From 1899, when the Navy's Civil War-era four-star grade was recreated after the Spanish-American War, through 1947, when the Officer Personnel Act defined the post-World War II military establishment, four-star grades evolved along two parallel tracks, one decorative and one functional.
Decorative four-star grades were permanent personal promotions that rewarded exceptional field commanders after a war. Such promotions included full active-duty pay and allowances for life, and were awarded after the Spanish-American War to George Dewey, with the title Admiral of the Navy; after World War I to John J. Pershing, with the title General of the Armies; and after World War II to one temporary four-star officer in every armed service. Purely ornamental, they were meant to recognize past accomplishments, not to help perform current or future jobs.
Functional four-star grades were temporary boosts in rank held ex officio while serving in specific jobs, or as a personal grade during a wartime emergency. Upon leaving an office designated to carry four-star rank, or at the end of the war that authorized emergency or temporary four-star grades, an officer reverted to his permanent grade on the active list, although he was typically restored to four-star rank on the retired list if he lived long enough.
Modern four-star grades are descended from the functional grades that were first created in the Navy in 1915, not the Civil War-era decorative grades, and continue to work in substantially the same way, as codified by the Officer Personnel Act of 1947 and its successor, the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act of 1980.
History
Appointment
Admiral of the Navy
In November 1898, Navy secretary John D. Long asked Congress to revive the grades of admiral and vice admiral to reward the triumphant naval commanders of the Spanish-American War. It was widely acknowledged that George Dewey's victory at the Battle of Manila Bay had earned him Farragut's grade of admiral, but the grade of vice admiral became mired in the so-called Sampson-Schley controversy, the public feud between William T. Sampson and Winfield S. Schley over who deserved credit for winning the Battle of Santiago de Cuba.
The House Naval Affairs Committee reported a bill authorizing a single appointment in each grade, intended to be Dewey and Sampson, and a competing bill in the Senate would have revived both grades permanently. Since Dewey would reach statutory retirement age in less than a year, the House bill also continued him on active duty until he completed fifty-five years of service, a privilege previously extended to senior naval officers who were personally voted the Thanks of Congress during the Civil War.Act of July 16, 1862 ().
By February, the bill was still stalled by Sampson-Schley partisans fighting over the vice admiralcy, so Dewey's promotion was repackaged as a standalone bill that simply authorized the appointment of an Admiral of the Navy who could remain on active duty until he asked to retire. The new bill passed easily on March 2, 1899. The next day, Congress passed a Navy personnel law that implicitly abolished the grade by not including the Admiral of the Navy in its list of active-duty line officers, so the identical text to authorize the grade was inserted in the annual naval appropriation bill, which passed later that day and assigned the grade the same annual pay of $13,500 given to the General of the Army in 1870.Acts of March 2, 1899 (), March 3, 1899 (), and March 3, 1899 ().
Although titled "Admiral of the Navy" instead of "admiral", Dewey held the same grade as Farragut and Porter, who had also been called the Admiral of the Navy during their respective tenures as the only admiral in the Navy. The Comptroller of the Treasury ruled in 1900 that the grade of Admiral of the Navy revived the 1866 grade of admiral and therefore ranked with Sheridan's grade, which had the analogous title of "General of the Army of the United States". The Supreme Court interpreted Dewey's grade the same way in 1912. Dewey even mistakenly received a commission as admiral in the Navy in 1899, and had to be renominated as Admiral of the Navy four years later to correct it. Press reports speculated that the correction had to be made because an Admiral of the Navy was actually equivalent to an admiral of the fleet, but Dewey himself defined his rank as admiral when comparing United States Navy flag grades with those of other nations in 1906.
By 1912, Navy officials were calling Dewey's grade equivalent to an admiral of the fleet, one rank higher than Farragut and Porter, as they lobbied Congress to permanently reestablish three- and four-star grades for peacetime use. However, Navy regulations continued to rank the Admiral of the Navy with a general in the Army until 1915, when the reestablished grades of admiral and vice admiral were inserted below the Admiral of the Navy, whose salute was increased to 19 guns from the 17 guns of an admiral or general. The annual pay of a 1915 admiral was only $10,000, while the Admiral of the Navy received $13,500, further distinguishing the two grades.Acts of May 4, 1908 (), and March 3, 1915 (). By 1916, Dewey's office had even acquired the definite article—The Admiral of the Navy, who was senior to all other admirals in the NavyAct of August 29, 1916 (). —following the precedent set by the Army in 1907 when Congress gave the top officer in the Adjutant General's Department the title of The Adjutant General, who was senior to all other adjutants general in the Army.Acts of April 23, 1904 (), and March 2, 1907 (). In 1924, four more Army department heads were authorized to capitalize the word The in their titles: The Inspector General, The Judge Advocate General, The Quartermaster General, and The Surgeon General.
Designated admirals
Congress had always held that three- and four-star promotions were meant to reward conspicuous service in time of war, not routine peacetime assignments, and ignored decades of Navy pleas to revive the grades of admiral and vice admiral to keep overseas commanders from being outranked by foreign flag officers commanding smaller forces. By 1911, a compromise had emerged whereby permanent promotions to admiral would still be reserved for war heroes like Dewey, but a rear admiral could be designated to hold temporary four-star rank while commanding a fleet and then revert to his permanent two-star grade. In 1912, an amendment was introduced to reestablish the grade of admiral on this ex officio basis for the commanders in chief of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, but it failed on a point of order. A second attempt, motivated by an incident where a British rear admiral had outranked the American commander during the Tampico Affair, also failed in early 1914.
Finally, in January 1915, the House Naval Affairs Committee reported a bill to create three admirals and three vice admirals, on the grounds that the fleet was now large enough to employ them. Officers were not actually promoted to those grades, but remained rear admirals temporarily designated by the President to have the rank and pay of an admiral or vice admiral while assigned as commander in chief or second in command of the Atlantic Fleet, Pacific Fleet, or Asiatic Fleet. They therefore did not need Senate confirmation but also could not retire in that grade or, later, base a tombstone promotion on it. The law passed on March 3, 1915, and Frank F. Fletcher, Thomas B. Howard, and Walter C. Cowles, commanders in chief of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic Fleets, respectively, were designated as admirals on March 10, 11, and 12, establishing their relative seniority. Four months later, Cowles became the first admiral to revert to rear admiral when he turned over command of the Asiatic Fleet and retired on July 10.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Congress relaxed the law to let the President designate as admiral any three commanders of fleets or subdivisions of fleets, not just the commanders in chief of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic Fleets, which allowed a four-star designation to be transferred from the Asiatic Fleet to the commander of naval forces in Europe, William S. Sims, in December 1918.Act of May 22, 1917 (). A fourth admiral designation had been authorized in 1916 for the chief of naval operations, William S. Benson, so he would outrank the four-star fleet commanders he was directing.
Emergency generals
Four-star grades reappeared in the Army in October 1917, when Congress authorized the chief of staff of the Army, Tasker H. Bliss, and the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France, John J. Pershing, to hold the ex officio grades of general during the wartime emergency.Act of October 6, 1917 (). The emergency generals of 1917 had the same annual pay of $10,000 as the designated admirals of 1915, as opposed to the $13,500 paid to the permanent generals of 1866, but were entitled to other privileges of an 1866 general such as the right to appoint aides with the rank and pay of a colonel of cavalry. The Comptroller General ruled in 1920 that the emergency four-star grade was a different office than the 1866 grade that was revived for Pershing in 1919.The right to appoint aides with the rank and pay of a colonel of cavalry was repealed by the National Defense Act Amendments of 1920.
Like a designated admiral, an emergency general's four-star rank was attached to his position, not his person, so when Bliss reached mandatory retirement age at the end of 1917, he reverted to his permanent grade of major general and was succeeded as emergency general and chief of staff by Peyton C. March. Because Bliss still needed four-star rank to serve alongside full generals from allied nations in his next assignment as United States permanent military representative to the Supreme War Council, he was reappointed emergency general by brevet, the last and highest brevet promotion awarded in the United States military.Act of March 1, 1869 ().
All emergency grades expired at the end of the war, so in July 1919, eight months after the armistice, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to reward March and Pershing by making them both permanent generals, with Pershing senior to March. The House Military Affairs Committee reported out separate bills to promote Pershing and March to General of the Armies of the United States, reviving the grade originally created for Washington in 1799 and subsequently awarded to Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan as "General of the Army of the United States". To ensure that Pershing would outrank March, Pershing's bill also repealed the 1917 law that made the Army chief of staff senior to all other Army officers.Act of May 12, 1917 (). March had made enemies in Congress during the war, so his bill did not pass and he reverted to major general when his emergency grade expired on June 30, 1920.
Wilson also asked Congress to recognize the Navy's contribution to the war by promoting Benson and Sims to permanent admiral. In September 1919, the House passed a bill to make Benson and Sims permanent admirals with the same pay and seniority over other admirals as an Admiral of the Navy, but it died in the Senate, which wanted Benson, Sims, and retired Atlantic Fleet commander Henry T. Mayo to be permanent vice admirals instead. By February 1920, a public brawl between Sims and the Navy Department over the conduct of the war had drained any appetite to give either admiral a higher permanent grade—or any other World War I officer, including March and Bliss. Sims, Benson, March, and Bliss finally regained their wartime ranks on the retired list in 1930, but without the extra pay and equivalence to Dewey and Pershing that would have accompanied a permanent promotion in 1919.Act of June 21, 1930 (). Morison (1942), pp. 486–487, 518.
General of the Armies