Sadler Center, 200 Stadium Dr, Williamsburg, VA 23185, United States
Monroe studied at Virginia's College of William & Mary.
1794
Portrait of James Monroe as Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1794.
James Monroe, oil on wood by Gilbert Stuart
1794
Portrait of James Monroe as Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1794.
Sadler Center, 200 Stadium Dr, Williamsburg, VA 23185, United States
Monroe studied at Virginia's College of William & Mary.
James Monroe, oil on wood by Gilbert Stuart
Statue of Monroe at Highland, Virginia, United States
1800
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale
Ethnicity:
Monroe’s father, Spence Monroe, was of Scottish descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Jones Monroe, of Welsh descent.
Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to the family of Spence Monroe and Elizabeth Jones Monroe. Spence was a moderately prosperous planter and carpenter whose family emigrated from Scotland in the mid-1600s.
First tutored by his mother at home, Monroe attended Campbelltown Academy between 1769 and 1774, and was an excellent student.
As the eldest of several children, Monroe was expected to inherit his father's estate, but the events of 1774 turned his life in new directions. His father died that year, and young Monroe soon enrolled at Virginia's College of William & Mary with intentions of studying law, but dropped out just months later to fight in the American Revolution.
After the war, Monroe studied law under the tutorage of Jefferson, beginning a life-long personal and professional relationship.
In 1782, Monroe was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and from 1783 to 1786, he served in the Continental Congress, then meeting in New York. While there, he met and courted Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a prosperous New York merchant. The couple married on February 16, 1786, and moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia. Monroe proved to not be as successful a farmer as his father and, in time, sold his property to practice law and enter politics.
After the 1787 Federal Convention, Monroe initially joined the anti-Federalists in opposing ratification of the new constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. However, he and several key figures withheld their reservations and vowed to push for changes after the new government was established. Virginia narrowly ratified the Constitution, paving the way for a new government.
In 1790, Monroe ran for a House seat but was defeated by James Madison. Monroe was quickly elected by the Virginia legislature as a United States senator, and soon joined the Democratic-Republican faction led by Jefferson and Madison opposing the Federalist policies of Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Within a year of his election, Monroe rose to become his party's leader in the Senate.
In 1794 Washington nominated him as minister to France. It was the hope of the administration that Monroe’s well-known French sympathies would secure for him a favorable reception and that his appointment would also conciliate France’s friends in the United States. His warm welcome in France and his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, which he regarded as a natural successor to the American Revolution, displeased the Federalists (the party of Alexander Hamilton, which encouraged close ties not to France but to England) at home. Monroe did nothing, moreover, to reconcile the French to the Jay Treaty, which regulated commerce and navigation between the United States and Great Britain during the French Revolutionary wars.
Without real justification, the French regarded the treaty as a violation of the French-American treaty of commerce and amity of 1778 and as a possible cause for war. Monroe led the French government to believe that the Jay Treaty would never be ratified by the United States, that the administration of George Washington would be overthrown as a result of the obnoxious treaty, and that better things might be expected after the election in 1796 of a new president, perhaps Thomas Jefferson. Washington, though he did not know of this intrigue, sensed that Monroe was unable to represent his government properly and, late in 1796, recalled him.
Monroe returned to America in the spring of 1797 and in the following December published a defense of his course in a pamphlet of 500 pages entitled A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the United States. Washington seems never to have forgiven Monroe for this stratagem, though Monroe’s opinion of Washington and Jay underwent a change in his later years.
Monroe’s fifty years of public service began in 1782 with his election to the Virginia General Assembly. Subsequently, Monroe served in the Confederation Congress and in the first United States Senate; was twice Minister to France, and later Minister to England and to Spain. He was elected to four one-year terms as Governor of Virginia, became Secretary of State for the remainder of President James Madison’s two terms, and also served as Secretary of War during the War of 1812. Monroe’s greatest achievement as a diplomat was his negotiation of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
In 1816 Monroe was elected president of the United States as the Republican candidate, defeating Rufus King, the Federalist candidate; Monroe received 183 electoral votes and King 34. By 1820, when he was re-elected, receiving all the electoral votes but one, the Federalists had ceased to function as a party. The chief events of his calm and prosperous administration, which has been called the Era of Good Feelings, were the First Seminole War (1817–18); the acquisition of the Floridas from Spain (1819–21); the Missouri Compromise (1820), by which the first conflict over slavery under the Constitution was peacefully settled; recognition of the new Latin American states, former Spanish colonies, in Central and South America (1822); and - most intimately connected with Monroe’s name - the enunciation, in the presidential message of December 2, 1823, of the Monroe Doctrine, which has profoundly influenced the foreign policy of the United States.
On the expiration of his second term, Monroe retired to his home, an estate called Oak Hill in northern Virginia. In 1826 he became a regent of the University of Virginia and in 1829 was a member of the convention called to amend the state constitution. Having neglected his private affairs and incurred large expenditures during his missions to Europe and his presidency, he was deeply in debt and felt compelled to ask Congress to reimburse him. In 1826 Congress finally authorized the payment to him of $30,000. Almost immediately, adding additional claims, he went back to Congress seeking more money. Congress paid him another $30,000 in 1831, but he still did not feel satisfied. After his death, Congress appropriated a small amount for the purchase of his papers from his heirs. Monroe died in 1831 - like Jefferson and Adams before him on the Fourth of July - in New York City at the home of his daughter, Maria, with whom he was living after the death of his wife the year before. In 1858, the centennial year of his birth, his remains were reinterred with impressive ceremonies at Richmond, Virginia. After Liberia was created in 1821 as a haven for freed slaves, its capital city was named Monrovia in honour of the American president, who had supported the repatriation of blacks to Africa.
Many historians regard James Monroe as one of the most effective presidents, and the one that enjoyed nearly full political support. He served two terms during which the young United States became a stronger and more prosperous nation, a period has been called the "Era of Good Feelings." By the time his two-term presidency ended, Monroe had served his country for 50 years, holding more elected public offices than any president before or after him.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, and many other prominent statesmen of Monroe’s time all spoke loudly in his praise.
The Monroe Doctrine became perhaps the most significant foreign policy statement in American history. Several U.S. presidents invoked it through the years to challenge European intervention in the affairs of the Americans, and later to protect island nations of the Pacific.
Monroe was born into an Anglican family. As an adult, he attended Episcopal churches.
In 1817 Monroe was elected 5th President of the United States. In choosing his cabinet Monroe honored established precedent, reappointing his predecessor's secretaries and preserving a geographical balance. Crawford was continued in the Treasury, although he had hoped for a transfer to the State Department as the probable successor to Monroe. Benjamin Crowninshield, a New Englander with a mercantile background, remained in the Navy Department, and Richard Rush of Pennsylvania continued as attorney general until late in 1817, when he was named minister to Great Britain, a post more to his liking. Rush's replacement was William Wirt, a successful Baltimore lawyer celebrated for his popular biography of Patrick Henry. Having no political ambitions, Wirt continued to busy himself with his private practice, since the attorney generalship was a part-time office.
The major post, that of the secretary of state, went to John Quincy Adams, who had been absent from the United States since 1809 on a series of diplomatic appointments that had taken him from St. Petersburg to Ghent, and then to London. The son of a Federalist president and himself a former Federalist, he had been one of the moderate Federalists who had entered Republican ranks during Jefferson's administration. Monroe chose Adams because of his extensive diplomatic experience, a consideration Monroe felt had been ignored by previous administrations. Monroe also intended to disabuse people of the notion that the incumbent in the Department of State was necessarily the president's hand-picked successor. In this Monroe failed. Within a year Adams had developed a solid core of supporters in Congress and was considered a major candidate for the presidency.
In response to the disappearance of political parties, Monroe developed new methods of executive leadership. Every president since Washington had relied upon party loyalty to ensure congressional approval of administration measures. Bereft of party support, Monroe turned to the members of his cabinet as a source of power. Three of the secretaries - Adams, Crawford, and Calhoun - as aspirants to the presidency had substantial followings in Congress. Of the leading hopefuls only Henry Clay had elected to remain outside the administration. It was not until Monroe's second term that Andrew Jackson's strength as a candidate was evident. As John Quincy Adams' diary makes abundantly clear, Monroe's frequent cabinet meetings were not held to secure advice but to hammer out a consensus. It is noteworthy that Monroe was able to win congressional approval for every measure that had the support of the cabinet. He never consulted the secretaries when he knew agreement was impossible.
