The first four decades of what has come to be called the “American Experiment” were turbulent in the extreme. First there was a revolution to be won, despite the opposition to its goals expressed by nearly a third of the population. A failed attempt at a national government under the Articles of Confederation led to the creation of a strong federal government, creating disputes over the role of state’s rights that continue to the present day. Partisan politics created divides so wide that at one point a sitting Vice-President, Aaron Burr, killed a former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in an illegal duel. Though the causes of their enmity were many, at their core was a fundamental disagreement over politics.
There were armed insurrections over taxes, over veteran’s benefits, over slavery. During the John Adams administration, the United States fought an undeclared naval war with France. Jefferson sent the US Navy and Marines to fight a war along the North African coast and ordered an embargo against trade with Britain that proved ruinous to American commerce. Quarrels with Britain over free trade and freedom of the seas led to another, nearly disastrous war with the British Empire. Settlers struggling into the western lands of the Northwest Territory and the southern lands found hostile tribes opposing them and a federal government unable to defend them.
Then came a period of eight years of relative peace, during which American commerce thrived, the nation’s borders expanded through peaceable means, and the United States gained respect on the world stage. In the wake of the tumultuous years that followed, it became known as the Era of Good Feelings. It was the period of the administration of James Monroe, fifth President of the United States, and the last of the Founders to hold that office.
Born of the Virginia Gentry
James Monroe was born in colonial Virginia on April 28, 1758. He was schooled in the best available facilities of the time, raised in a family of some prestige and privilege, yet knew the hard daily labor required of a farmer. At the age of 16, the orphaned Monroe found himself responsible for raising his three younger brothers. An uncle assisted him by opening doors to the influential citizens of the colony, but in matters of business, he was largely on his own.
His early education was rudimentary, but sufficient to allow him to enter the College of William and Mary. His studies were frequently interrupted by the unrest that marked the Virginia capital of Williamsburg in the days leading up to the American Revolution. The young Monroe met and socialized with men like Patrick Henry, George Mason, George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and others leading the protests against the perceived tyranny of the British government. By the time the call to war came in 1775, Monroe was a fervent supporter of the Patriots’ cause, driven by a desire for liberty and a young man’s quest for adventure.
The Virginia Dynasty
Of the first five Presidents of the United States, four came from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. All were involved in the American Revolution, the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Like George Washington, James Monroe served in the Continental Army during the war. With Washington’s army as a young lieutenant, he crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, to attack the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton. He was severely wounded at Trenton, nearly bleeding to death from a severed artery. He later returned to his unit, endured the winter at Valley Forge and witnessed Washington’s furious dressing down of General Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth.
During his war service, Monroe became friends with the French volunteer the Marquis de Lafayette, the Prussian volunteer, the Baron von Steuben, and the Baron Johan de Kalb, who hailed from a Franconian enclave in Bavaria. From these Europeans, and others he fraternized with, Monroe developed a more worldly perspective on the American struggle, which to his fellow Virginians was more a battle between Englishmen over their natural rights.
While Washington and Monroe fought on the fields of battle, Jefferson and Madison were largely relegated to the debates in Congress and the state legislature. Following his war service, Monroe returned to Williamsburg, Virginia and resumed his studies at the College of William and Mary which had been interrupted by the call to arms. He then read the law, under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Thomas Jefferson. Before the war, Monroe had studied Latin, mathematics, and philosophy. After the war, he chose law, because as he said in a rare moment of candor for a budding lawyer, it presented an opportunity for “…the most immediate rewards”.
Monroe needed those rewards. Though he was by then a moderately wealthy planter, by contemporary Virginia standards, he had little ready cash. His wealth was in the land he owned and the enslaved people that worked it for him. While reading the law under Jefferson, he befriended another of Jefferson’s friends and allies, fellow planter James Madison. Madison, also a student of the law, suggested that Monroe consider politics as a means of helping build a law practice.
In 1782, at Jefferson’s urging, Monroe entered politics and was elected to Virginia’s legislature, the House of Delegates. Two years later, he was elected to the Congress of the Confederation. Monroe served in the Congress when it sat in Annapolis, Trenton, and ultimately in New York City in the 1780s. During that time, he worked with and corresponded regularly with Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and other Virginia luminaries, creating the core of what would later be known as the Virginia Dynasty under the Constitution. He, like many ambitious politicians, fumed at the constraints imposed by the Articles of Confederation, which prevented Congress from accomplishing much of anything.
