United States Department of War

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For the present agency overseeing the United States Armed Forces, see United States Department of Defense.
United States Department of War
Seal of the U.S. Department of War
Department overview
FormedAugust 7, 1789; 234 years ago (1789-08-07)
Preceding department
DissolvedSeptember 18, 1947; 76 years ago (1947-09-18)
Superseding agencies
Department executive
Child department

The United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the

United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, also bearing responsibility for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, and for most land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force
on September 18, 1947.

The Secretary of War, a civilian with such responsibilities as finance and purchases and a minor role in directing military affairs, headed the War Department throughout its existence.

The War Department existed from August 7, 1789[1] until September 18, 1947, when it split into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force later joined the Department of the Navy under the United States Department of Defense in 1949.

History

See also: History of the United States Army
The seal of the Board of War and Ordnance, which the U.S. War Department's seal is derived from
The emblem of the Department of the Army, derived from the seal of the U.S. War Department

18th century

The Department of War traces its origins to the committees created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 to oversee the Revolutionary War. Individual committees were formed for each issue, including committees to secure ammunition, to raise funds for gunpowder, and to organize a national militia. These committees were consolidated into the Board of War and Ordnance in 1776, operated by members of Congress. A second board was created in 1777, the Board of War, to operate separately from Congress.[2] The Congress of the Confederation eventually replaced the system of boards with the Department of War.[3] Only five positions were created within the department upon its creation: the Secretary at War, an assistant, a secretary, and two clerks.[4]

Shortly after the establishment of a government under President George Washington in 1789, Congress reestablished the War Department as a civilian agency to administer the field army under the president (as commander-in-chief) and the secretary of war.[5] Retired senior General Henry Knox, then in civilian life, served as the first United States Secretary of War.[6] When the department was created, the president was authorized to appoint two inspectors to oversee the troops. Congress created several additional offices over the course of the 1790s, including the major general, brigadier general, quartermaster general, chaplain, surgeon general, adjutant general, superintendent of military stores, paymaster general, judge advocate, inspector general, physician general, apothecary general, purveyor, and accountant.[7]

Forming and organizing the department and the army fell to Secretary Knox, while direct field command of the small Regular Army fell to President Washington.[citation needed] In 1798, Congress authorized President John Adams to create a second provisional army under the command of former President Washington in anticipation of the Quasi-War, but this army was never utilized.[8] The Department of War was also responsible for overseeing interactions with Native Americans in its early years.[9]

On November 8, 1800, the War Department building with its records and files was consumed by fire.[10]

19th century

The

Department of the Interior.[15][16] The U.S. Soldiers' Home was created in 1851.[17]

During the American Civil War, the War Department responsibilities expanded. It handled the recruiting, training, supply, medical care, transportation and pay of two million soldiers, comprising both the regular army and the much larger temporary volunteer army. A separate command structure took charge of military operations.

In the late stages of the war, the department took charge of refugees and freedmen (freed slaves) in the American South through the

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.[18] During the Reconstruction era
, this bureau played a major role in supporting the new Republican governments in the southern states. When military Reconstruction ended in 1877, the U.S. Army removed the last troops from military occupation of the American South, and the last Republican state governments in the region ended.

The picture of a map with the weather conditions during the War of the Pacific.
U.S. War Department weather map depicting weather conditions on October 21, 1879, over New England at 7:35 am. Produced for the U.S. Army during the War of the Pacific.

The Army comprised hundreds of small detachments in forts around the West, dealing with Indians, and in coastal artillery units in port cities, dealing with the threat of a naval attack.[19]

1898–1939

The United States Army, with 39,000 men in 1890 was the smallest and least powerful army of any major power in the late 19th century. By contrast, France had an army of 542,000.[20] Temporary volunteers and state militia units mostly fought the Spanish–American War of 1898. This conflict demonstrated the need for more effective control over the department and its bureaus.[21]

Secretary of War Elihu Root (1899–1904) sought to appoint a chief of staff as general manager and a European-type general staff for planning, aiming to achieve this goal in a businesslike manner, but General Nelson A. Miles stymied his efforts. Root enlarged the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York and established the United States Army War College and the General Staff. He changed the procedures for promotions and organized schools for the special branches of the service. He also devised the principle of rotating officers from staff to line. Concerned about the new territories acquired after the Spanish–American War, Root worked out the procedures for turning Cuba over to the Cubans, wrote the charter of government for the Philippines, and eliminated tariffs on goods imported to the United States from Puerto Rico.

