James Monroe (1758 - 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer and diplomat who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A veteran of the Revolutionary War and the last president of the founding generation, he presided over a period of one-party dominance known as the Era of Good Feelings. [3] His annual message of 1823, later called the Monroe Doctrine, warned European powers against new colonisation in the Western Hemisphere and became a lasting principle of American policy. [4]
Early life and the Revolution
James Monroe was born on 28 April 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to a planter family of modest standing. He entered the College of William and Mary in 1774 but left in 1776 to join the Continental Army. [1]
He served in the New York and New Jersey campaigns and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Trenton in December 1776, where he was struck in the shoulder while helping to capture enemy artillery. He rose to the rank of major and later served as an aide to Lord Stirling before returning to Virginia, where he studied law under Thomas Jefferson, who became a lifelong political mentor. [2]
Political and diplomatic career
Monroe sat in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Congress of the Confederation, and at Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788 he opposed the new federal Constitution on the grounds that it granted too much power to the central government. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1790, where he aligned with Jefferson and James Madison against the Federalists. [1]
His diplomatic service began as minister to France from 1794 to 1796, a posting that ended in recall after disagreements with the Washington administration. He was governor of Virginia from 1799 to 1802, and in 1803 returned to Paris as a special envoy, joining Robert Livingston in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, which roughly doubled the territory of the United States. [2] He later served as minister to Britain, and from 1811 as secretary of state under Madison, additionally taking on the War Department during the War of 1812.
Presidency
Elected president in 1816 and re-elected almost unopposed in 1820, Monroe governed at a time when the Federalist Party had effectively collapsed, producing the period of apparent political harmony called the Era of Good Feelings. [3]
Domestically his presidency was dominated by sectional conflict over slavery, resolved temporarily by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and drew a line across the remaining Louisiana territory. The Panic of 1819 brought the first major peacetime financial crisis in the country's history. [1]
In foreign affairs, the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 secured Florida from Spain and fixed the western boundary of American territory. In December 1823, with his secretary of state John Quincy Adams, Monroe told Congress that the Americas were closed to further European colonisation and that the United States would not interfere in European affairs. [4] The statement had limited force at the time, but was invoked repeatedly by later administrations.
Later life and legacy
Monroe left office in 1825 in serious debt, having spent much of his own money on public service, and was obliged to sell property in his final years. