Department of War Had a Robust History

Within hours Friday of President Donald Trump signing an executive order restoring the U.S. Department of Defense to its pre-1947 name as the Department of War, actions were taken to follow through on the name change.

Along with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referring to himself as Secretary of War, a new emblem for the War Department was unveiled and the Pentagon's website reflected the name change.

In what one expert estimated would cost a minimum of $7 million, stationery, napkins, and menus in the Pentagon cafeteria and entrances and office signs in 40 states and 50 countries will be altered from Department of Defense to Department of War.

The president himself has explained that this name change is not so much renaming the umbrella department for America's armed forces but restoring the name it had from its creation in 1789 until an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947 led it to rechristen the Department of War as its present incarnation.

As the Department of War, America's civilian military agency had a robust history that included many notable Americans at its helm. George Washington named one of his closest military comrades, retired General Henry Knox, the first secretary of war. Knox, who had been chief of artillery in all of Washington's campaigns in the American Revolution, oversaw the civilian and military leadership of the army as well as the navy of the fledgling United States.

That changed in 1798, when President John Adams signed legislation separating the navy from the War Department into its own cabinet-level department.

Edwin Stanton, a high-powered corporate lawyer, served as Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war during the Civil War. In that capacity, he mobilized America's Army of the Republic to save the union.

Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln served as secretary of war under Republican Presidents James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Future President William Howard Taft was Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, as his father Alphonso Taft held the same office under President Ulysses S. Grant — thus making the Tafts one of only two father-son duos to have held the same Cabinet office.

Woodrow Wilson turned to Newton D. Baker, the reform mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, to be his secretary of war and thus be in charge of reviving a moribund U.S. Army on the eve of the First World War.

Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a similar task to Henry L. Stimson, a New York Republican who had served as Herbert Hoover's secretary of state and had previously held the War secretaryship under President Taft. Under Stimson's leadership, the U.S. Army swelled to become the largest and best-armed force in history to win World War II.

The last secretary of war was Kenneth C. Royall, who held the office for two months before it was officially scrapped and then became the first secretary of the Army. An amendment to the National Security Act in 1949 changed what was then known as the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense — including the Departments of the Army and Navy, the new Department of the Air Force, and later the Coast Guard and U.S. Space Force.

Even the strongest supporters of the president's rebranding of the department agree that his executive order is only a start, and that it must eventually be accompanied by legislation to override the 1949 amendment naming it the Department of Defense. Already, Republican Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have introduced legislation to put into law the rebranding of Defense as War. Sources on Capitol Hill told Newsmax that this might also be put into law through an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act, which is expected to be voted on later this year.