of . It quickly expands into basically an international conflict. And the United States was nowhere near prepared to get into another war. They were just starting to recover physically, emotionally, financially from the revolution. The id really ignored the United States neutrality. He started hiring privateers which were essentially private citizens that were hired to take ships out and attacked british ships and then they would bring them back into the ports and sell off the goods and turned the new ship into another privateers of the british were mad that this was happening and they didnt want them brought into the u. S. Ports. They basically disregarded orders to stop doing this activity and in fact was doing it in the port o port of philada was about a block from washingtons house. So right under the president s nose. There were so many orders again and again for months to stop these activities. Finally he was in an argument with jefferson and he was basically disagreeing with jefferson saying you are wrong if the president and threatened to appeal the american people. And that was hugely disrespectful to washington and very disrespectful to the new nation and so when this thread came out when it was revealed that he said this, washington convened a Cabinet Meeting and they decided the request of the recall. If france disagreed or refused her mother was basically going to be denying the right of the United States to establish its own Foreign Policy and require Foreign Ministers adhere to that foreignpolicy. So when they made that decision, they wanted to be sure everyone agreed. Otherwise that is going to be problematic when they took this huge step so they all did agree and sent send a letter to frand eventually france did recall and that was an agreement to. Its for quite some time that this was a moment when it became a violent situation. And washington gathered his cabinet and asked for their advice on what they should do. There were four options that were available to him. He could leave it to the states to deal with them in their own way so they could deal with their own discontent. North carolina could deal with affairs. 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 of congress and ask them to come up with a sort of policy or he could use a new wall that had been passed that said the president could call up the militia from several states in the event of a Foreign Invasion or domestic rebellion. It is to try to negotiate to come up with a peaceful solution. The new attorney general William Bradford suggested an approach where he sent out eight commission to look as though they had done everything he could to avoid the military solution. Washington pursued the last option and thought it was a good idea to try to build up public favor before sending out the troops but then he did end up calling it the militia from maryland, virginia, pennsylvania and new jersey. Before doing so, they had to work with the pennsylvania officials to try to get their compliance and this is where the cabinet was crucial because they basically agreed to comply. They didnt want to. They thought washington was overstepping his authority the present debate co cabinet worked to sideline the authority of congress and carve out a sphere of influence the cabinet will be led by the president and in a personal way the president has to take his or her approach to how they leave the cabinet. What did you mean by that . There is a lot of turnover i refer to them as the b. Team and washington didnt really trust them as much. He didnt think that they were up to snuff. He didnt think that they were as talented as the first team so based on the numbers, there are far fewer Cabinet Meetings in the last couple of years and he reverts to the consultations to go oneonone meetings and to the written correspondence because he doesnt want to convened a group of individuals. So he assures they do not have the right to participate in the decisionmaking process and he determines that the president gets to decide when and how i want to remind our viewers that are out there that we can ask at the conclusion by typing in the question in the comments secti section. At the end of your book you argue the management of the cabinet can be a nearly Impossible Task. Can you tell us why you call it a nearly Impossible Task and also what are some who effectively managed and led to their cabinet . It can be the president s greatest asset and it can also be the biggest potential risk factor or detrimental to the president s legacy and success. If the president put together a good cabinet, that means they are putting together a group of people that are incredibly experienced and knowledgeable and full of opinions and maybe have their own ambitions. Managing that group of people and getting them to be the most effective tools for the administration to that can be a tricky tool to a jihad really diverse perspectives including a there was unity and favors opinion in the cabinet. Another example a president that did well with the cabinet there was a team of rivals and he managed to have a number of different personalities by making them feel involved and welcomed and heard. And jefferson was good at this as well. And on the flipside, people like atoms struggled with the cabinet because he thought they would be loyal to him for the office as opposed to having to work hard to manage this relationship. So we tend not to see them and the success gives an extra boost and when they are not working well then they become very visible and they tend to detract from the president s mission. The fierce competition once they were created in other words when they found that washington was putting together this thing called a cabinet everybody wanted to get in and have the chance to be served. It was pretty remarkable. Washington struggled to get people to fill these positions and it makes sense when we think about the reality of these positions. It was pretty low. You have to live in philadelphia and most of the year. You probably were meeting your family, your homecoming for business, your farm and plantation for many is the time. Communication was poor because it took a long time for the mail to go and travel was difficult and uncomfortable, so you were not getting to visit all that often. Washington had to appeal to the sense of honor and