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James Monroe (1817-1825)

James Monroe was the fifth president of the United States (1817-1825). He is perhaps best known for establishing the foreign policy principle that came to bear his name, the Monroe Doctrine. James Monroe was the last in the Virginia Dynasty of presidents from 1801 to 1825. Among many other positions including Secretary of State, Monroe served as a member of the Congress of the Confederation from 1783 until 1786, a U.S. Senator from 1790 until 1794, Governor of Virginia from 1799 until 1802 and in 1811, and U.S. President from 1817 until 1824.

On New Year's Day, 1825, at the last of his annual White House receptions, President James Monroe made a pleasing impression upon a Virginia lady who shook his hand: "He is tall and well formed. His dress plain and in the old style.... His manner was quiet and dignified. From the frank, honest expression of his eye ... I think he well deserves the encomium passed upon him by the great Jefferson, who said, 'Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out there would not be a spot on it.' "

He was not as brilliant as some other leading members of the Revolutionary generation. But his contemporaries liked and admired him for his sensible judgment, his honesty, and his personal kindness. Monroe became president at a time when Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party dominated the political scene, but the Panic of 1819 and the first emergence of the sectional rivalries that would eventually culminate in the Civil War dashed hopes for an “Era of Good Feelings.” He is most famous for the Monroe Doctrine, which he promulgated in 1823 and which became and continues to be a cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Monroe was born in 1758 to a plantation family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He began attending Campbell Academy when he was eleven years old and entered the College of William and Mary at sixteen. In 1775 he enlisted in the Third Virginia Infantry and then fought under George Washington’s command during the Revolutionary War. Monroe was wounded during the Battle of Trenton, and eventually reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1780, he began to study law under Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia. Their friendship was a great aid to Monroe throughout his long political career.

In 1782, only two years after James Monroe began to read law under Thomas Jefferson, he entered the Virginia House of Delegates. The following year, he took a seat in the Continental Congress, where he served until 1786. That year he left New York City for Fredericksburg, Virginia to establish his law practice. He brought his new wife, the former Elizabeth Kortright, with him. At the age of 28 and disillusioned with politics, Monroe at the time could not have realized his destiny of becoming the fifth President of the United States.

He practiced law in Fredericksburg for three years in a modest one and one half story brick building. Events of this period included the birth of his first child and his election to the Virginia Assembly. Monroe also attended the Annapolis Convention, one of the forerunners of the Constitutional Convention, while living in Fredericksburg. In 1790, he left Fredericksburg when he was elected to the United States Senate. From that point on, Monroe served in a State or national office almost continuously, culminating in the highest of them all, the presidency of the United States.

Monroe conducted numerous diplomatic missions addressing the most critical international threats facing his generation. President George Washington appointed Monroe Minister to France in 1794. Jay’s Treaty frustrated Monroe’s efforts to retain cordial relations with the French Government and he was recalled in 1796.

Monroe returned to France in 1803 on a successful mission to assist Robert Livingston with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations. Monroe also served as Minister to Britain from 1803 until 1807, a period complicated by disputes over U.S. neutrality rights. In 1805 Monroe traveled to Spain, intending to win recognition of the U.S. possession of West Florida. The United States claimed the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but Monroe could not gain the consent of the Spanish Government.

Monroe joined with Special Commissioner William Pinkney in 1806 in the effort to halt British impressment of U.S. sailors and to secure neutral trading rights. The proposed Monroe-Pinkney Treaty, however, failed to address impressments, and President Jefferson therefore declined to forward the treaty to the Senate.

While serving as Secretary of State in 1811, Monroe became convinced that a declaration of war against Great Britain was the best option to change offensive British policies. Along with Madison, Monroe encouraged Congress to issue a war declaration, which came on June 17, 1812. Monroe skillfully managed the expansion of the U.S. military occupation of Florida and served as acting Secretary of War during the War of 1812.

Although there would be no clear victor, the United States emerged from the war with enhanced international prestige. As President, Monroe’s main diplomatic challenges stemmed from the recession of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and Russian Tsar Alexander’s hopes to populate the Oregon Coast. Monroe responded effectively. In 1819 he skillfully managed the total Acquisition of Florida.

In 1816, Monroe launched his second, successful presidential campaign with the support of the Madison administration. He defeated the candidate of the moribund Federalist Party in the Electoral College 183 to 34. The “Era of Good Feelings” that this end of party rivalries was supposed to usher in soon evaporated. A depression struck the country in 1819, and sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery erupted for the first time when Missouri sought admission to the Union as a slave state in 1819. The fierce debates threatened to split the country. The adoption of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 temporarily averted disaster by setting rules for the expansion of slavery in the western territories, while admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.

With the admission of Missouri and Maine to the Union, the number of slave states and nonslave states remained equal at 12 each, which prevented the South from having more representation in the Senate (which has two senators from each state), than the North. In addition, slavery would be forbidden north of the latitude line that runs along the southern Missouri border for the remaining Louisiana Territory. Monroe signed Congress's bill reflecting the Compromise on March 6, 1820.

Some New Englanders reacted angrily to the idea of Missouri being added to the Union as a slave state. They were proud of their work ethic as inhabitants of a state based on free labor and, as expressed in the poem shown here, thought of Southern slave owners as lazy. In the end, the Missouri Compromise led to the creation of a total of nine new states that would never allow slavery (out of a total of 14 states, or parts of states, that were carved out of land acquired through the Louisiana Purchase).

Perhaps Monroe’s most significant contribution to history was the Monroe Doctrine announced during his State of the Union Address on December 3, 1823, in response to the revolutions that were bringing independence to Latin America. The principles of this message were threefold: no further colonization by Europe in the new world, abstention of the United States from the political affairs of Europe, and noninterference of European nations in the governmental affairs of the western hemisphere. Adhering to the intellectual underpinnings of the doctrine, Monroe granted diplomatic recognition to newly-independent Latin American republics. Although forgotten for many years, this doctrine has come to represent a central principle in American foreign policy.

Monroe retired to an active life at Oak Hill at the end of his second term in 1825. Financial difficulties forced him to sell all his properties by 1830, when he moved to New York to live with his daughter. He died there on the 4th of July in 1831.

He is the person for whom Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, was named. Liberia is an African country founded by freed American slaves. Monroe, a slave owner, supported their repatriation (return to their place of origin) to Africa.