He also traveled extensively in what was then called the West, including western New York and Pennsylvania, the Ohio River country, and the Northwest Territory. He was one of the principal authors of the Northwest Ordinance, which defined the first organized incorporated territory of the United States, including the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota. The Northwest Ordinance was one of the few accomplishments of the Confederation Congress to have any lasting effect on American history.
The Virginia Politician and Planter
While serving in the Congress of the Confederation, James Monroe met New York socialite Elizabeth Kortright. They were married on February 16, 1786. Some sources claim the wedding took place in Manhattan’s Trinity Church, others cite her father’s home as the location where their vows were exchanged. Monroe was then 27 years of age, his bride but 17. Eventually they had three children together, a son, James Spence Monroe, who sadly died in infancy, and two daughters, Eliza and Maria. Monroe kept the surviving children close to him for the rest of his life. When he traveled, as he did extensively, he usually brought his family with him. Evidently, he remembered the sting of being orphaned.
In 1786, Monroe’s term in Congress ended, and he relocated to an uncle’s home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There Monroe established a law practice and re-entered politics. He served in the House of Delegates and the Virginia Ratifying Convention when that body was formed to debate and ratify the draft Constitution. In the debates over the merits of the Constitution, Monroe is most notable, at least to modern eyes, for his staunch opposition to the creation of the Electoral College. Monroe viewed the College, with some prescience, as easily corruptible by political interests within the separate states, and supported the idea of direct election of the President by popular vote. His views did not prevail.
In 1789, Monroe ran for Congress under the newly adopted Constitution. His opponent was his friend, James Madison. In a campaign which would be unthinkable to modern Americans, the two opposing candidates traveled the district together, presenting their views to the electorate and seeking their support. Madison prevailed, in a district which had been drawn to his advantage by allies within the State Legislature. The word gerrymandering had not yet been coined to describe such political machinations, but it was one of the earliest examples of such in American history. Yet Madison and Monroe’s personal friendship was unaffected, they remained close confidants and allies.
Monroe followed his defeat by moving to Albemarle County, near Charlottesville, where he purchased a large plantation near Jefferson’s Monticello. He called his new estate Highlands. The following year, 1790, the Virginia Legislature selected Monroe to serve out the term of Senator William Grayson, who had died while in office. Monroe thus had little time to enjoy his new home before returning to the Federal government.
At that time, the United States Senate met behind closed doors, its proceedings closed to the public. Senators were appointed by their respective states, rather than elected by the populace, and felt no obligation to allow the people to monitor their activities. Monroe felt such behavior smacked of the medieval Star Chambers. In early 1791, he proposed opening the Senate to the public it purported to serve. Not until 1794 did a sufficient number of Senators agree to allow the Senate to be subject to view by the people. By then, Monroe was on his way out of the Senate and into the administration of a fellow Virginian, George Washington.
A Rising Political Star
In 1794, Washington appointed Monroe as his Minister to France, a position equivalent to an Ambassador in the present day. Despite frail health, Elizabeth accompanied her husband to Paris as did the children. It was a stressful tenure in the French capital, then under the throes of the Reign of Terror. The Monroes learned that Marie Adrienne du Motier, Marquise de Lafayette, wife of the Franco-American hero Lafayette, was imprisoned and threatened with beheading on the guillotine. Largely through Elizabeth’s efforts, she was freed. The Monroes’ young daughter Eliza also accompanied her parents to Paris, and became friends with Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais and step-daughter of Napoleon. Elizabeth Monroe and Josephine likewise became friends, which no doubt helped shape James Monroe’s pro-French views.
Monroe came to be solidly pro-French and anti-British, adopting views that were opposite to those of the emerging Federalist faction in the United States. There, Jefferson adopted similar views, which were opposed by Washington. Party politics, Federalists in opposition to Democratic-Republicans, began to evolve in the American government. Though Washington famously warned against the threat posed to the Constitution by political parties, he proved powerless to prevent their forming, or to tone down the invective their respective adherents presented in public debate. He could, though, deny a pulpit to those who participated in partisan debate. In 1796, he recalled Monroe, replacing him as Minister to France with William Pinkney. Washington demonstrated his own political skills by ensuring the letter relieving Monroe did not arrive in time to allow him to return to the United States in time to participate in that year’s elections.
