James Monroe

President of the United States (1817–25)

• Born: April 28, 1758
• Birthplace: Westmoreland County, Virginia
• Died: July 4, 1831
• Place of death: New York, New York

As president of the United States and author of the Monroe Doctrine, Monroe set forth a basic principle of American foreign policy that has endured into modern times.

Early Life

James Monroe came from a good but undistinguished family of Scottish origin. His father was Spence Monroe, and his mother was Elizabeth Jones Monroe, sister of Judge Joseph Jones, a prominent Virginia politician. James was the eldest of four children. His formal education began at the age of eleven, at a private school operated by the Reverend Archibald Campbell, which was considered the best school in the colony. At the age of sixteen, after the death of his father, Monroe entered the College of William and Mary upon the advice of his uncle, Judge Jones, who was to have a formative influence upon Monroe’s life.

At the College of William and Mary, the Revolutionary War intruded, and Monroe, with his education unfinished, enlisted, in the spring of 1776, as a lieutenant in a Virginia regiment of the Continental Line. Slightly more than six feet tall, with a large, broad-shouldered frame, the eighteen-year-old was an impressive figure. He had a plain face, a rather large nose, a broad forehead, and wide-set, blue-gray eyes. His face was generally unexpressive, and his manners were simple and unaffected. He fought in the battles at Harlem and White Plains, and he was wounded at Trenton. During 1777 and 1778, he served as an aide, with the rank of major, on the staff of William Alexander, Lord Stirling. As an aide, Monroe mingled with the aides of other commanders and other staff officers, among them Alexander Hamilton, Charles Lee, Aaron Burr, and the Marquis de Lafayette. This interlude broadened his outlook and view of the ideals of the Revolution, which he carried with almost missionary zeal the remainder of his life.

After participating in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, Monroe resigned from Stirling’s staff in December 1778, and returned to Virginia to apply for a rank in the state line. Unable to secure a position, Monroe, upon the advice of Judge Jones, cultivated the friendship of Governor Thomas Jefferson, and he formed a connection as a student of law with Jefferson that continued until 1783. This was the beginning of a long and valuable relationship, especially for Monroe. In 1782, Monroe was elected to the Virginia legislature, thus beginning a political career that lasted for more than forty years and brought him eventually to the highest office in the land.

Life’s Work

In 1783, Monroe was elected to the Congress of the Articles of Confederation. He was an active and useful member, and he gained invaluable experience. He cultivated a friendship with James Madison, who was introduced to him by Jefferson. Monroe was identified with the nationalists, but his strong localist and sectional views made him cautious. He was particularly opposed to John Jay’s negotiations with Don Diego de Gardoqui, the first Spanish minister to the United States, which threatened the western navigation of the Mississippi River. Monroe helped to defeat the negotiations, thereby gaining great popularity in the western country, which lasted all of his political life.

Monroe’s congressional service expired in 1786. He returned to Virginia intending to become a lawyer. By this time, he had married Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a New York merchant, on February 16, 1786. She was attractive but formal and reserved. Years later, she proved to be a marked contrast to her predecessor as hostess of the White House, Dolley Madison.

Monroe set up a law practice at Fredericksburg, Virginia, but he was not long out of politics. He was again elected to the Virginia legislature. He was also a delegate at the Annapolis Conference, but he was not chosen for the federal convention. In 1788, Monroe was elected to the Virginia convention for ratification of the Constitution. Here he joined with the opponents of the Constitution, fearing that the government would be too strong and would threaten western development.

Monroe soon joined the new government, however, after losing a race for the House of Representatives against James Madison. He was elected to the US Senate in 1790 and served there until May 1794. He took an antiadministration stand, opposing virtually all of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s measures. It was a surprise, therefore, when he was selected as the new United States minister to France in June 1794. Relations between the United States and France were at a low ebb. President George Washington apparently believed that Monroe, whose pro-French attitude was well known, would improve relations as well as appease the Republican Party at home.

Moved by his sympathies and a desire to satisfy the French, Monroe addressed the French National Convention in a manner that brought a rebuke from Secretary of State Edmund Randolph. Monroe was unable to defend Jay’s treaty to the French, and he was considered too pro-French in the United States. In 1796, he was recalled by the new secretary of state, Timothy Pickering. When he returned, Monroe responded to innuendoes about his conduct with a nearly five-hundred-page pamphlet entitled A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the United States (1797), revealing his belief that he had been betrayed by the administration. Although attacked by Federalists, among westerners and his friends, his reputation was enhanced.

Monroe’s diplomatic career was not finished. After an interlude as governor of Virginia (1799–1802), Monroe was chosen to return to France to assist Robert R. Livingston in negotiations to purchase New Orleans. Monroe always believed that his arrival in France was the decisive factor in convincing Napoleon Bonaparte to shift his position and offer the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States. Livingston had, however, already opened the negotiations and, with Monroe’s assistance, closed the deal.

In 1804, Monroe went to Spain to “perfect” the American claim that the Louisiana Purchase included West Florida. The Spanish would not budge, and Monroe returned to England in 1805. In London, Jefferson matched Monroe with William Pinkney to negotiate with the British to end the practice of impressments and other disputes that had arisen between the two countries. The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty of December, 1806, gained few concessions but apparently satisfied the two American ministers. President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison, however, rejected the treaty, and Jefferson did not submit it to the Senate.

