The first executive order was used by George Washington on June 8, 1789, to instruct the heads of all federal departments to create a State of the Union for the newborn country. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued one that became known as the Emancipation Proclamation—ultimately freeing three million slaves. And nearly a century later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a 550-word executive order that called for the United States government to incarcerate over a hundred and twenty thousand of its own citizens and residents of Japanese descent in concentration camps constructed across the Western
...more