Although foreign affairs, which the Constitution placed directly under the control of the executive, occupied much of his attention, a variety of domestic issues required executive involvement. In his first annual message, Monroe startled the members of Congress by recommending that the Constitution be amended to authorize federal construction of roads and canals. In making this proposal Monroe was attempting to resolve the dilemma created when Madison, just before leaving office, vetoed as unconstitutional a bill appropriating dividends from the federally owned stock in the Bank of the United States for internal improvements. Madison's action had seemed inconsistent to many, for Madison, like Jefferson, had signed bills for the construction of the Cumberland Road. When Monroe queried Madison, he received the unsatisfactory response that the earlier bills had been signed hastily, without full consideration of the issue.
Monroe took a particular interest in the strengthening of the defenses of the nation. Just before leaving the War Department in 1815, he had submitted a report to Congress recommending that the army be retained at twenty thousand men rather than returned to the prewar figure of ten thousand. He also outlined an extensive plan for constructing coastal fortifications. Although Congress reduced the army to its prewar level, the substantial sum of $400,000 was appropriated in 1818 for coastal fortifications. The next year the sum was increased to $800,000. However, the decline in federal revenues following the Panic of 1819 led to a cutback in 1821 to $220,000. Only after revenues improved in 1822 did Congress raise the annual appropriation to $400,000, in response to Monroe's plea for the need to defend Florida.
Midway in his first term Monroe was confronted by two unexpected domestic crises. During his western tour in 1819, Monroe had become aware of the distress precipitated by the first peacetime depression - the so-called Panic of 1819. In response to his suggestion that Congress "give encouragement to domestic industries," a bill was introduced providing for increased duties on textiles, the industry most hurt by imports. This mild protectionist measure encountered immediate opposition from southern congressmen, many of whom had eagerly supported the tariff of 1816. The bill passed the House but failed in the Senate by one vote.
In his annual message of 1820, Monroe recommended that purchasers who acquired the land when prices were high be granted a "reasonable indulgence." Following a specific plan submitted by Crawford, a bill was passed permitting debtors unable to pay the balance to secure title for that portion for which they had already paid. A discount was granted to those making their payments on time.
Since government revenues from customs and land sales had declined so sharply, the Treasury in 1820 was faced with a deficit of $7 million, a sizable sum in a budget of only $25 million. Calhoun had made substantial economies in the operation of the War Department, which absorbed nearly a third of the budget in 1818, but they were insufficient to reduce the deficit substantially. Regarding the depression as only temporary, Monroe accepted Crawford's recommendation that the deficit be met by loans. However, as Monroe noted in his second inaugural, if the depression continued, he would request additional taxes.
In the winter of 1819–1820 the president and Congress engaged in the more serious, protracted conflict over the effort to prevent the admission of Missouri as a slave state. Nearly the whole session was consumed in this bitter controversy while the two houses remained deadlocked.
Within the framework of the then-current interpretation of the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, it was impossible for Monroe to intervene directly in the controversy. From the outset he let it be known that he would veto any measure restricting slavery in Missouri, since this would be contrary to the provision of the Constitution requiring that new states be admitted on an equal footing with the older states. Slavery was a legal institution and imposing limitations on Missouri would deprive that state of the right to determine a basic institution. In opposing restriction, Monroe was not only concerned with the constitutional issue: he shared the common view of many southerners that confining slavery to a few states would ensure its perpetuation. Slavery, he believed, would be more easily eliminated if it were diffused throughout the nation.
While the Missouri debates were raging in Congress, Monroe was kept informed of developments by Senator James Barbour of Virginia. Through Barbour, Monroe let it be known that he would approve Henry Clay's compromise admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and banning slavery in territory north of 36°30'. When Monroe finally consulted his secretaries after the passage of the compromise, he received only a qualified approval.
