Grant Creates Modern Staff System for the White House March-April 1869

Grant was sworn in as president on March 4, 1869. His cabinet was nominated and confirmed in his first week in office. One innovation of Grant’s was the creation of a sophisticated White House Staff system outside the need for approval by the Senate. Historian Charles Calhoun describes the functioning of the staff:

In 1857 Congress had begun paying for a small presidential staff, and since then, presidents had employed private secretaries to assist them, especially with correspondence. Grant went further. He not only increased the number of staff members but, drawing on his wartime experience, also gave them substantive responsibilities. Nominally, his official private secretary was Robert Douglas, son of the late Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, but Grant gave Douglas relatively little to do. To a much greater degree he turned to the men who had served as his military aides. Under an arrangement with Sherman, staff officers who had served under General Grant were now detailed to the White House as President Grant’s private secretaries. They kept their army salaries and did not require Senate confirmation. Horace Porter and Orville Babcock, both West Point graduates, handled the burgeoning correspondence and other paperwork, most of which related to patronage. Frederick Dent, Grant’s brother-in-law, manned the reception room, an innovation in the executive office. Occupying a separate space outside the president’s office, Dent screened all visitors and much of the mail. With the help of two messengers, two doorkeepers, and a clerk, he kept the crowd of office seekers at bay, and no one saw the president or the other secretaries without his permission. From the beginning, Grant relied heavily on this staff… [From: Calhoun, Charles W.. The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (American Presidency Series) (p. 77). University Press of Kansas. Kindle Edition.]

The use of active duty military men to staff the White House led to fears of encroaching military control over the civilian government among Democrats. Orville Babcock emerged as Grant’s “major domo” according to Calhoun. He managed patronage within the administration and fed information to friendly newspapers on Grant’s opponents.

 

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