JAMES MONROE

Monroe was the last of the Virginia-born Presidents. A very normal man, with great love of country, he made a most successful President. His years in office were known as “The Era of Good  Feeling.” Monroe's name is mainly associated with his famous Doctrine—an idea which was part of a message to Congress but which grew into an important cornerstone of American foreign policy.

 The real force of the Doctrine came from what the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, declared it to be—a warning to Europe to keep “hands off” the Western Hemisphere. Monroe plainly wanted to succeed Jefferson as President. But he had to wait eight years, during which he served well as Madison’s Secretary of State and even, for a time, as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War. There was little opposition from the dying Federalist party to his election as President in 1816 or to his re-election in 1820. Bom April 28, 1758, Monroe was the son of Spence Monroe and Eliza Jones, both members of distinguished colonial families. James had the advantage of a private teacher and of attending William and Mary College for two years. His studies were interrupted when he became a lieutenant at only eighteen and fought in the Revolutionary War. After 1780, he began the study of law under Jefferson’s guidance. Monroe first ventured into politics in 1782, when he obtained a seat in the Virginia Assembly. He was sent to Congress the following year. In 1786, he again was in his state’s Assembly, serving four years. Although he failed to be elected to the First Congress under the new Government, he was named in 1790 to the United States Senate. In 1794, Washington appointed Monroe—a member of the American party favoring France—as Minister in Paris. Two years later he was recalled because the Administration—especially the State Department—now sided with the British. Monroe hated the idea of a king and was a close supporter of Jefferson during these years. The people’s answer to his recall was to elect Hm Governor of Virginia for three years. Monroe published a defense of his labors in Paris, attacking the conduct of foreign affairs in the Washington Administration. In 1803, Monroe was sent to France again, this time by President Jefferson, to help purchase New Orleans. He and Robert Livingston, the American Minister to France, did more: they ar- nngtd for the purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory—to their everlasting credit. There were some failures, however. In Madrid, Monroe tried unsuccessfully to acquire the Florida; for the United States. As Minister to Britain, be made a hopeless attempt to stop the British action against American shipping that led to the War of 1812. But in 18n, the people at home »warded him with another term in the Virginia Governorship. From there he went into Madison’s Cabinet. The Presidency of James Monroe, the statesmanship of John Quincy Adams, and the rise of Andrew Jackson, are all tied together. Florida, for example, was acquired through the efforts of all three men. During Monroe’s Presidency, Jackson’s military expedition drove back the Seminole Indians when they attacked Georgia from East Florida. Adams, as head of Monroe’s State Department, persuaded Spain to let the United States govern the province peacefully and it was acquired in 1819 for $5,000,000. But the most important act of Monroe’s Administration was a law known as the Missouri Compromise, the result of the first serious division between North and South. Through this law, Missouri was admitted to the Union as a “slave state” but all other territory in the Louisiana Purchase lands north of Missouri’s southern boundary was to be forever barred to slavery. Maine was then separated from Massachusetts and admitted as a “free state” to keep the number of free and slave states even. But the Missouri Compromise, later declared unconstitutional, did not begin to solve the terrible problem of slavery—an issue which would sooner or later have to be faced. When Monroe left office, his party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, was as dead as that of the Federalists. The Jacksonians who came afterward were the “democratic” half of the Democratic- 26 Republicans, whereas Monroe and his group had been the “republican” half. The new force was to represent the raw West Like Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was an officer of the University of Virginia. He also made a great contribution to national education: while he was President the first free high school was established in the United States. In his last years Monroe took part in a convention for rewriting the Virginia Constitution. He died in 1831 at the home of his daughter in New York Ciy.