Which is her base of operations on Lafayette Park but as we are all working from home and joined you in your home, were trying out this new mode of communications that 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 in such a short period of time as first lady to create an organization like the White House Historical association to give nonprofit, nonpartisan support to the work of maintaining the Museum Standard of the white house, but also in Education Mission to teach and to tell the stories of the white house and its history going back to 7092 when George Washington who were talking about today actually selected that piece of land and hired a young irish architect to build the white house. Creating education materials and content is a a core part of our mission, and thats what we do everyday through the wonderful, wonderful books that we publish, our programs that we host at the Decatur House and around the country, and our online social media content and website content. This is an example of that. We are doing more and more of this during this time were all of them looking for interesting things to do. I would really encourage you to check out our website, whitehousehistory. Org and you can find all kinds of information and materials, particularly a wonderful new part of her website which combines educational materials from over 100 president ial sites across the country. So we become onestop shopping for president ial and white house history. At the end of the program ill remind you to go to shop whitehousehistory. Org or you could order the book. We have it on sale at a lesser price anywhere else you can find it at a think after you hear her talk today you are going to want a copy of your own. So now i will turn over our program to try to lose a Senior Vice President , my colleague at dissociation, and also directs that David RubensteinNational Senator whitehouse history. She will be talking with lindsay chervinsky, the author of the book were celebrating and launching today, the cabinet George Washington and the creation of an american institution. Colleen, its all yours. Thank thank you, stuart. Im so delighted to be with everybody this evening to celebrate my colleague book launch of the cabinet. 1090 i have it right here in front me. Its a terrific book. I want to but everybody was listening tonight and tuning in on Facebook Live that if you have questions we will be taking questions from the audience at the end of the program. Just type your questions into the comments 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 talk to lens about this terrific book, the cabinet. Tell us, theres been many, many books written about George Washington, books about his time as revolution were general, books written about his time as president of the United States, and theres been a lot of scholarship on his precedentsetting activity. However, theres never been it book length treatment of washingtons creation of the cabinet. Why do you think that is . It such a great question. Most people really assumed that because washington created the cabinet and every president since washington has had a cabinet, that it was inevitable or it was just there from the very beginning. Thats very much not the case. Washington held his first Cabinet Meeting to and half years into his administration, and is very much a product of an organic development of him getting to respond to international and domestic pressures as they came up. I think because history is has evolved the way it is, people sort of assume that was always going to be the case. Said tell us what washington decided to create the cabinet and tell us a little bit about the earlier models that utilize when when is trying to seek advice when he was president. So most people dont know that the cabinet actually is in the constitution, and article ii, section two of the constitution lays out two options for the president to obtain advice. First, the president can request written advice from the Department Secretaries about issues pertaining to their departments, or the president can consult and advise with the senate on Foreign Affairs. This had a very different meaning back in 1787 and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention first crafted this clause. They really intended the senate to serve as a council on Foreign Affairs, and the intended the city to be active participants in the process of diplomacy. And so this picture that i put up for you to see is a federal hall in new york city, and when washington first went into office he will he intended to use these options at the constitution laid out for him, and he went to federal hall. He visited with the senate and requested their advice, and it went very badly. He was expecting immediate answers. He wanted their opinions. The senators really wanted to act like legislators. They wanted to refer the issue to committee. They wanted to debate it and discuss it in private, and they asked him to come back the next week. That really frustrated washington. He got really angry. Sort of urban legend is he swore on the way out he would never again return, and im not sure if thats actually true that he said that, but he never went back to the senate for advice. Regardless of what he said, he certainly meant it. So that was one option that is sort of experimented with and then really pretty quickly dismissed. The other option, the requesting of written advice was something washington that from the very beginning. But if we think about today when were sending emails back and forth, we often forget to ask something or something is in clear and we need to the followup because someone stole isnt necessarily conveyed well. Now imagine trying to do that with parchment and quill. It was incredibly complicated and it took a really long timed it was cumbersome and tried to wait for it