Root's successor as Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, returned to the traditional secretary-bureau chief alliance, subordinating the chief of staff to the adjutant general, a powerful office since its creation in 1775. Indeed, Secretary Taft exercised little power; President Theodore Roosevelt made the major decisions. In 1911, Secretary Henry L. Stimson and Major General Leonard Wood, his chief of staff, revived the Root reforms. The general staff assisted them in their efforts to rationalize the organization of the army along modern lines and in supervising the bureaus.[22]

World War I

The Congress reversed these changes in support of the bureaus and in the

George W. Goethals acting quartermaster general and General Peyton C. March chief of staff. Assisted by industrial advisers, they reorganized the supply system of the army and practically wiped out the bureaus as quasi-independent agencies. General March reorganized the general staff along similar lines and gave it direct authority over departmental operations. After the war, the Congress again granted the bureaus their former independence. The Commission on Training Camp Activities addressed moral standards of the troops.[23]

In the 1920s, General John J. Pershing realigned the general staff on the pattern of his American Expeditionary Force (AEF) field headquarters, which he commanded. The general staff in the early 1920s exercised little effective control over the bureaus, but the chiefs of staff gradually gained substantial authority over them by 1939, when General George C. Marshall assumed the office of Army Chief of Staff.

World War II

During

Services of Supply (later Army Service Forces) directed administrative and logistical operations. The Operations Division acted as general planning staff for Marshall. By 1942, the Army Air Forces gained virtual independence in every way from the rest of the army.[24]

Postwar

After World War II, the Department of War abandoned Marshall's organization for the fragmented prewar pattern while the independent services continually parried efforts to reestablish firm executive control over their operations. The

Secretary of the Air Force
served as operating managers for the new Secretary of Defense.

Office space

The State, War, and Navy Building in 1917

In the early years, between 1797 and 1800, the Department of War was headquartered in

Old Executive Office Building, and later renamed to honor General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower
), built in the same location as its predecessors.

By the 1930s, the

Munitions Building, a temporary structure built on the National Mall during World War I. In the late 1930s, the government constructed the War Department Building (renamed in 2000 as the Harry S Truman Building) at 21st and C Streets in Foggy Bottom, but upon completion, the new building did not solve the space problem of the department, and the Department of State ultimately used it.[25]

Coming into office with World War II raging in Europe and Asia, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson faced with the situation of the War Department spread through the overcrowded Munitions Building and numerous other buildings across Washington, D.C., and suburban

Arlington, Virginia, which would house the entire department under one roof.[28] When construction of the Pentagon
was completed in 1943, the Secretary of War vacated the Munitions Building and the department began moving into the Pentagon.

Organization

The United States Secretary of War, a member of the United States Cabinet, headed the War Department.

The National Security Act of 1947 established the National Military Establishment, later renamed the United States Department of Defense. On the same day this act was signed, Executive Order 9877 assigned primary military functions and responsibilities[29] with the former War Department split between the Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force.

In the aftermath of World War II, the American government (among others around the world) decided to abandon the word 'War' when referring to the civilian leadership of their military. One vestige of the former nomenclature is the names of the service was colleges: the Army War College, the

Air War College
, which still train U.S. military officers in battlefield tactics and the strategy of war fighting.

Seal of the department

Main article:
Department of the Army Seal and Emblem

The date "MDCCLXXVIII" and the designation "War Office" are indicative of the origin of the seal. The date (1778) refers to the year of its adoption. The term "War Office" used during the Revolution, and for many years afterward, was associated with the Headquarters of the Army.

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Establishment of the Department of War – US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". house.gov. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
  2. ^ Short 1923, pp. 37–40.
  3. ^ Short 1923, pp. 61–62.
  4. ^ Short 1923, pp. 70–71.
  5. ^ Chap. VII. 1 Stat. 49 from "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U. S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875". Library of Congress, Law Library of Congress. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  6. ^ Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword the Beginnings of the Military Establishment in America (1975) ch 6
  7. ^ Short 1923, pp. 119–122.
  8. ^ Short 1923, p. 121.
  9. ^ Short 1923, p. 125.
  10. ^ United States War Dept Board on Business Methods (August 17, 1889). Business Methods in the War Department: Report of the Board Appointed in Compliance with the Request of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Methods of Business in the Executive Departments. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 184 – via Internet Archive. War Department Building burn in 1814.
  11. ^ Short 1923, p. 123.
  12. ^ Short 1923, p. 122.
  13. ^ Short 1923, p. 126.
  14. ^ Short 1923, p. 131.
  15. ISSN 0038-3082
  16. ^ Francis P. Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Abridged Edition 1986) excerpt and text search
  17. ^ Short 1923, p. 135.
  18. ^ George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (1955)
  19. ^ Robert Marshall Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (1984)
  20. ^ Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) p. 154, 203
  21. ^ Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for Empire: The United States Army and the Spanish–American War (1971)
  22. ^ Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (2002)
  23. ^ "Moral Uplifting – World War I Centennial". www.worldwar1centennial.org. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
  24. ^ Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (1960).
  25. ^ Goldberg, Alfred (1992). The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years. Office of Secretary of Defense / Government Printing Office. pp. 4–9.
  26. ^ "Intro – Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army". United States Army Center of Military History. 1992. Archived from the original on December 28, 2007. Retrieved October 17, 2008.
  27. ISBN 978-1400063031
    .
  28. ^ Goldberg, Alfred (1992). The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years. Office of Secretary of Defense / Government Printing Office. p. 22.
  29. ^ "USAF Established". Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved June 23, 2014.

Bibliography

External links

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External images
1945 War Department Organization
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