Monroe returned to the United States and his plantation in Virginia until he was elected Governor of Virginia by the legislature in 1799. He served in that office until 1802, when he returned to France, this time at the behest of President Jefferson. Monroe was tasked with assisting Minister to France Robert Livingston with negotiating a purchase of New Orleans and a license to trade on the Mississippi River. He was given a budget of $9 million to persuade First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to sell. Instead, Bonaparte, through his ministers, offered all of Louisiana for about $15 million. Livingston hesitated, believing he lacked the authority to approve the sale. Monroe, on the other hand, urged Livingston to make the deal. In the end, Monroe prevailed, Jefferson approved, and the Senate, somewhat grumpily, gave their consent.
The Senate did not disapprove of the value of the deal, which doubled the size of the United States for pennies an acre. Instead, members of both parties objected to the expansion of the powers of the Presidency the deal implied. Yet in the end, it was simply too good of a deal to pass up. Monroe took note of the aggressive use of Presidential power by Jefferson. He would return to it in due time.
His next mission was as ambassador to Great Britain. There he negotiated a treaty, the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty, which would redefine British and American trade. Jefferson, after receiving the agreement Monroe had negotiated, refused to present it to the Senate for them to “…advise and consent”. Madison, then Secretary of State, supported the President. Jefferson’s main objection to the treaty was that it did not address the British practice of impressment of American sailors on the high seas. Monroe considered that to be a side issue, and that the treaty would strengthen trade relations between the English-speaking nations. Jefferson’s refusal to accept the treaty led to Monroe resigning his post in Great Britain.
Secretary of State and War
Monroe returned to Virginia and private life at Highlands in 1807. In 1810, he returned to politics, elected to the Virginia legislature, and in 1811, he answered the call of President James Madison to enter the Cabinet as Secretary of State. He served as Secretary of State through most of the War of 1812, and as acting Secretary of War during a large portion of it, holding the posts simultaneously. The war did not go well for the Americans at first, but by late 1814, naval victories on the Great Lakes and the successful defense of Baltimore boosted American morale, as well as the bargaining position of peace negotiators.
After the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, the newly elevated Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, was offered command of His Majesty’s troops in North America. Wellington reviewed the strategic situation and declined the command, informing the British Prime Minister that he would do well to negotiate a peace along the lines of status quo ante bellum, with no territorial losses or gains for either side. Wellington believed the war unwinnable for the British. Following the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but before it had been received by the Americans, a British army composed of many of Wellington’s best troops against Napoleon was torn to pieces by an American force near New Orleans. Monroe recommended to Madison that the Americans accept the treaty, the Senate concurred, and the war of 1812 ended. Both sides claimed victory, though neither side accomplished their war aims.
Monroe had performed well as Secretary of State, and as acting Secretary of War, and the victory at New Orleans had bolstered America’s belief in itself. In the election of 1816, James Monroe ran for President as the representative of the Democratic-Republican Party. The collapse of the Federalist Party, which nominated Rufus King, meant that Monroe was virtually unopposed. He won in a landslide. Although it wasn’t known at the time, he was the last of the Founders, and the last of the Virginia Dynasty, to win the Presidency.
President of the United States
When James Monroe became President in March, 1817, the White House was still in the process of being rebuilt, after being burned by the British in 1814. The Monroes occupied a rented home on I Street until moving into the Executive Mansion, as it was then known, in 1818. When they did occupy the house, they brought with them a decidedly old-fashioned appearance. Men wearing their hair tied back in a queue had long gone out of style, except for footmen and servants. Monroe preferred that style, and continued to display it throughout his Presidency.
Likewise, knee breeches and stockings had surrendered to pantaloons and boots many years earlier, but James Monroe continued to favor the former long after they had gone out of style. In a later day, the citizens of Washington would adapt the fashions of the White House, such as making cowboy boots popular when a westerner was in the White House, but not in Monroe’s day. The President appeared at levees and other official functions clad in the style he had worn forty years earlier, seemingly oblivious to the changes in garb and hair stles he was surrounded by.
His first administration dealt with problems along the southern border, which was then the northern border of the East and West Floridas, Spanish colonies. Spain had been devastated by the Napoleonic Wars and was no longer capable of defending its territories from either the Seminoles within, or raiding pirates from outside the borders. Monroe resolved the Florida issue by dispatching Andrew Jackson with American troops to occupy Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida. Jackson’s expedition was purportedly to quell Seminole raids across the borders into Alabama and Georgia, but it also served as a show of force to Spanish authorities. Monroe then offered Spain $5 million for the Floridas, which was accepted.