duty to get people to go into the process. Theyve tried to take the political genius and foresight into creating the cabinet. Do you see lincoln as the unique and changing the mold and quite frankly was there a lot of clashing personalities in the early days . This is a great question because its changed how we think of that cabinet so far if the president was lucky they were not competing directly with them, only with each other. So, this is a great example munro didnt really have any trouble with the secretary trying to take over authority from him but they were all competing with each other but he was going to be the next president. And that led to a lot of cabinet conflict. That was a sort of standard model through lincoln and he had his own political genius of getting the people to work together. But that was definitely the standard cabinet level. The next question is from claire. Did they see him as an advisor in any way similar to how he saw his cabinet members . John jay was one of washingtons closest advisers. They have a personal relationship from the very beginning. Washington was asking for his advice especially on issues pertaining to diplomacy because they get in th up in the secretf the Foreign Affairs under the confederation and so washington asked him for advice on everything from diplomacy to how washington should host social events to legal issues then they shut that down and said we cant really advise you on this issue because that would be a problem of separation of powers give you that he was an important adviser tadvisorto washington until thef his presidency. He just didnt speak to the next question is from stephen. This is a good one. Who is your favorite cabinet member and why . Having to choose one. Oh my good us. I would say either, im going to take a cop out and say two of them. Either knocks or ran off. I think those tend to be the most under appreciated the cabinet members. I hate when people say he didnt do anything. He just followed along with hamilton, which directly comes from jeffersons writings by the way. Jefferson thought that because he agreed with hamilton almost everything surely he was hamiltons. In reality, he had all of these incredible experiences and was in the army for so much longer than hamilton and wasnt appreciated enough in the cabinet. And with randolph hed gotten a bad rap so those were two of my favorites. I kind of feel bad for their legacy. What are the primary ways washingtons engagement with his cabinet effect how the cabinets work today . Great question, william. The cabinet had changed a lot. It was bigger and it had institutionalized. The council had taken over a lot of the responsibilities. But when you think about washingtons legacy which is that each president gets to decide who their closest advisers are going to be and how they are going to relate to them and when they are going to ask them for advice and what form they are going to ask for advice and whether or not they will listen to that of vice, those relationships all take place outside of congressional and public oversight, which means some president s can be very close to their Vice President s like obama and biden were close. Some can be close with certain 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 very much affects how modern president s work because we still dont have much oversight over those relationships. Host next question is from sean. Did George Washington really offer hamilton his choice of structure a poor state and hamilton have chosen the state, who would have been the first treasury secretary . No, he didnt. So, depending on the evidence you look at, some people say washington first offered treasury to Robert Morris which makes a lot of sense because paper closeparen. Hed been to treasury secretary during the Confederation Period. And according to the sort of us to become mass, he encouraged them to pick hamilton for the treasury secretary which would have probably been the second choice anyway and a natural fit. Washington knew he needed to someone that had diplomatic experience to serve as the secretary of state and hamilton didnt have that experience and hadnt been in those positions so that definitely wouldnt have happened. The next question from kaitlyn, why was the creation of the cabinet written into the constitution . That is a good question because the british had a form of the cabinet, so an into the british system influence so why didnt they write into the constitution . A delegate to the Constitutional Convention were very concerned about a a group of advisers around the president that sort of obscured responsibility at the highest levels. It was taking different positions and who is makin at we final decision. And that was very much the concern they inherited from the british system because it wasnt clear with the british cabinet who told the king was and who is making thwas making the decisioo they could hold responsible those policies. And so, the delegates rejected that option and refused to put him into the cabinet because they were concerned about responsibility and transparency. That is why they insisted that the secretary provide written advice because his family than it would be a paper trail of evidence about who says what it would be clear who to blame. Host was there a story or stores you love that you couldnt include in your book . Guest that is a very creative question. Yes actually, so i mention it briefly but i dont talk much about it in the book although ive since written other things about it. Theres the articles of confederation, sorry, acts of congress. There is the articles of confederation of course. Its the act of congress. It is a volume that washington had ordered. Its basically a copy of the constitution and all of the bills that were passed by the First Federal congress. And he had been bound into a volume and printed. Then he wrote a series of notes in the margin. Basically, these notes were revealed. The ongoing thinking of exec if power as he was contemplating what he was going to be because the senate hasnt worked ou outn a written advice is not efficient enough. So, they are incredibly important and the reason i love the documents so much is that it was in private hands on till 2012. Then mount vernon acquired it. So most historians didnt even know until 2012. And the notations are rare