Neither the Constitution nor Congressional legislation created key structures of the U.S. government like the President’s Cabinet. So how did the Cabinet first come into existence?
So much of our government requires people following what the person before them did. The early government was a great example of this because if we look at the text of the Constitution, it’s description of the presidency is really quite limited. Article II is very short. There's not a whole lot of guidance about what day to day governing should look like.
Maybe the delegates to the [1789?] Constitutional Convention expected Washington to just figure it out. Maybe Washington was in the room, and they were uncomfortable discussing limitations to his activities. It's hard to say because they didn't necessarily write it down, but whatever the reason, much was left up to him to determine what to do once he was in office and to figure out what worked best.
The delegates basically gave the president two options: One was that he could consult with the Senate on foreign affairs, the other was that he could request written advice from the department secretaries about issues pertaining to their departments.
Washington very quickly concluded that those options just weren't sufficient or prompt enough. They didn't allow for the complex dialogue that was necessary to deal with the issues in front of him. So he created the cabinet to provide the support and advice that he needed. No legislation, no constitutional amendment created any of these things.
The idea of direct reports is pretty common, and it would have been the management style that Washington was familiar with as a general. Why wasn't that the obvious way to proceed from the beginning?
The government form that these people were familiar with at the time was the British system, which had ministers that held seats in Parliament, while at the same time they were serving as the king's advisors. They had a seat in power in the legislature while also serving as advisors. That was something that Americans were very cautious to try and avoid.
They really thought of the department secretaries as being mini-bureaucrats that would help take care of some details and would report on those issues to the president. Initially, they didn't want the secretaries meeting with the president secretly and providing advice because they thought that that would encourage corruption and might allow them to avoid taking responsibility for their decisions.
If decisions were made behind closed doors, there wouldn't be transparency at the highest levels of government. So the delegates put very clearly [in the Constitution?] that the president could request written advice, and it would force people to be held accountable for the positions they were promoting.
Washington, of course, came from a military background and so the idea that when he would go meet with the Senate and they would say, “Well, we'd really like to refer the issue back to committee,”—that didn't really fly with his desire for efficient and speedy answers. He wanted a system where he could issue an order, and the secretaries would give him their opinions or at least if they needed more time, then they would write a written opinion. He needed something that was more immediate, because the issues facing the executive were incredibly complicated and unprecedented.