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James Monroe

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   James Monroe
   James Monroe
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   5th President of the United States
   In office
   March 4, 1817 –  March 4, 1825
   Vice President(s)   Daniel D. Tompkins
   Preceded by James Madison
   Succeeded by John Quincy Adams
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   7th United States Secretary of State
   In office
   April 2, 1811 –  September 30, 1814
   February 28, 1815 – March 3, 1817
   Preceded by Robert Smith
   Succeeded by John Quincy Adams
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   Born April 28, 1758
   Westmoreland County, Virginia
   Died July 4, 1831
   New York City
   Political party Democratic-Republican
   Spouse Elizabeth Kortright Monroe
   Religion Church of England, Episcopal, Deist
   Signature

   James Monroe ( April 28, 1758- July 4, 1831) was the fifth President of
   the United States (1817-1825). His administration was marked by the
   acquisition of Florida (1819), the Missouri Compromise (1820), in which
   Missouri was declared a slave state, and the profession of the Monroe
   Doctrine (1823), declaring U.S. opposition to European interference in
   the Americas.

Early years

   The President’s parents, father Spence Monroe (ca. 1727–1774), a
   woodworker and tobacco farmer, and mother Elizabeth Jones Monroe had
   significant land holdings but little money. Like his parents, he was a
   slaveholder. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Monroe went to
   school at Campbelltown Academy and then the College of William and
   Mary, both in Virginia. After graduating in 1776, Monroe fought in the
   Continental Army, serving with distinction at the Battle of Trenton,
   where he was shot in his left shoulder. Following his military service,
   he practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia. James Monroe married
   Elizabeth Kortright on February 16, 1786 at the Trinity Church in New
   York.

   Monroe was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and
   served in the Continental Congress 1783–1786. As a youthful politician,
   he joined the anti-Federalists in the Virginia Convention which
   ratified the Constitution, and in 1790, was elected United States
   Senator. As Minister to France in 1794–1796, he displayed strong
   sympathies for the French Revolution; later, with Robert R. Livingston
   and under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, he helped
   negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. He served as Governor of Virginia
   from 1799 to 1802. He was Minister to France again in 1803 and then
   Minister to the Court of St. James (Britain) from 1803 to 1807. In 1807
   he negotiated a treaty with Britain to replace the Jay Treaty of 1794,
   but Jefferson rejected it as unsatisfactory and the two nations moved
   toward the War of 1812. Monroe returned to the Virginia House of
   Delegates and was elected to another term as governor of Virginia in
   1811, but he resigned a few months into the term. He then served as
   Secretary of State from 1811 to 1814. When he was appointed to
   Secretary of War in 1814, he stayed on as the interim Secretary of
   State. In 1815 he was again commissioned as the permanent Secretary of
   State, and left his position as Secretary of War. Thus from October 1,
   1814 to February 28, 1815, Monroe held the two cabinet posts. Monroe
   stayed on as Secretary of State until the end of the James Madison
   Presidency, and the following day Monroe began his term as the new
   President of the United States.

Presidency 1817-1825: The Era of Good Feelings

Policies

   Following the War of 1812, Monroe was elected president in the election
   of 1816, and re-elected in 1820. In both those elections Monroe ran
   nearly uncontested.

   Attentive to detail, well prepared on most issues, non-partisan in
   spirit, and above all pragmatic, Monroe managed his presidential duties
   well. He made strong Cabinet choices, naming a southerner, John C.
   Calhoun, as Secretary of War, and a northerner, John Quincy Adams, as
   Secretary of State. Only Henry Clay's refusal kept Monroe from adding
   an outstanding westerner. Most appointments went to deserving
   Democratic-Republicans, but he did not try to use them to build the
   party's base. Indeed, he allowed the base to decay, which reduced
   tensions and led to the naming of his era as the " Era of Good
   Feelings". To build good will, he made two long tours in 1817. Frequent
   stops allowed innumerable ceremonies of welcome and good will. The
   Federalist Party dwindled and eventually died out, starting with the
   Hartford Convention. Practically every politician belonged to the
   Democratic-Republican Party, but the party lost its vitality and
   organizational integrity. The party's Congressional caucus stopped
   meeting, and there were no national conventions.

   These "good feelings" endured until 1824. Monroe, with his popularity
   undiminished, followed nationalist policies. Across the commitment to
   nationalism, sectional cracks appeared. The Panic of 1819 caused a
   painful economic depression. The application for statehood by the
   Missouri Territory, in 1819, as a slave state failed. An amended bill
   for gradually eliminating slavery in Missouri precipitated two years of
   bitter debate in Congress. The Missouri Compromise bill resolved the
   struggle, pairing Missouri as a slave state with Maine, a free state,
   and barring slavery north and west of Missouri forever.

   Monroe began to formally recognize the young sister republics (the
   former Spanish colonies) in 1822. He and Secretary of State John Quincy
   Adams wished to avoid trouble with Spain until it had ceded the
   Floridas to the U.S., which was done in 1821.

