James Monroe
 | |
| Term of office | March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1825 |
| Preceded by | James Madison |
| Succeeded by | John Quincy Adams |
| Date of birth | April 28, 1758 |
| Place of birth | Westmoreland County, Virginia |
| Date of death | July 4, 1831 |
| Place of death | New York City |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Kortright Monroe |
| Political party | Democratic-Republican |
James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was the fifth (1817–1825) President of the United States. Monroe's Presidency was marked by a disappearance of partisan politics, after the politically charged War of 1812. He was the last American President of the “Virginia Dynasty” — of the first five men who held that position, four hailed from Virginia. Monroe also had a long and distinguished public career as a soldier, diplomat, governor, senator, and cabinet official. His presidency, which began in 1817 and lasted until 1825, encompassed what came to be called the “Era of Good Feelings.” One of his lasting achievements was the Monroe Doctrine, which became a major tenet of U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.
Early years
The President’s parents, father Spence Monroe, a woodworker and tobacco farmer, and mother Elizabeth Jones Monroe had significant land holdings but little money. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Monroe went to school at Campbelltown Academy and then the College of William and Mary, both in Virginia. After graduating in 1776, Monroe fought in the Continental Army, serving with distinction at the Battle of Trenton, where he was shot in his left shoulder. Following his military service, he practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia. James Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright on February 16, 1786 at the Trinity Church in New York.
Politicical Career
Monroe was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and served in the Continental Congress 1783–1786. As a youthful politician, he joined the anti-Federalists in the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, and in 1790, was elected United States Senator. As Minister to France in 1794–1796, he displayed strong sympathies for the French Revolution; later, with Robert R. Livingston and under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. He served as Governor of Virginia from 1799 to 1802. He was Minister to France again in 1803 and then Minister to the Court of St. James from 1803 to 1807. He returned to the Virginia House of Delegates and was elected to 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. When he was appointed to Secretary of War on October 1, 1814, he stayed on as the interim Secretary of State. On February 28, 1815, he was again commissioned as the permanent Secretary of State, and left his position as Secretary of War. Thus from October 1, 1814 to February 28, 1815, Monroe held the two cabinet posts. Monroe stayed on as Secretary of State until the end of the James Madison Presidency, and the following day Monroe began his term as the new President of the United States.
Presidency 1817-1825
Policies
Following the War of 1812, Monroe was elected president in the election of 1816, and re-elected in 1820. In both those elections Monroe ran nearly uncontested.
Attentive to detail, well prepared on most issues, non-partisan in spirit, and above all pragmatic, Monroe managed his presidential duties well. He 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. Most appointments went to deserving Republicans, but he did not try to use them to build the party's base. Indeed, he allowed the base to decay, which reduced tensions and led to the naming of his era as the "Era of Good Feelings". To build good will, he made two long tours in 1817. Frequent stops allowed innumerable ceremonies of welcome and good will. The Federalist Party dwindled and eventually died out, starting with the Hartford Convention. Practically every politician belonged to the Democratic-Republican Party, but the party lost its vitality and organizational integrity. The party's Congressional caucus stopped meeting, and there were no national conventions.
These "good feelings" endured until 1824. Monroe, his popularity undiminished, would follow nationalist policies. Across the commitment to nationalism, sectional cracks appeared. The Panic of 1819 caused a painful economic depression. The application for statehood by the Missouri Territory, in 1819, 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 did not begin formally to recognize the young sister republics (the former Spanish colonies) 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 to the U.S., which was done in 1821.
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' 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.
The United Kingdom, with its powerful navy, also opposed re-conquest 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' 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.
Administration and 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 | 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 Justice 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
Post-Presidency
Upon leaving the White House after his 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. 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 the College of William and Mary which has opened it to the public. He never financially recovered, and his wife's poor health made matters worse. [1] As a result, he and his wife lived in Oak Hill until Elizabeth's death on September 23, 1830.
Death
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 U.S. 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 he was re-interred in 1858 to the President's Circle at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
Trivia
- Apart from George Washington and Washington DC, James Monroe is the only U.S. 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.
- Monroe was the third president to die on July 4.
- Monroe was (arguably) the last president to have fought in the Revolutionary War, although Andrew Jackson served as a 13-year-old courier in the Continental Army and was taken as a prisoner of war by the British.
- In the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware (also depicted on the New Jersey state quarter), Monroe is standing behind George Washington and holds the American flag.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Ammon, Harry James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1990 ISBN 0813912660 biography
- Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Presidency of James Monroe (American Presidency Series)Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, c1996 ISBN 0700607285
- Dangerfield, George The Era of Good Feelings Norwalk, Conn. : Easton Press, c1986
- Dangerfield, George The Awakening of American Nationalism: 1815 - 1828 New York : Harper & Row, c1965
- Holmes, David L. The Faiths of the Founding Fathers Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 9780195300925
- Holmes, David L. "The Religion of James Monroe", The Virginia Quarterly Review (Autumn 2003) online version
External links
- White House Biography
- James Monroe Biography and Fact File
- The Presidential Home of James Monroe (College of William and Mary)
- The Papers of James Monroe at the Avalon Project
- Monroe Doctrine and related resources at the Library of Congress
- James Monroe's Health and Medical History
- James Monroe Birthplace Commission
- InfoPlease- James Monroe
- The Religion of James Monroe
| Preceded by: John Walker |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Virginia 1790 – 1794 |
Succeeded by: Stevens T. Mason |
| Preceded by: Gouverneur Morris |
U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to France 1794 – 1796 |
Succeeded by: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney |
| Preceded by: James Wood |
Governor of Virginia 1799 – 1802 |
Succeeded by: John Page |
| Preceded by: Rufus King |
U.S. Minister to Great Britain 1803 - 1807 |
Succeeded by: William Pinkney |
| Preceded by: John Tyler, Sr. |
Governor of Virginia 1811 |
Succeeded by: George William Smith |
| Preceded by: Robert Smith |
United States Secretary of State April 2, 1811 – September 30, 1814; February 28, 1815 – March 3, 1817 |
Succeeded by: John Quincy Adams |
| Preceded by: John Armstrong, Jr. |
United States Secretary of War 1814 – 1815 |
Succeeded by: William H. Crawford |
| Preceded by: James Madison |
Democratic-Republican Party presidential nominiee 1816 (won), 1820 (won) |
Succeeded by: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Harris Crawford, Andrew Jackson(a) |
| Preceded by: James Madison |
President of the United States March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1825 |
Succeeded by: John Quincy Adams |
Credits
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.
