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United States Department of War — news, coverage & facts — IJR

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. The Congress of the Confederation eventually replaced the system of boards with the Department of War. Only five positions were created within the department upon its creation: the secretary at war, an assistant, a secretary, and two clerks.

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. Retired senior General Henry Knox, then in civilian life, served as the first United States secretary of war. 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.

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. 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. The Department of War was also responsible for overseeing interactions with Native Americans in its early years.

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

Office space

In the early years, between 1797 and 1800, the Department of War was headquartered in Philadelphia; it moved with the other federal agencies to the new national capital at Washington, D.C., in 1800. In 1820, headquarters moved into a building at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, adjacent to the Executive Mansion, part of a complex of four matching brick Georgian/Federal style buildings for Cabinet departments with War in the northwest, Navy in the southwest and to the other side: State to the northeast and Treasury in the southeast. The War Department building was supplemented in the 1850s by a building across the street to the west known as the Annex and became very important during the Civil War with President Abraham Lincoln visiting the War Office's telegraph room for constant updates and reports and walking back and forth to the "Residence". The original 1820 structures for War and Navy on the west side of the White House was replaced in 1888 by construction of a new building of French Empire design with mansard roofs, the "State, War, and Navy Building" (now the 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 Department of State squeezed the War Department from its office space, and the White House also desired additional office space. In August 1939, Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring and Acting Chief of Staff of the Army George C. Marshall moved their offices into 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.

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 Maryland and Virginia. On July 28, 1941, Congress authorized funding for a new Department of War building in Arlington, Virginia, which would house the entire department under one roof. 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.