Unsung History18 Apr 2022

The Cabinet

Today, when Americans think of it at all, they take for granted the institution of The Cabinet, the heads of the executive departments and other advisors who meet with the President around a big mahogany table in the White House. But how did The Cabinet come into being? It’s not established in the Constitution, and the writers of The Constitution were explicitly opposed to creating a private executive advisory body.

I’m joined in this episode by presidential historian Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, who helps us answer the question of how – and why – President George Washington formed the first Cabinet, and why it continued.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Washington and his cabinet [lithograph],” New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1876. Via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Image is in the Public domain.

Additional Sources:

“The President’s Cabinet Was an Invention of America’s First President,” by Karin Wulf, Smithsonian Magazine, April 7, 2020.
“Cabinet Members,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
“The Cabinet,” The White House.
“First Cabinet Confirmation,” United States Senate.
“The changing faces of Cabinet diversity, George Washington through Joe Biden,” by Lindsay Chervinsky and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, FixGov, The Brookings Institution, April 13, 2021.
“The Cabinet of President Washington,” by By James Parton, The Atlantic, January 1873.
“The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription,” America’s Founding Documents, National Archives.

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