The United States Army traces its birthday back to June 14, 1775—the date the Second Congressional Congress voted to adopt the New England army then encircling the British in Boston.

Almost a year later to the day—June 12, 1776—the Congress voted to establish the Board of war and Ordnance, the precursor to today’s Department of Defense.[1] One could therefore make the argument that June 12, 2026, is the 250th birthday of the department. At the very least, one could directly trace the department’s ancestry back that far.

Congress voted to establish the board in response to pressure from Gen. George Washington, who desperately needed help managing the logistics of feeding, clothing, arming, equipping, and otherwise supplying the army. He spent at least as much time begging (in a dignified but humble way) various colonies for support as he did planning and executing military strategy and tactics. Supply worries were never far from his mind. “The reflection upon my Situation, & that of this Army, produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in Sleep . . .” he wrote a confidant.[2]

But because everything about the Continental government was voluntary, that meant colonies—soon to be states—did not have to comply with Washington’s requests, let alone any Congressional resolutions. Colonies chronically undershot troop quotas and financial contributions.

Naivety ran high in those heady, early days of the war. Colonies believed militia, rather than a trained professional army, could somehow win the war. Their “patriotic spirit” would be enough to overcome the discipline and experience of the British army and its hired mercenaries. Even members of Congress, tied more regularly to military affairs through Washington’s correspondence, bought into the idea.

“You think the present army assisted by the militia is sufficient to oppose the force of Great Britain, formidable as it appears on paper,” one of Washington’s key confidents, Gen. Nathaniel Greene, told Congress in early June. He assured them they were “greatly deceived.”[3]

The creation of the Board of War did much to make the scales fall from Congressional eyes. It did so by bringing key members of Congress more directly into the management of the war.

The initial board consisted of Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, with John Adams of Massachusetts as chair. Adams, by that point, had already demonstrated a nearly endless capacity for work—he served on 26 committees at the time—so it’s little wonder that his colleagues tasked him with overseeing the vital work of running the war. The chairmanship made him, in essence, America’s first Secretary of War.

The Board held its first meeting on June 21, 1776. Among its duties, the Board handled

• the purchase of supplies, from clothes and food to guns and ammunition;
• the procurement of horses;
• pay for soldiers and officers;
• the establishment of goals for recruitment
• the establishment of policies for prisoner exchanges;
• account auditing;
• the management of personnel, from chaplains to teamsters to tradesmen;
• the review of all promotion requests.

Adams hated this last task, in particular, because of the petty jealousies among officers, many of whom seemed more interested in self-promotion than military success. “I am wearied to Death with the Wrangles between military officers, high and low,” he complained to his wife, Abigail. “They Quarrell like Cats and Dogs. They worry one another like Mastiffs. Scrambling for Rank and Pay like Apes for Nutts.”[4]

Most importantly, the Board of War provided basic civilian oversight of military affairs. Washington understood the importance of this function and supported it through his entire military and political career.

Adams saw a moral as well as a practical component to his work. “Men must be furnished with good and wholesome Provisions in Sufficient Plenty,” he wrote to Gen. Nathaniel Greene, a key confident to Washington. “They must be well paid—they must be well cloathed and well covered, with Barracks and Tents—they must be kept Warm with Suitable Fuel. In these Respects, We have not been able to do So well as We wished.”[5]

As the New York campaign unfolded over the late summer and into the fall of 1776, Adams got a much clearer picture of how well—or not—the “citizen-solider” ideal held up. “Wherever the [British] Men of War have approached, our Militia have most manfully turned their backs and run away, Officers and Men, like sturdy fellows,” he wrote to Abigail. “[A]nd their panicks have sometimes seized the regular Regiments.”[6] Adams blamed poor leadership by officers and suggested that shooting one of them now and then might incentivize the rest of them to better do their duty.

Aside from its day-to-day responsibilities, the Board would propose such ideas as the establishment of a military academy and the establishment of a navy.

Adams left for a diplomatic mission to Europe in the fall of 1777, and shortly thereafter, the Board began to evolve. Permanent administrators took over for the Congressional committee members, who could not keep up with the workload along with their other duties (particularly in light of the often-sporadic attendance of many delegates). Adams characterized the workload as “continual employment, not to say drudgery….”

The new arrangement lasted, with shifting membership, until February 7, 1781, when the Congress created a Department of War, replacing the Board. The following October, Congress appointed Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln as secretary of war.

In 1789, following the ratification of the Constitution and the election of Washington to the presidency, the Department of War was established as one of the first cabinet-level departments. Former general Henry Knox served as the first Secretary of War. The department existed until September 18, 1947, when Congress replaced it with the Department of Defense.

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Chris Mackowski is the author of Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution, part of the Emerging Revolutionary War Series from Savas Beatie.

[1] Currently, the Executive Branch refers to the department as the “Department of War,” although the department’s official name remains the “Department of Defense.” Originally, the department was called the Department of War, so for purposes of clarity, when talking about the historical entity, I’ll use “War Department,” but for modern references, I’ll use “Department of Defense.”

[2] “George Washington to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed, 14 January 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-03-02-0062. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, pp. 87–92.]

[3] “Nathanael Greene to John Adams, 2 June 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0100. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 227–231.]

[4] “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 22 May 1777,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0191. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, June 1776 – March 1778, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 245–246.]

[5] “John Adams to Nathanael Greene, 22 June 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0129. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 323–326.]

[6] “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 8 October 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0096. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, June 1776 – March 1778, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 139–141.]