Even when looked at in comparison to other great men of his
time, James Monroe led a remarkable life. His childhood was not easy; school
was a 5-mile trek through the Virginia wilderness that had to be made, musket
in hand, three months out of the year. By sixteen both of his parents had
passed. History has James’ influential uncle, Judge Joseph Jones to thank for
the fifth president of the United States. Jones paid the family’s debts, gave
James’s older sister the wherewithal to raise their two younger brothers, and brought
James with him to Williamsburg, where Jones was a member of the House of
Burgesses, and enrolled James at the College of William & Mary.
At William & Mary, Monroe was exposed to the simmering
resentment against the Crown and shortly thereafter dropped out of class to
join the Virginia Infantry. Monroe’s regiment marched to New York, but arrived
after the American retreat from New York City was underway (explained in more
detail during the George Washington posts). Monroe was in the group of soldiers
Washington led across New Jersey into Pennsylvania during the winter of 1776
and was one of the soldiers to cross the Delaware. At the ensuing Battle of
Trenton, Monroe took a musket ball to the chest and escaped death thanks to the
work of a field medic.
 |
| Monroe is depicted holding the flag in Emanuel Leutze's famous painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" |
Following the war, Monroe returned to William & Mary
where he received tutoring from his uncle’s acquaintance, Thomas Jefferson.
Monroe’s uncle was elected to the Continental Congress in 1782 and recommended
Monroe to take his seat on the Virginia Assembly, a post he would win. Monroe’s
seat on the Virginia Assembly marked the first in a long string of political
offices he would hold including US Congressman, US Senator, ambassador to
France during the French Revolution, ambassador to England, minister to Spain,
Governor of Virginia, Secretary of State, Secretary of War during the War of
1812, and President of the United States.
The list of offices that Monroe held hints at his proximity
to many important events in American history. James, his wife Elizabeth, and
their eight-year-old daughter Eliza set out for France in 1794, they stepped
off the boat into the genocide that was the French Revolution – 17,000 were
already dead and nearly half-a-million were in prisons. Monroe spent much of
the goodwill he built up with the French leaders extracting Americans from
French prisons. In one of the more interesting stories of his time in France,
Monroe set out to free Marquis de Lafayette’s wife, Adrienne, who had been
imprisoned after the Marquis fell afoul of the Jacobins. Elizabeth insisted on
visiting Adrienne herself and the resulting scene, combined with Monroe’s
diplomatic efforts, so affected the French people that Adrienne was released
shortly thereafter. The Monroes reunited Adrienne with her son, George
Washington Lafayette, who James then issued an American passport to get him out
of France. While in the United States, Lafayette’s son would briefly live with
his namesake.
Monroe’s efforts during the Jefferson administration are his
most enduring. In 1803, Jefferson asked Monroe to travel back to France to help
negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and West Florida from the French. His
instructions were specific to the purchase of just the two territories
mentioned above and he was further instructed to spend no more than $9 million.
However, Monroe sensed that Napoléon desired to exit North America altogether
and he arranged the purchase of an area larger than Great Britain, France,
German, Spain, and Portugal combined. Monroe agreed to $15 million in exchange
for what was to become known as the Louisiana Purchase, it would become the
largest peaceful transition of land from one nation to another in history.
Despite some concern about how the country would react, and Jefferson’s brief
contemplation about the Constitutionality of the purchase, Congress approved
the purchase and the United States doubled in size.
James Monroe played an important role in the War of 1812 as
well, during Madison’s administration he took control of the War Department
from the hapless, and possibly treasonous, John Armstrong. After the war,
Monroe succeeded Madison in the Nation’s highest office and presided over a
prolonged period of peace, which would become known as the Era of Good Feelings.
So good were the feelings that Monroe won reelection with 231 of the 235
electoral votes, this count included 3 abstentions and 1 vote for John Quincy
Adams (rumored to have been a symbolic vote meant to preserve Washington’s
place in history as the only unanimously elected president). During his penultimate State of the Union Address, Monroe would articulate the concept for which he is most remembered, the Monroe Doctrine. The Doctrine sought to prevent European meddling in the affairs of the United States and its neighbors, but has since been invoked by many presidents seeking to protect American interests. Like Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams before him, James Monroe would die on July 4th,
55 years after the founding of the Republic.
While James Monroe seems to have been a great American,
Harlow Giles Unger’s book was difficult to get through. The hero-worship for
Monroe was, at times, laughable and severely detracted from my enjoyment of the
book. Unger considers the presidents preceding Monroe “mere caretakers,” a view
that he shares with few others. The book never touches on Monroe’s slave
ownership, which seems worth writing about because I don’t believe he inherited
any. Unger also writes about Madison as though he was a sickly, bumbling fool
who cowered behind Monroe as Monroe held his presidency, and the nation,
together.
With the end of Monroe’s presidency the revolutionaries have
also passed us by. Next up, John Quincy Adams and the beginnings of the slow
march toward the Civil War.