   Monroe is probably best known for the Monroe Doctrine, which he
   delivered in his message to Congress on December 2, 1823. In it, he
   proclaimed the Americas should be free from future European
   colonization and free from European interference in sovereign
   countries' affairs. It further stated the United States' intention to
   stay neutral in European wars and wars between European powers and
   their colonies, but to consider any new colonies or interference with
   independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts toward the United
   States.

   Britain, with its powerful navy, also opposed re-conquest of Latin
   America and suggested that the United States join in proclaiming "hands
   off." Ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison counseled Monroe to accept
   the offer, but Secretary Adams advised, "It would be more candid ... to
   avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as
   a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war." Monroe accepted
   Adams' advice. Not only must Latin America be left alone, he warned,
   but also Russia must not encroach southward on the Pacific coast. "...
   the American continents," he stated, "by the free and independent
   condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to
   be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European
   Power." Some 20 years after Monroe died in 1831 this became known as
   the Monroe Doctrine.

Administration and Cabinet

   James Vanderlyn, James Monroe, 1816, oil on canvas, Washington, DC:
   Smithsonian Institution.
   Enlarge
   James Vanderlyn, James Monroe, 1816, oil on canvas, Washington, DC:
   Smithsonian Institution.
   OFFICE                    NAME                   TERM
   President                 James Monroe           1817–1825
   Vice President            Daniel Tompkins        1817–1825
   Secretary of State        John Quincy Adams      1817–1825
   Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford    1817–1825
   Secretary of War          John C. Calhoun        1817–1825
   Attorney General          Richard Rush           1817
                             William Wirt           1817–1825
   Postmaster General        Return Meigs           1817–1823
                             John McLean            1823–1825
   Secretary of the Navy     Benjamin Crowninshield 1817–1818
                             John C. Calhoun        1818–1819
                             Smith Thompson         1819–1823
                             Samuel L. Southard     1823–1825

Supreme Court appointments

   Monroe appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * Smith Thompson – 1822

States admitted to the Union

     * Mississippi – December 10, 1817
     * Illinois – December 3, 1818
     * Alabama – December 14, 1819
     * Maine – March 15, 1820
     * Missouri – August 10, 1821

Post-Presidency

   Upon leaving the White House after his presidency expired on March 4,
   1825, James Monroe moved to live at Monroe Hill on the grounds of the
   University of Virginia. This university's modern campus was originally
   Monroe's family farm from 1788 to 1817, but he had sold it in the first
   year of his Presidency to the new college. He served on the Board of
   Visitors under Jefferson and then under the second rector and another
   former President James Madison, until his death.

   Monroe had racked up many debts during his years of public life. As a
   result, he was forced to sell off his Highland Plantation (now called
   Ash Lawn-Highland; it is owned by his alma mater, the College of
   William and Mary, which has opened it to the public). He never
   financially recovered throughout his entire life, and his wife's poor
   health made matters worse. For these reasons, he and his wife lived in
   Oak Hill until Elizabeth's death on September 23, 1830.

Death

   Upon Elizabeth's death, Monroe moved to live with his daughter Maria
   Hester Monroe Governor in New York City and died there from heart
   failure and tuberculosis on July 4, 1831, 55 years after the U.S.
   Declaration of Independence was proclaimed and 5 years after the death
   of Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He was originally buried
   in New York, but he was re-interred in 1858 to the President's Circle
   at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.
   Statue of Monroe at Ash Lawn-Highland
   Enlarge
   Statue of Monroe at Ash Lawn-Highland

Religious beliefs

   "When it comes to Monroe's ...thoughts on religion", Bliss Isely
   comments in his The Presidents: Men of Faith, "less is known than that
   of any other President." He burned much of his correspondence with his
   wife, and no letters survive in which he might have discussed his
   religious beliefs. Nor did his friends, family or associates write
   about his beliefs. Letters that do survive, such as ones written on the
   occasion of the death of his son, contain no discussion of religion.

   Monroe was raised in a family that belonged to the Church of England
   when it was the state church in Virginia, and as an adult frequently
   attended Episcopalian churches, though there is no record he ever took
   communion. He has been classified by some historians as a Deist, and he
   did use deistic language to refer to God. Jefferson had been attacked
   as an atheist and infidel for his deistic views, but never Monroe.
   Unlike Jefferson, Monroe was not anticlerical. [Holmes 2003]

Trivia

     * Apart from George Washington and Washington DC, James Monroe is the
       only U.S. President to have had a country's capital city named
       after him—that of Monrovia in Liberia which was founded by the
       American Colonization Society, in 1822, as a haven for freed
       slaves.
     * Monroe was the third president to die on July 4.
     * Monroe was (arguably) the last president to have fought in the
       Revolutionary War, although Andrew Jackson served as a 13-year-old
       courier in the Continental Army and was taken as a prisoner of war
       by the British.
     * In the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware (also
       depicted on the New Jersey state quarter), Monroe is standing
       behind George Washington and holds the American Flag
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   Monroe is considered to be the president who was in the most paintings;
   throughout the 1800's he was in over 350.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe"
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