to dry and then wait for the letter to be delivered and then wait for the response. To washington really quickly realize he needed to have in person conversations in order to deal with a very complex issues that were facing his administration. What he did is he would send a letter to the secretary. They would write back and forth once or twice and then have an individual meeting afterwards. That worked for about the first year and half of the administration intel diplomatic issues really started to boil to the surface in washington decided that he needed to bring all of his advisers together to consult in a group. You argue in your book washington was influenced during his time as the revolutionary war general for his service in the revolution of war that influence the creation of the cabinet. In particular, you talk a lot about the war councils that he contacted as general. Can you tell us about those war councils and now that influence the creation of the cabinet . Absolutely. So washington was very much a military man and i put two pictures appear what the councils might have looked like, depending on whether or not they were meeting in a larger home or in washingtons war tent. The washington was really a military man. His prior leadership experience had come in the context of the military. It was how he thought, was how he approached issues. The councils of war had been incredibly helpful to them because it was an opportunity to bring together the officers to ask are different opinions, to allow them to debate all of these issues and duke it out, and it was way for him to stress test the different positions and see where the weaknesses were and arguments, and to consider all the facts at one time. And then he would often ask for written opinions afterwards that he could go home and read them and consistent in his own time, and then make a final decision. He concluded this process was really helpful because it allowed him to get expertise and advice and perspectives that were different than his own, and that was very important to him both as a general and as a president , and allowed him to try and build unity among his officers and even to get Additional Support if he is making a controversial decision. Those councils of war were really the building graph for his leadership skills, and once washington did conclude that he needed a cabinet it was a model he drove on. 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 to think of jello, some of very decisive. You dont think of him as a talented administrator. Can you talk about that and also explain why that was so important when he became president of the United States . Sure. Washington as you point at washington really didnt get enough credit for being politically savvy for having good leadership skills, for being very actively involved in the president ial process. As i mentioned with the council of war leadership, he was with some really big personalities. They were allowed, sometimes arrogant, they had their own ambitions. They had own ideas about how to do things including charles lee who famously like to bring in his pack of hounds to council of wars, which i as a dog lover personally think is great and anyone who knows hounds knows that they can be quite loud and perhaps not conducive to good meeting environment. So he was cheating with a really colorful, boisterous environment and had to manage all those personalities. When washington was president he had fewer people that he had to manage in a small space, anyone who is seen hamilton knows that hamilton and jefferson really, really didnt like each other and really couldnt get along. And so that management was crucial. The other reason than management was so important was because washington was setting precedent in every single action he was taking. Everything from how to correspond with the secretaries have to interact with congressman, how to respond to an average person on the street, was sort of social events to take place . Someone whos capable of managing these details and managing the people beneath them was crucial when youre talking about building out a governing structure that is in the constitution and isnt passed in legislation. So that daily management becomes essential. Following up on your observation, you also talk about in the book washington understood the importance of developing close social relationships between his advisers. In modern day terms of did washington have a high eq. Was absolutely. This is another one of the strengths is that usually appreciated. So washington understood that when youre going to spend eight years fighting a war or eight years in the presidency, there are going to be disagreements. Of course people are going to disagree. But if you have a bond that is existing beneath, you can use get through them. Or if you have a common cause you are working towards you can usually smooth fast any sort of disagreements or tensions. He hosted the social events, everything from private dinners to horseback rides out in the countryside, the balls and dances in Winter Quarters when officers wives would come to visit. They would have these big festivities around holidays, and so we did so as a way to build an esprit de corps to make sure the officers understood that theyre they were all fighting for the same cause. As president he did do the same thing to secretaries bigger often often invite and what he called a family dinner. Because he referred to the secretaries as his official family. He would invite them to a family dinner either after a Cabinet Meeting or perhaps in the middle of one if it was dragging on for several hours as as a bit of a break, to try to smooth over the feathers that have gotten a rud by hamilton and jeffersons debates and try to remind them they were all working towards the same goal. I would maybe suggest that