February 25, 1793 – First Full Cabinet Meeting of the United States

Neither the Constitution nor established law explicitly mandates the creation and/or use of a cabinet by the President of the United States. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides:

The President . . . may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices . . . .”

President George Washington thought it would be useful to have regular meetings with department heads for soliciting advice on “interesting questions of national importance.”

As history.com reports, on September 11, 1789, just a few months after taking office, Washington sent his first nomination — Alexander Hamilton for Secretary of the Treasury — to the Senate, which unanimously approved the choice. Three more confirmations quickly followed: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.

The Mount Vernon website tells us that the group came to be known as the cabinet based on a reference made by James Madison, who described the meetings as “the president’s cabinet.”

At first, Washington consulted with his four Cabinet members individually. By fall of 1791, however, he had begun convening the whole group, and these meetings became commonplace in 1793 as tensions with revolutionary France heated up. But the meetings soon became sparring matches between Hamilton and Jefferson, who each wrote Washington separately complaining about the other.

Washington responded with letters to both men pleading with them to try to get along. As he wrote to Jefferson :

How unfortunate, and how much is it to be regretted.., that whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends, that internal dissentions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals. The last, to me, is the most serious-the most alarming-and the most afflicting of the two. And without more charity for the opinions and acts of one another in Governmental matters. … I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the Reins of Government or to keep the parts of it together: for if, instead of laying our shoulders to the machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this way and another that, before the utility of the thing is fairly tried, it must inevitably be tom asunder- And, in my opinion the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man, will be lost-perhaps for ever!”

Washington said essentially the same thing to Hamilton in a letter written three days later, writing:

I do not mean to apply this advice to measures which are passed, or to any character in particular,” he wrote. “l have given it in the same general terms to other Officers of the Government. My earnest wish is, that balsam may be poured into all the wounds which have been given, to prevent them from gangrening; & from those fatal consequences which the community may sustain if it is withheld.”

Since the time of Washington, the number of executive departments — and hence the number of Cabinet members — has slowly but steadily increased. The Department of the Navy was the first new one added, in 1798. (It merged with the War Department in 1947.) The Postmaster General was added in 1829. (In 1971, the Post Office Department was re-organized into the United States Postal Service, an independent agency of the executive branch. Therefore, the Postmaster General is no longer a member of the Cabinet and is no longer in line for Presidential succession.) Interior and Agriculture came in 1849 and 1862, respectively, as the United States expanded west. Labor and Commerce was created in 1903, but the departments were split in 1913. No new departments were added until the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953 (later split up into separate divisions.)

The most recent department added was the Department of Homeland Security, established in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

You can see a list of all 15 current cabinet positions here as well as a list of positions that have the status of “Cabinet rank.”

Initially, the vice president was not a Cabinet member. Until 1919, vice presidents were not included in meetings of the President’s Cabinet. This precedent was broken by President Woodrow Wilson when he asked Thomas R. Marshall to preside over Cabinet meetings while Wilson was in France negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. President Warren G. Harding also invited his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, to meetings. The next vice president, Charles G. Dawes, wrote President Coolidge that he did not think the vice president should attend cabinet meetings. He took the initiative by declining even before Coolidge had offered him an invitation.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the stature of the office by renewing the practice of inviting the vice president to cabinet meetings, which every president since has maintained.