Monroe returned to the United States in December 1807, in an angry mood. He allowed his friends to present him as a presidential contender against Madison. Although Monroe’s ticket was swamped in Virginia, ending his effort, he still had support in Virginia, for he was elected to the Virginia legislature in 1810, and the next year, to the state’s governorship.

In 1811, Monroe and Madison were reconciled. Monroe accepted the offer of secretary of state. Relations between the United States and Great Britain had so deteriorated that Monroe concluded, as had Madison, that war must result. Monroe sustained the president’s policy and the declaration of war on June 18. As secretary of state, Monroe supported Madison’s decision to enter negotiations with the British and helped him select an outstanding negotiating team. Thereafter, Monroe had little influence upon the negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812.

Monroe emerged from the war with his reputation generally unscathed, and he was a leading contender for the presidency. The congressional caucus in 1816, however, partially influenced by a prejudice against the Virginia dynasty, accorded him only an eleven-vote margin to win the nomination. The discredited Federalists offered only token opposition, and Monroe won easily. His years in the presidency (1817–25) are often referred to as the Era of Good Feelings. The Federalist Party gradually disappeared and offered no opposition. Monroe was reelected in 1820, only one vote short of a unanimous vote. He sought to govern as a president above parties. He took two grand tours, one to the North and the other to the South, and was well received wherever he went. Monroe also appointed some Federalists to office.

The outward placidity of these years, however, was belied by ferment below the surface. The question of slavery was raised to dangerous levels in the debate over restrictions upon the admission of Missouri to statehood. Monroe did not interfere in the debate, and he readily signed the compromise measure. Other issues during his presidency revealed the dissension within his party—for example, the debate over Jackson’s invasion of Florida, army reduction, and internal improvements.

Diplomatic successes included neutralizing the Great Lakes, arbitrating the fisheries question, establishing the northern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase as the forty-ninth parallel, and joint occupation of Oregon with Great Britain. Much of the success of these negotiations was a result of Monroe’s able secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. After Jackson’s foray into Florida, Adams got Spain to transfer Florida to the United States and to settle the border extending to the Pacific Ocean.

The Monroe Doctrine, issued in 1823, capped off these diplomatic successes. It arose out of American fears that European nations would intervene to subdue the newly independent countries in South America. Invited by the British to join in a statement warning against intervention, Monroe, at the urging of Adams, issued a unilateral statement warning Europe not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

In 1824 election, the unity of the party was shattered by a contest between several strong rivals for the presidency. William H. Crawford, Monroe’s secretary of the treasury, secured the caucus nomination from a rump group of congressmen, but other contenders, including Adams, Jackson, and Henry Clay, threw the vote into the House of Representatives. Clay threw his support to Adams, who won the presidency. In the aftermath, new coalitions were formed and eventually another two-party system emerged.

Monroe did not exert any political leadership during this period. It was not his temperament to operate in the new style of politics emerging as the Age of the Common Man. In many ways, he was obsolete when he left the presidency. His last years were spent making claims upon the government for past service. He received $29,513 in 1826, and he got an additional $30,000 in 1831, but this did not stave off advancing bankruptcy. In 1830, upon the death of his wife, he moved to New York City to live with a daughter and her husband. He died there on July 4, 1831.

Significance

Monroe, the third of the Virginia triumvirate, has generally been ranked below his two predecessors in intellectual ability, although he has been ranked higher than either for his administrative skills. Monroe was more narrowly partisan and sectional, but he tried to be a president of all the people. The question has been raised, however, as to what extent he understood the role of the president as a party leader. It is to be noted that the party disintegrated under his presidency, but that may be a result, in part, of the decline of the Federalist Party as an effective opposition.

During his last years, Monroe was much concerned about his reputation. His concern reflects the essentially political cast of his mind. His letters throughout his life concerned almost exclusively political matters. An experienced and even a sensitive politician, he was an anachronism by the end of his presidency. Monroe was the last representative of the generation of the Founders. His idea of government by consensus was out of place in the new democratic politics of the Age of the Common Man.

Monroe’s legacy was his Americanism. If he was at times narrow and sectional, he was always an American. His Monroe Doctrine aptly expressed the feelings of his fellow Americans that the Western Hemisphere was where the principles of freedom would be worked out and show the way to Europe and the rest of the world. His career was long and successful, and his public service, if not brilliant, was useful to his country.

Bibliography

Ammon, Harry. James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity. New York: McGraw, 1971. Print.

Cresson, William P. James Monroe. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1946. Print.

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. Jefferson and Monroe: Constant Friendship and Respect. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003. Print.

Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. The Presidency of James Monroe. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1996. Print.

Dangerfield, George. The Era of Good Feelings. New York: Harcourt, 1952. Print.

Greenstein, Fred I. "The Political Professionalism of James Monroe." Presidential Studies Quarterly 39.2 (2009): 275–82. Print.

Hart, Gary. James Monroe. New York: Times, 2005. Print.

Monroe, James. The Autobiography of James Monroe. Ed. Gerry Stuart Brown. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1959. Print.

Perkins, Dexter. Hands Off: A History of the Monroe Doctrine. Rev. ed. Boston: Little, 1955. Print.

Scherr, Arthur. "'The Confidence of His Country': James Monroe on Impeachment." Midwest Quarterly 44.1 (2002): 27. Print.

Scherr, Arthur. "James Monroe and John Adams: An Unlikely "Friendship." Historian 67.3 (2005): 405–33. Print.

Styron, Arthur. The Last of the Cocked Hats: James Monroe and the Virginia Dynasty. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1945. Print.