James Monroe

James Monroe
5th President
In office March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1825
Vice President	Daniel D. Tompkins
Preceded by	James Madison
Succeeded by	John Quincy Adams
Personal details
Born	April 28, 1758 Westmoreland County, Virginia
Died	July 4, 1831 New York City
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Spouse	Elizabeth Kortright Monroe

James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was the fifth (1817–1825) President of the United States and author of the eponymous Monroe Doctrine. Monroe's Presidency was marked by a disappearance of partisan politics known as the Era of Good Feelings, after the politically charged War of 1812.

Early years

Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Monroe attended the school of Campbelltown Academy and attended the College of William and Mary, both in Virginia. After graduating in 1776, Monroe fought with distinction in the Continental Army and practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia. His father Spence Monroe (c. 1727 – 1774) was a carpenter, joiner, and modest tobacco planter. He and his wife, Elizabeth Jones (born ca. 1729) had significant land holdings, but little money.

He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782, and then he served in the Continental Congress from 1783-1786. As a youthful politician, he joined the anti-Federalists in the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, and in 1790, an advocate of Jeffersonian policies, was elected United States Senator. As Minister to France in 1794–96, he displayed strong sympathies for the French cause; later, with Robert R. Livingston and under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. He was Governor of Virginia 1799–1802. He was Minister to France again in 1803 and then Minister to Britain from 1803 to 1807. He received three electoral votes for vice president in 1808. He then returned to the Virginia House of Delegates and then he was elected to an another term as Governor of Virginia in 1811, but he resigned a few months into the term. He then served as Secretary of State from 1811 to 1814 and again from 1815 to 1817. Finally he served as Secretary of War from 1814 to 1815.

Presidency

Following the War of 1812, Monroe was elected president in the election of 1816, and re-elected in 1820. In both those elections Monroe went nearly uncontested.

Monroe made strong Cabinet choices, naming a Southerner, John C. Calhoun, as Secretary of War, and a Northerner, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State. Only Henry Clay's refusal kept Monroe from adding an outstanding Westerner. Both of these individuals are considered outstanding leaders of their time.

Monroe's presidency was later labeled "The Era of Good Feelings", in part because partisan politics were almost nonexistent. The Federalist Party dwindled and eventually died out, starting with the Hartford Convention, and the rift between the Democratic Party and the Whig Party had not yet come to pass. Practically every politician belonged to the Democratic-Republican Party.

Unfortunately these "good feelings" did not endure, although Monroe, his popularity undiminished, followed nationalist policies. Across the façade of nationalism, ugly sectional cracks appeared. A painful economic depression undoubtedly increased the dismay of the people of the Missouri Territory in 1819 when their application for admission to the Union as a slave state failed. An amended bill for gradually eliminating slavery in Missouri precipitated two years of bitter debate in Congress. The Missouri Compromise bill resolved the struggle, pairing Missouri as a slave state with Maine, a free state, and barring slavery north and west of Missouri forever.

Monroe is probably best known for the Monroe Doctrine, which he delivered in his message to Congress on December 2, 1823. In it, he proclaimed the Americas should be free from future European colonization and free from European interference in sovereign countries' affairs. It further stated the United States's intention to stay neutral in European wars and wars between European powers and their colonies but to consider any new colonies or interference with independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts toward the United States. Monroe did not begin formally to recognize the young sister republics until 1822, after ascertaining that Congress would vote appropriations for diplomatic missions. He and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wished to avoid trouble with Spain until it had ceded the Floridas, as was done in 1821.

The United Kingdom, with its powerful navy, also opposed reconquest of Latin America and suggested that the United States join in proclaiming "hands off." Ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison counseled Monroe to accept the offer, but Secretary Adams advised, "It would be more candid ... to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war." Monroe accepted Adams's advice. Not only must Latin America be left alone, he warned, but also Russia must not encroach southward on the Pacific coast. "... the American continents," he stated, "by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power." Some 20 years after Monroe died in 1831, this became known as the Monroe Doctrine.

Post-Presidency

Upon leaving the White House after Monroe's presidency expired on March 4, 1825, James Monroe moved to live at Monroe Hill on the Grounds of the University of Virginia. This university's modern campus was originally Monroe's family farm from 1788 to 1817, but he had sold it in the first year of his Presidency to the new college founded by his friend and former President, Thomas Jefferson. He served on the Board of Visitors under Jefferson and then under the second Rector and another former President James Madison, until his death.

Monroe had racked up debts during his years of public life. As a result, he was forced to sell off his Highland plantation (now called Ash Lawn-Highland, it is owned by College of William and Mary which has opened it to the public) to pay off the debts. Afterwards, he never financially recovered and his wife's poor health made matters worse. [1] As a result, he and his wife Elizabeth lived in Oak Hill until Elizabeth's death on September 23, 1830. Upon Elizabeth's death, Monroe moved to live with his daughter Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur in New York City and died there from heart failure and tuberculosis on July 4, 1831, 55 years after the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed and 5 years after the death of Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He was originally buried in New York but, in 1858, he was reinterred in the President's Circle at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	James Monroe	1817–1825
Vice President	Daniel Tompkins	1817–1825
Secretary of State	John Quincy Adams	1817–1825
Secretary of the Treasury	William H. Crawford	1817–1825
Secretary of War	George Graham (ad interim)	1817
	John C. Calhoun	1817–1825
Attorney General	Richard Rush	1817
	William Wirt	1817–1825
Postmaster General	Return Meigs	1817–1823
	John McLean	1823–1825
Secretary of the Navy	Benjamin Crowninshield	1817–1818
	John C. Calhoun	1818–1819
	Smith Thompson	1819–1823
	Samuel L. Southard	1823–1825

Supreme Court appointments

Monroe appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• Smith Thompson - 1823

States admitted to the Union

• Mississippi – December 10, 1817
• Illinois – December 3, 1818
• Alabama – December 14, 1819
• Maine – March 15, 1820
• Missouri – August 10, 1821

Trivia

• Monroe remains the only president to have held two Cabinet secretary positions. He served as Secretary of State and Secretary of War under James Madison.
• Apart from George Washington and Washington DC, James Monroe is the only US President to have had a country's capital city named after him - that of Monrovia in Liberia which was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822 as a haven for freed slaves.

External links

• The Presidential Home of James Monroe (College of William and Mary)
• The Papers of James Monroe at the Avalon Project (includes Inaugural Addresses and other materials)
• Monroe Doctrine and related resources at the Library of Congress
• A genealogical profile of the President
• White House Biography
• James Monroe's Health and Medical History
• Works by James Monroe at Project Gutenberg

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