Monroe, James

Monroe, James (1758–1831), fifth president of the United States.Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, James Monroe entered the College of William and Mary in 1774, but left two years later to fight in the Revolutionary War. Rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Monroe saw active service at Long Island, Manhattan, Trenton, Brandywine, Valley Forge, and Monmouth Courthouse.

Elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782, Monroe soon went to Philadelphia for a term in the Continental Congress (1783–1786). He opposed ratification of the federal Constitution, but was nevertheless elected to the U.S. Senate in 1790. He represented the United States in Paris from 1793 to 1796, but was recalled after disagreeing with the George Washington administration over foreign policy. He served three terms as Virginia governor (1799–1802) before President Thomas Jefferson sent him back to Paris for the final stage of the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase (1803). Thereafter, until 1807, Monroe was, alternately, U.S. minister in London and Madrid, but he achieved little success. Jefferson rejected a commercial treaty he negotiated with Great Britain in 1806, and in Spain Monroe failed to obtain the Floridas for the United States.

In 1808 Monroe ran unsuccessfully for the presidency. He began another term as governor of Virginia in 1811, but resigned the same year when President James Madison appointed him secretary of state. During the War of 1812 Monroe contemplated resuming a military career but he remained in the State Department while simultaneously serving as secretary of war in the Winter of 1812–1813 and again in 1814–1815.

In 1816 Monroe was elected to the first of two terms as president. Winning on each occasion without significant opposition, he presided over the “Era of Good Feelings” following the collapse of the Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican parties. On the domestic front, the Monroe administration undertook few initiatives. The president played no active role in the debates occasioned by the Missouri Crisis, though he did ultimately support the measures that resolved the dispute by linking the admission of Maine and Missouri to the Union to the restriction on slavery throughout the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase. In foreign affairs, Monroe's accomplishments were more substantial. He worked closely with his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, on the negotiations with Spain that produced the 1819 Adams‐Onís Treaty granting the United States clear title to the Floridas, establishing the final boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase, and extending U.S. territory to the Pacific. A section of his 1823 annual message, drafted by Adams, warning European powers against intervening in the Americas and opposing the incorporation of South American territory into European colonial empires, was subsequently enshrined as the “Monroe Doctrine,” which helped lay the foundation for U.S. diplomatic hegemony in the Americas.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Expansionism; Federalist Party; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Missouri Compromise; Political Parties.

Bibliography

Harry Ammon , James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, 1971.
Noble E. Cunningham Jr. , The Presidency of James Monroe, 1996.

J.C.A. Stagg