worked better in the war that worked in the presidency because hamilton and jefferson were so opposed to each other. Im not sure in the amount of socializing with a fixed it and he certainly tried have the awareness that he needed to try to try and keep the cabinet together. So tell us who the original members, the original team of rivals were in washington president ial cabinet and also talk about the backgrounds of these individuals, their geographic origin, their opinions. Was this a heterogeneous group of advisers or Homogenous Group of advisers . Yeah, so the picture shows the original cabin, washington the course is to the left, then theres secretary for henry knox, secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton, secretary of state thomas jefferson, and attorney general Edmund Randolph. And to certain extent they are all fairly similar, all white men of course, but in terms of the ideas that they represented and the experiences and expertise they brought into the cabin, they were very, very different. Henry knox had been the Major General of the artillery during the war. He had been served as the command at west point and then secretary of war underneath the Confederation Congress. So we had indispensable military experience and indispensable experienced negotiator with native american nations under the purview of the secretary of war at the time. Hamilton had a brilliant financial mind, and while washington certainly understood the plans hamilton keep up with come he didnt necessarily have that same sort of creativity and ability to come up with complex solutions. So he needed someone who could really come up with those ideas. Thomas jefferson had extensive diplomatic experience and was fluent in french which was the language of diplomacy, while washington had been to barbados when he was a teenager that was the only time he ever left the country. He needed someone who was experience in the art of diplomacy and what it was like to be in france and great britain. Lastly, Edmund Randolph of prickly goes overlooked was a brilliant people might picky bend the attorney general for virginia. He had been washingtons private work for many decades and so he was a really, really important part of the cabinet, especially when youre talking about constitutional questions. Guess he would provide advice for all of the secretaries and not just washington. So in addition to the background and training, they also came from different regions of the country. Jefferson and randolph were both slave owning virginians. Hamilton made his home in new york and cozied up to the merchant trade elites, and knox really had been self taught, self trained in boston and now made his home in maine. Into washington understood that when the nation was new and the tie that bound the different stick together were quite tenuous, he understood that if he brought in people to his administration that represented the different regions and different interests and different factions and all the different parts of the nation, as long as they were white men, that that would help people feel that they belong in the federal government. It would help them feel like the federal government spoke for them, and that was a really important part of his nationbuilding agenda. The original cabinet was the first in several critical aspects, as you just described. However, the reunified and homogenous in their belief that washington needed to bolster his executive authority as president. Why did they all agree upon this one principle . This is really important argument i try to make in the book people think jefferson who was sometimes critical of washington and who was opposed to executive power, surely he didnt support that. But actually what if that is that the cabinet worked together handinhand to try and boost executive power. Because they had observed during the articles of confederation. Period and during the war what happen when it wasnt a strong federal government. And what happened when there wasnt one person really pushing an agenda and trying to get things done. And congress had been woefully inefficient. They had been powerless to try and levy taxes. Powerless to try to negotiate diplomacy, powerless to defend the nation against both domestic and foreign threats. So they had all experience what happened when the was a Week Congress and the weak executive. They believed that in order for the nation to survive, the need to be a strong president that could articulate policy and then go back and lamenting it in a very energetic way. The cabinet as they envisioned it was not supposed to take away authority from the president or compete with the president , but rather to bolster the President Authority and help the president get things done. So when did the first Cabinet Meeting take place and why did washington call it . So the first Cabinet Meeting took place on november 26, 1791, which was over two and half years into washington presidency. The pictures show the president s house in philadelphia, the painting to the right of course with contemporary, and then this 3d model shows what the house would have looked like at the time. It was one of the largest umps in philadelphia and was really quite a grand residence. Washington invited the secretaries over on november 26 because jefferson had just gotten some bad news from the british minister, and they really felt like it was time to establish a new strategy of trying to figure out the trade agreements with france and great britain. They basically have this meeting where they laid out all of the existing policies and what the future goals were going to be. And not too much actually came of that meeting, but whats interesting is those issues, e relationships with france and great britain, those continue to dominate both washingtons presidency and also cabinet delibe