During the session of 1820–1821, there was a prolonged conflict over provisions in the Missouri constitution making it illegal for free blacks to enter Missouri and forbidding manumission without the specific authorization of the state legislature. Clay worked out a compromise providing that no provision of the Missouri constitution should be construed as denying any citizen the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. While Clay labored in Congress, Monroe quietly helped round up the votes needed to ensure the passage of what has been termed "the second Missouri Compromise."
James Monroe's best-known political act is the so-called Monroe Doctrine. Not until 1848 when James K. Polk was president did the first reference to Monroe’s statement as a "Doctrine" appear. The phrase Monroe Doctrine came into common use in the 1850s. The "principles of President Monroe," as the message was referred to in Congress, consisted of three openly proclaimed dicta: no further European colonization in the New World, the abstention of the United States from the political affairs of Europe, and nonintervention of Europe in the governments of the American hemisphere. In the diplomatic correspondence preceding the proclamation of these principles in the president’s message was a fourth dictum not publicly associated with the doctrine until 1869: the United States opposed the transfer of any existing European colonies from one European sovereign to another.
The most pressing constitutional question of his time was the place of slavery in the American republic. Himself a slaveholder, Monroe favored gradual, compensated emancipation followed by settlement of ex-slaves in Africa. To that end he was a founding member of the American Colonization Society; and the capital of Liberia, the African state settled through the society's efforts, was named in his honor.
President Monroe and his wife remained smitten by France after their sojourn there and with their daughters often spoke French together when they were in the White House. Elizabeth Monroe clothed herself in Paris creations and insisted on French etiquette and French cuisine at her table. Given the opportunity to refurnish the Executive Mansion when it was rebuilt after its destruction in 1814, the Monroes spent lavishly on gilded furniture, silverware, and various objets d’art imported from France. Some items that the president had purchased from impoverished French noble families while he was a minister he now lent or sold to the government for use in the Executive Mansion at prices some considered suspiciously high, although Monroe was later cleared of impropriety.
Physical Characteristics: Slightly over 6 feet tall, Monroe was sturdily built with broad shoulders and a large frame. He has a high forehead, and from early adulthood deep bays indented in his hairline. The dark wavy hair of his youth had grayed almost completely by the time he became president. His angular face was distinctive for its oversized nose, wide-set blue-gray eyes, and dimpled chin. He always appeared well-groomed but did not keep up with fashion changes in clothes. His health generally was good.
Quotes from others about the person
"Monroe's greatest asset was his disarming, warm personality. Although conceding that Monroe lacked brilliance and a nimble mind, biographer Harry Ammon pointed out that he "had a rare ability of putting men at ease by his courtesy, his lack of condescension, his frankness, and by what his contemporaries looked upon as his essential goodness and kindness of heart." Monroe at least partially overcame an early shyness but remained markedly low-key and reserved, especially among strangers. Acutely sensitive to criticism, he at times took offense where none was intended. Rather than lash back at his critics, however, he usually bottled up his feelings. "Operating as he did with such an elevated sense of his own integrity," Ammon has written, "he could not easily adjust when old friends failed to approve his conduct." - William A. DeGregorio
On February 16, 1786, Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright, one of the most beautiful women of her generation. The ceremony was in New York. After a brief honeymoon on Long Island, New York, the Monroes returned to New York City to live with her father until Congress adjourned. They then moved to Virginia, settling in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1789. They bought an estate in Charlottesville known as Ash Lawn-Highland, settling on the property in 1799. The couple had three children.
James Monroe had no better friend than his mentor, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was 15 years older than Monroe and like a father to him, teaching him much about law and the art of politics. When Jefferson urged Monroe to move near him, Monroe bought up some land adjacent to Monticello and build himself a home so the BFFs could be neighbors.
Monroe appointed John Quincy Adams the secretary of state.
William H. Crawford was the Secretary of the Treasury during Monroe's presidency.
Benjamin Williams Crowninshield got the position of the United States Secretary of the Navy between 1815 and 1818, during the administrations of Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.
Monroe appointed William Wirt the United States Attorney General.
