To Edmund Randolph, Washington offered the responsible position of attorney-general of the United States. They had differed materially in their opinions concerning the federal constitution, and it will be remembered that Randolph refused to sign it; but he had in a great degree become reconciled to the measure; and at no time was the friendship between himself and Washington interrupted by their diversity of political sentiments. Washington knew Randolph's great worth and eminent abilities, and urged him to accept the office. He complied, and some months afterward entered upon its duties.
John Jay, one of the brightest minds of the remarkable century in which he lived, and an acute lawyer, was chosen to fill the office of chief justice of the United States. “I have a full confidence,” wrote Washington to Mr. Jay, “that the love which you bear to our country, and a desire to promote the general happiness, will not suffer you to hesitate a moment to bring into action the talents, knowledge, and integrity, which are so necessary to be exercised at the head of that department which must be considered the keystone of our political fabric.”
Mr. Jay accepted the office; and for his associates on the bench, the president selected William Cushing, then chief justice of Massachusetts; James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, a very conspicuous member of the general convention of 1787; Robert H. Harrison, then chief justice of Maryland, who during a large portion of the war for independence had been one of Washington's most loved confidential secretaries; John Blair, one of the judges of the court of appeals in Virginia; and John Rutledge, the bold, outspoken patriot of South Carolina. Harrison declined, and James Iredell, of North Carolina, was substituted.
The office of secretary of state remained to be filled. To that important post the president invited Thomas Jefferson, whose long and varied experience in public affairs at home and abroad thoroughly qualified him for the duties of that office. He was then the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at the French court, having succeeded Doctor Franklin. He had obtained leave to return home for a few months. He sailed from Havre to England late in September, and embarked from Cowes for America. He landed at Norfolk on the twenty-third of November; and on his way to Monticello, his beautiful seat near Charlottesville in Virginia, he received a letter from Washington, dated the thirteenth of October, in which he was invited to a seat in the cabinet as secretary of state. “In the selection of characters,” the president said, “to fill the important offices of government, I was naturally led to contemplate the talents and disposition which I knew you to possess and entertain for the service of your country; and without being able to consult your inclination, or to derive any knowledge of your intentions from your letters either to myself or to any of your friends, I was determined, as well by motives of private regard as a conviction of public propriety, to nominate you for the department of state, which, under its present organization, involves many of the most interesting objects of the executive authority.”
Mr. Jefferson, who had become enamored with the leaders and the principles of the French revolution then just inaugurated by the destruction of the Bastile and other acts, preferred to remain in Europe; but, yielding to the wishes of the president, he signified his willingness to accept the office. He was fearful that he would not be equal to the requirements of the station; but, he said, “my chief comfort will be to work under your eye, my only shelter the authority of your name, and the wisdom of measures to be dictated by you and implicitly executed by me.”
The office of secretary of the navy was not created until early in 1798, when war with France was anticipated. A navy was then formed, and a naval department established; and at the close of April, Benjamin Stoddart, of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, was appointed the secretary, and became a cabinet officer. The postmaster-general did not become an executive officer until 1829, the first year of President Jackson's administration, when William T. Barry entered the cabinet as the head of the post-office department. Since then a new department has been established, called the department of the interior, the head of which is a cabinet officer.
The Congress adjourned on the twenty-ninth of September, after a session of more than six months, to meet again on the first Monday in January. Their last act was to appoint a joint committee to wait on the president and “request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peacefully to establish a constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”
The president complied, and by proclamation he recommended that the twenty-sixth of November “be devoted by the people of these states to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may thus all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now recently instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.”