The First Official Executive Order Was Issued By President Abraham Lincoln



Executive Orders: History and Context. In photo: Photo adaptation - Abraham Lincoln.President Joe Biden issued a total of 160 Executive orders during his time in the White House, with his last being numbered Executive Order ("EO") 14144.

This means that there have been a total of 14,144 "official" executive orders issued.

In 1907, the US Department of State decided that they would going to start numbering Executive Orders. They also decided that they would start retroactively with an order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on October 20th, 1862.

This order is officially known as "Executive Order 1".

Were Executive Orders issued before October 20th, 1862? Absolutely.

The first Executive Order was issued by President George Washington on June 8th, 1789.

Executive Orders issued before 1907 were quite often kept from the general public and were essentially directives to different Departments in the White House.

In this day and age, Executive Orders are usually very well-publicized - in fact, President Donald Trump signed a number of EOs in front of a live crowd the day that he was sworn in as President for the second time.

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So - what exactly was Executive Order 1?

Executive Order 1 was titled "Executive Order Establishing a Provisional Court in Louisiana".

This order, issued in the middle of the Civil War, meant to establish a provisional court in Louisiana while the state was under "military occupation".

This order established the rates that the judge, prosecuting attorney and others would receive out of the contingent fund of the War Department, with the judge receiving $3,500 per year, the prosecuting attorney receiving $3,000 per year and the court marshal receiving $3,000 per year.

This is the first "official" EO, and has the title of Executive Order 1.

Filed under: General Knowledge

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