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Alexander Hamilton
Born
The first Treasury Secretary had a department Congress had just created and few precedents. Hamilton used it to have the federal government assume state war debts, found the First Bank of the United States in 1791 and argue for its constitutionality through implied powers, a reading that still frames federal authority.
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Albert Gallatin
Born
Jefferson's Treasury Secretary from 1801 to 1814 cut the national debt while finding the money for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, largely through bonds. His 1808 report on roads and canals set out the first national plan for federally funded infrastructure.
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John Quincy Adams
Born
As Monroe's Secretary of State, Adams negotiated the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, which secured Florida from Spain and drew a border to the Pacific, and he was the main author of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. He insisted it be a unilateral American statement rather than a joint one with Britain.
More about John Quincy Adams4
William H. Seward
Born
Seward served Lincoln and Johnson as Secretary of State, keeping Britain and France out of the Civil War, and in 1867 negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. Mocked at the time as "Seward's Folly", the treaty is the clearest case of a secretary's own initiative.
More about William H. Seward5
Edwin Stanton
Born
Lincoln's Secretary of War from 1862 ran the Union's military logistics, railways and telegraph, and led the pursuit of Lincoln's assassins. When Andrew Johnson tried to dismiss him in 1868, Stanton refused to leave his office, and the removal, made in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, led to the first presidential impeachment.
More about Edwin Stanton6
John Hay
Born
Secretary of State under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Hay issued the Open Door Notes of 1899 and 1900, asking the powers to keep trade with China equal and its territory intact. He also negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote and Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaties that cleared the way for the Panama Canal.
More about John Hay7
Elihu Root
Born
As Secretary of War from 1899, Root created the Army War College and a general staff, the basis of the modern army's command structure. He also wrote the colonial governance of the Philippines and the Platt Amendment for Cuba, a record critics see as imperial, before winning a Nobel Peace Prize for arbitration treaties as Secretary of State.
More about Elihu Root8
Andrew Mellon
Born
Mellon was Treasury Secretary under three presidents, 1921 to 1932, and his programme of steep cuts to top income tax rates defined 1920s fiscal policy. He remains a reference point in arguments over supply-side economics, and his policies after the 1929 crash are widely criticised.
More about Andrew Mellon9
Frances Perkins
Born
The first woman in a US cabinet, Perkins took the Labor job in 1933 on condition that Roosevelt back her agenda. She chaired the Committee on Economic Security that designed the Social Security Act of 1935 and drove the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, with its minimum wage and limits on child labour.
More about Frances Perkins10
Harold L. Ickes
Born
Interior Secretary from 1933 to 1946 and head of the Public Works Administration, Ickes directed billions into dams, bridges, schools and housing while keeping a reputation for clean spending. He also arranged Marian Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial after she was barred from Constitution Hall.
More about Harold L. Ickes11
Henry Morgenthau Jr.
Born
Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary financed the war through mass-market war bonds and pushed the 1944 report that led to the War Refugee Board, which helped rescue Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe. His Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialise postwar Germany was adopted briefly and then dropped.
More about Henry Morgenthau Jr.12
Henry L. Stimson
Born
As Secretary of War from 1940 to 1945, Stimson oversaw the Manhattan Project and advised Truman on using the atomic bomb, while removing Kyoto from the target list. He also administered the internment of Japanese Americans, a decision now regarded as a grave injustice.
More about Henry L. Stimson13
George C. Marshall
Born
Marshall's Harvard speech of June 1947, as Truman's Secretary of State, launched the European Recovery Program, about 13 billion dollars of aid to rebuild Western Europe. He later served as Secretary of Defense during the Korean War and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
More about George C. Marshall14
Dean Acheson
Born
Acheson, Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953, signed the North Atlantic Treaty and shaped containment into institutions. His January 1950 speech leaving Korea outside a stated defence perimeter is still debated as a possible invitation to the North's invasion that June.
More about Dean Acheson15
John Foster Dulles
Born
Eisenhower's Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 built a ring of alliances such as SEATO and argued for massive retaliation and "brinkmanship". His backing of covert action, including the coups in Iran and Guatemala carried out with his brother Allen at the CIA, remains one of the most criticised parts of the Cold War record.
More about John Foster Dulles16
Robert F. Kennedy
Born
As Attorney General from 1961 to 1964, Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, and expanded Justice Department voting rights suits. He was also a key adviser in the Cuban missile crisis, while approving FBI wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr.
More about Robert F. Kennedy17
Robert McNamara
Born
McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, brought systems analysis and centralised budgeting to the Pentagon and oversaw the escalation in Vietnam. His later admission, in the 1995 memoir In Retrospect, that he and his colleagues had been "wrong, terribly wrong" makes him essential to any study of accountability in office.
More about Robert McNamara18
Henry Kissinger
Born
Kissinger held the State Department from 1973 to 1977, after years as national security adviser, and his shuttle diplomacy after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war produced the first disengagement agreements. Admirers point to détente and the opening to China; critics to Cambodia, Chile and East Timor.
More about Henry Kissinger19
Elliot Richardson
Born
Richardson held four cabinet posts, but one choice defines him. Ordered by Nixon in October 1973 to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, the Attorney General resigned instead, and the "Saturday Night Massacre" turned public opinion towards impeachment.
More about Elliot Richardson20
James Baker
Born
Baker shaped two departments. At Treasury he negotiated the 1985 Plaza Accord to bring down the dollar and helped pass the Tax Reform Act of 1986; as Secretary of State from 1989 he managed German reunification within NATO and built the coalition for the 1991 Gulf War.
More about James Baker21
Robert Rubin
Born
Clinton's Treasury Secretary from 1995 to 1999 used the Exchange Stabilization Fund to rescue Mexico in the 1995 peso crisis when Congress would not act, and pressed for the deficit reduction that produced budget surpluses. Critics link his support for financial deregulation to the risks that surfaced in 2008.
More about Robert Rubin22
Colin Powell
Born
As Secretary of State, Powell presented the case against Iraq to the UN Security Council in February 2003, citing weapons programmes that were later shown not to exist. He called the speech a permanent "blot" on his record, and it remains a study in how a trusted official's credibility can be spent.
More about Colin Powell23
Donald Rumsfeld
Born
Rumsfeld's second spell at Defense, from 2001 to 2006, set the light-footprint plan for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and approved interrogation techniques later tied to abuses at Abu Ghraib. Supporters credited his push to modernise the military; critics blame his planning for the chaos after the invasion.
More about Donald Rumsfeld24
Henry Paulson
Born
In September 2008 Treasury Secretary Paulson took Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, declined to rescue Lehman Brothers and asked Congress for the 700 billion dollar TARP fund, which he then used to inject capital directly into the banks. The rescue still divides opinion about bailouts and moral hazard.
More about Henry Paulson