because washington wasnt a scribbler in his book like adams and jefferson. So you could actually see it if you go to mount vernon and ive done an article on this as well so if you are interested in that i could share it because it is a fascinating document. We dont have much record of what he thought during the convention because he didnt speak very many times during the Constitutional Convention, correct . He only spoke once at the very end. And he preferred to listen during the actual debates. But its also 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 powerful. Second is after the end of each session, a lot of the delegates would go to dinner. They would go listen to music. They would go to the theater. They were divisive focal philadelphia families. So, they were socializing together almost every day. And you can do it tha but they e talking about with you discussed earlier. So i think he was probably having more private conversations about his opinions than working with the virginia delegate to try to get certain things past. He just preferred to work in smaller groups as opposed to speaking to the entire convention. Host next question is from brian. Can you tell us more about the philadelphia home where some of the Cabinet Meetings took place . What was it like in the neighborhood and how did that affect the meetings . That is a good question. I think this basis of important and something we dont often consider about how our surroundings affect us on a daytoday basis. So, the home as i said was one of the largest private homes in philadelphia. Disturbing the heart of a very nice elitist district on the market and sixth street. If you go to philadelphia today, there is still a sort of memorial on behalf of the floor plans. But, so all of th the secretaris basically were within six blocks of the president s house and so did many of the elite homes. So, people say washington, d. C. Is a small room today. It has nothing on philadelphia in the 1790s, because it was a very small community. They all went to the same shop. They went to the same markets of the same merchants. He attended the same theaters, the same social clubs, the same libraries. And they went to each others homes. So, that network and the neighborhood was important because not only could jefferson and hamilton not escape each other in their roles did they show that was pretty small, but when they left the home, they probably were running into each other fairly regularly at social events and other things. I know we have records that they use the same keyword to so the likelihood that they were running into, so philadelphia really became a celebration of the First Political parties. The next question from andrew was the musical hamilton and accurate representation of Alexander Hamilton . Is phenomenal art but its not history and thats okay because it has inspired so many people to learn more about the subject and read more. There are certain things that are absolutely correct. His marriage was true with, that efforts to preserve his memory and legacy were 100 correct. The dual come absolutely. But then there are things that are sort of build out for dramatic effect said there is no record that he had a sort of romantic flirtation with eliza sister and they had a robust correspondence but it didnt appear to be inappropriate similarly. He did support some abolitionists but it wasnt as much of the musical mismatch. She didnt appear to object to get all that much so yes and no to a certain extent. Was there talk among the early cabinet amon cabinets amot be the next president . Did jefferson make his intentions to run early . Great question. Everyone walsh wantewanted wash. They felt he was a unifying figure and the only person they could agree upon when it was hard to come by so there wasnt all that much conversation. Jefferson retired at the end of 1793 and went home to monticello and swore he was done with politics. Everyone knew that wasnt quite so. But he never said anything about wanting to be president but at the same time it was important to remember you couldnt appear to want to be president because that could make you ambitious in a bad way. You have to appear to be this and arrested and called to duty and honor so jefferson really tried to sort of put that image out that he didnt want to serve the president. He wanted to stay home. Now weve come to the last question and its a good one. Why is it called a cabinet and why not a council . The term comes from the british like so many things in the american political system and culture so initially there had been a council that they came to meet with to discuss issues and get their advice and they met in a very Large Chamber and when they got too big to be efficient, then they started pulling them into a small little room off to the side and that was the description at the time so they became known as the kings Cabinet Council and a sort of signified a less official position within the Government Council that tended to be written into legislation. So, virginia for example the cabinet was to convey a more private conversation and more private relationship and americans were referring to the meetings. Once again the book is the cabinet. I cant say enough about this book. I learned so much about George Washington and also about Political Institutions and the creation of the cabinet. We are now going to go back to the conclusion of the evening. Listening to the conversation this evening this is the First Edition of something we would like to continue so we would like to get your feedback. Send us a message through the website or the comments on this case the client session. We would also like to invite you to an event we are hosting this thursday at 5 30 eastern, 4 30 central. Its the third of the happy hours of this we will talk with president ial grandson Clifton Daniels who will talk about many other aspects and his son will be mixing a special cocktail if i understand was a favorite of truman. If you would like to order the book tha but we have been discug today, it is available on the White House Historical association website. Shop white house history. Org. Discounted for purchase and you can get your copy today. Stay safe if we look forward to hearing you on the next edition of white house history live
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.