James Monroe

James Monroe (1758-1831) was the fifth president of the United States, (1817-1825) best known for sponsoring the Monroe Doctrine, and for presiding over a lessening of partisan tensions known as the "Era of Good Feelings."

Early career

Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, Va., on Apr. 28, 1758. His father, Spence Monroe, and his mother, Eliza Jones Monroe, of Scottish and Welsh ancestry respectively, were of the moderately wealthy Virginia planter class. The young Monroe was sent to a neighborhood school conducted by a clergyman and then, at the age of 16, to William and Mary College. His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the American Revolution. At 18 he became a lieutenant in a Virginia regiment of the Continental line. Rising to the rank of major, he participated in the New Jersey campaign and was wounded at Trenton. He was an aide to George Washington at the "crossing of the Delaware" in December 1776. Monroe served during the operations around Philadelphia and at Monmouth but resigned from the army in 1778. From 1780 to 1783 Monroe studied law under Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia. This proved the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the men.

Political career

In 1782 Monroe was elected to the Virginia Assembly. The following year he was elected as one of Virginia's representatives to the Confederation Congress, where he served from 1783 to 1786. Although a staunch defender of states' rights, Monroe proposed and supported a measure to give the Congress the right to control interstate commerce. Returning to Virginia, he married Eliza Kortright, of early Dutch stock, by whom he had two daughters, plus a son who died in infancy. He attended the Annapolis Convention in 1786 but was not selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention which followed. He considered the proposed Constitution would be dangerous to the sovereignty of Virginia, and joined the "anti-Federalist" opposition. Like most opponents he wanted a Bill of Rights, and once that was promised he supported the new government. In 1788 he ran against James Madison for the new national Congress, but was overwhelmingly defeated. Two years later he was chosen by the legislature to fill an unexpired term in the U.S. Senate. There he joined the Jeffersonian faction, later to become the Democratic-Republican Party, which opposed the Federalist policies of Alexander Hamilton

Retirement and Legacy

Turning the presidency over to Adams on March 4, 1825, Monroe retired to his plantation, operated by slaves and an overseer, in Loudoun County, Virginia. Tobacco farming was unprofitable and he struggled to get out of debt. Elected to Virginia's constitutional convention in 1829, he opposed the widening of the franchise but took little part in the debates over other questions. Still in financial difficulties, he moved to New York City in 1830, where he died on July 4, 1831.

Monroe lacked the charisma of Washington, and the brilliance of Jefferson and Madison. He was an extremely able administrator and a harmonizer of conflicting viewpoints. His great achievement was to calm the political waters. He lived a simple but energetic life devoted almost entirely to the public affairs of his nation and his state. He kept his religious beliefs very strictly private, and historians do not know what they were.

Bibliography

• Ammon, Harry. James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity. (1971, 2nd ed. 1990). 706 pp. standard scholarly biography
• Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (1949), the standard history of Monroe's foreign policy.
• Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Presidency of James Monroe. 1996. 246 pp. standard scholarly survey
• Perkins, Bradford. Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812-1823 (1964)
• Perkins, Dexter. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823-1826 (1927)
• White, Leonard D. The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801-1829 (1951), explains the operation and organization of federal administration

Primary sources

• Monroe, James. The Political Writings of James Monroe.

ed. by James P. Lucier, (2002). 863 pp.