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MONROE, James
(1758–1831), fifth president of the U.S. (1817–25).
One of the founders of the Jeffersonian Republican party, Monroe
served as minister to France and to Great Britain and as secretary of
state under President James Madison. He was co-negotiator of the
Louisiana Purchase and author of the Monroe Doctrine.
Born in Westmoreland Co., Va., on April 28, 1758, the son
of a modest planter, Monroe entered William and Mary College in
July 1774, leaving in the spring of 1776 to serve in the 3d Virginia
Regiment during the American Revolution. He fought in the battles
of New York and distinguished himself in the vanguard action at
Trenton, N.J., where he was wounded. At Valley Forge he held the
rank of colonel as an aide to Gen. William Alexander. Returning
to Virginia in 1780, he studied law with Thomas Jefferson, who became
his lifelong friend, patron, and major intellectual influence. Monroe
was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1782. As a delegate
(1783–86) to the Continental Congress he organized opposition
to the Jay-Gardoqui proposals (which would have blocked U.S. use
of the Mississippi River) and framed the system of territorial government
incorporated into the Northwest Ordinance. Although an advocate
of a strong central government, he opposed ratification of the Constitution
because he thought it gave too much power to the Senate.
In 1789 Monroe moved to a plantation in Albemarle Co., where
he and Jefferson were neighbors. His wife, Elizabeth Kortright (c.
1763–1830) of New York, whom he had married in 1786, was
one of the great beauties of the day. She was later known for the
atmosphere of elegance and formality she brought to the White House.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1790, Monroe joined Representative
Madison and Secretary of State Jefferson in founding the Republican
party to oppose the fiscal program of Secretary of the Treasury
Alexander Hamilton. In order to please the Republicans, President
George Washington appointed Monroe minister to France in 1794. His
pro-French sympathies, however, which conflicted with the policy
of the administration, led to his recall two years later. Monroe
then defended himself in a pamphlet that attacked Washington’s
foreign policy.
As governor of Virginia from 1799 to 1802, Monroe acted decisively
to check a slave rebellion (Gabriel’s Rebellion) in 1802.
In 1803 Jefferson, by then president, named him special envoy to
France to assist Robert R. Livingston, the resident minister, in
negotiating the purchase of Louisiana. From 1803 to 1807 Monroe
was minister to Great Britain, and in 1806, aided by special envoy
William Pinkney (1764–1822), he negotiated a treaty providing
for limited relaxation of British wartime restrictions on U.S. trade
with Europe. Jefferson, however, refused to accept a settlement
that did not include a ban on British impressment of American seamen.
This led to an estrangement between Monroe and his friends, President
Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison, that was healed only in
1811, when Madison, who had succeeded Jefferson as president, appointed
Monroe his secretary of state.
Widely respected by the younger generation of politicians
for his practical sense and his ability to harmonize conflicting
interests, Monroe established a good working relationship with Congress
and won Republican support for administration policy as the U.S.
became involved in the War of 1812. When the British captured Washington,
D.C., in 1814, Monroe was made secretary of war in place of John
Armstrong (1758–1843), who was blamed for the fiasco. A
capable administrator, he restored morale and rushed reinforcements
to help Gen. Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans.
In 1816 the Republican congressional caucus chose Monroe as its
presidential nominee, and he won an overwhelming victory over his
Federalist opponent, Rufus King. Adopting a conciliatory policy,
he launched the Era of Good Feeling, hoping to terminate the party
warfare he regarded as destructive of representative government.
Monroe drew into his cabinet three of the leading men of the
day: John Quincy Adams as secretary of state, William H. Crawford
as secretary of the treasury, and John C. Calhoun as secretary of
war. His greatest achievements as president lay in foreign affairs.
In 1819 he pressured Spain into ceding Florida and making a generous
settlement of the Louisiana boundary. When Spain’s American
colonies rebelled, a coalition of European powers threatened to
intervene and restore Spanish authority. In 1822 the British foreign
secretary George Canning proposed a joint declaration opposing European
intervention. Monroe opted instead for an independent declaration
of policy (later known as the Monroe Doctrine), which he embodied
in his annual message to Congress in 1823. He announced that the
U.S. would regard interference in American affairs as an unfriendly
act and that the western hemisphere was closed to further European
colonization. The latter statement, designed to check Russian expansion
on the Pacific coast, was Adams’s contribution.
Monroe’s most important domestic achievement lay
in constructing a chain of coastal fortifications to prevent future
invasions. A drop in federal revenues after the financial panic
of 1819 led Congress to curtail this program.
In 1820 the harmony of the Era of Good Feeling was ended by
the crisis over slavery in Missouri and the bitter conflict over
the presidential succession. Monroe welcomed the compromise that
admitted Maine as a free state and excluded slavery in the Louisiana
Territory north of 36° 30’. During his second
term the intense rivalry over the presidential succession led to
a decline in support for his administration, causing the failure
of an Anglo-American accord to ban the international slave trade
and also of Monroe’s efforts to protect Indian treaty rights.
After leaving the White House, Monroe lived at Oak Hill in
Loudoun Co., Va. Heavily in debt, he was threatened by bankruptcy
until Congress appropriated $30,000 to settle claims for expenses
during his diplomatic missions. His last public act was to preside
over the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829. He died July
4, 1831, at his daughter’s home in New York City. He was
buried in New York, but reinterred in Richmond, Va., in 1858.