Monroe followed the reasoning used by Jefferson in the purchase of Louisiana, which was, simply put, if the Constitution and subsequent law did not specifically bar the office of the President from doing something in the national interest, he could do it. Congress acquiesced.
In 1818, the territory of Missouri applied for statehood. Missouri was a slave state, and non-slave states opposed its admission as altering the balance between slave states and free. After bitter and rancorous debate, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, balanced by Maine’s admission as a free state, and future admissions would follow the same balancing act. Monroe endorsed the act, which was largely the work of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, as it was called, dominated the issue of slavery in the United States for most of the Antebellum Period.
During the Monroe Administration Great Britain and the United States enacted treaties which demilitarized the border between the United States and Canada, creating what remains the longest demilitarized border between two nations in the world. Monroe then turned his attention to checking Tsarist Russia’s expansion into North America, through the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. Russia’s expansion into North America was limited to roughly the southern tip of the modern Alaskan panhandle. Eventually, the existing Russian settlements in present-day California were abandoned by St Petersburg.
During his second term as President, Monroe faced a crisis in South and Central America, as the Spanish colonies one-by-one declared their independence and fought for freedom from Spain. Concern that other European nations would attempt to take advantage of the situation and seize control of the former Spanish Empire led Monroe to issue his policy of the end of colonization in the Americas by European powers, known to posterity as the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe announced the policy as part of his State of the Union message in 1823. The doctrine in essence established United States protection over North and South America, as well as the Caribbean.
In truth, the United States lacked the military power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, but it found an ally in Britain’s Royal Navy, which enforced anti-piracy and anti-slavery laws throughout the region. The Monroe Doctrine remains James Monroe’s greatest legacy, and has been cited as justification for American actions by Presidents including John F. Kennedy, Ulysses S Grant, Ronald Reagan, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few.
Monroe lobbied Congress hard for action on internal improvements, though he stipulated that the Federal government could raise money for internal infrastructure, but it could not build or operate it, under the Constitution. Congress heard his requests for funding for roads, canals, bridges, harbor improvements, and other infrastructure in his annual State of the Union messages and largely ignored them. In response, Monroe used his authority as Commander in Chief of the US Army to have the Army Corps of Engineers improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
Retirement and Legacy
James Monroe left office and returned to his Virginia plantation in 1825. He remained active in Virginia politics for a time after leaving the Presidency, including serving at the state Constitutional Convention in 1829. In 1830, his wife Elizabeth died, and a grieving Monroe relocated to New York City, where he lived in the home of his daughter Maria. He died there in 1831, appropriately for a Founder and veteran of the Revolution, on the 4th of July. Originally interred in New York, his body was moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, in 1858.
Like each of the members of the Virginia dynasty who preceded him, all of whom served two terms, he left office considerably less well off financially than he had entered it. Also in common with the rest of the Virginia Dynasty was his ownership of slaves. His White House included enslaved people as servants; housekeepers, cooks, waiters, doormen, valets, and so on. He came to oppose the expansion of slavery, and supported the creation of colonies in Africa for the support of freed African slaves, including Liberia. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, was named for him. Despite his wealth, measured in land and slaves, Monroe was heavily in debt. He was forced to sell his Highland estate to satisfy his creditors. The sale included many of the enslaved people who resided there.
Of all the men who have occupied the White House as President, less is known about the religious beliefs of James Monroe. He did not refer to them in speeches, nor in writing. No letter exists where he discussed them. He did not attend church in Washington, nor in Virginia, and he did not explore his beliefs, nor doubts, in any known discourse. Even the death of his son, at the age of just sixteen months, did not cause him to address his faith, if any, in his correspondence, or in conversation with friends. At William and Mary, in pre-Revolutionary Virginia, and even in Washington’s Continental Army, attendance at services was often mandatory. Yet Monroe never mentioned them, in any context.
He is not regarded as one of the greatest American Presidents, though most historians and scholars rank him above the middle tier of Chief Executives. When added to his roles in fighting the Revolution, creating the Constitution, acquiring Louisiana, and Florida, and securing America’s future, his role as President becomes more substantial. The last of the revolutionary Founders helped found the America of Manifest Destiny and the taming of the continent, as well as secure it from European tampering. Perhaps not one of the greatest Presidents, but certainly a far way from being among the worst.
