Trump suggests bringing back secretary of war. Why did the title get dropped?

Brendan Rascius, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) on Jun 26, 2025

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President Donald Trump said he wants to bring back a long-retired title: secretary of war. Why was it dropped in the first place?

Trump brought up the idea of a name change while introducing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a June 25 news conference in the Netherlands, which hosted this year’s NATO summit.

“You know, it used to be called secretary of war,” the president said. “Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.”

“In fact, if you look at the old building next to the White House, you can see where it used to be secretary of war,” Trump added. “Then we became politically correct and they called it secretary of defense. Maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it.”

Here’s why the secretary of war came to be known as the secretary of defense.

The title of secretary of war dates back to the founding of the United States.

In 1789, shortly after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, President George Washington signed legislation establishing the War Department, according to the Department of Defense.

The new department was tasked with overseeing and maintaining the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, all of which were set up three years earlier.

Washington chose Henry Knox, one of his aides during the Revolutionary War — and the namesake of Fort Knox — to serve as its first secretary.

Then, less than a decade later, in 1798, the scope of the department shrank, when management of the Navy was handed over to the newly formed Navy Department. And, in 1834, the Marine Corps was moved under the Navy Department, leaving just the Army under the War Department.

In 1879, following the Civil War, the War Department took up headquarters in the newly built Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It was then referred to as the State-War-Navy Building — as Trump referenced in his recent news conference.

In 1947, during the aftermath of World War II, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which combined the War and Navy Departments, as well as the newly formed Air Force, into one organization known as the National Military Establishment.

This new organization was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949, according to Dartmouth University records.

James Forrestal, who had previously served as the secretary of the Navy, then became the nation’s first secretary of defense.

This title has remained in use ever since then, with Hegseth being the country’s 29th secretary of defense.