General Discussion

President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented Henry Stimson with his commission as Secretary of War
after the oath of office had been administered to the Republican on July 10, 1940.

In an effort to build bipartisan support to rescue an embattled democracy abroad, Roosevelt took the
extraordinary step on July 10 of naming two key Republicans to significant posts in his Cabinet. For
secretary of War, he chose Henry Stimson, who had served as secretary of State under his predecessor
Herbert Hoover. For secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt named Frank Knox, who had run for vice president
with Alf Landon on the 1936 GOP ticket, and who’d assailed FDR’s “crackpot ideas.”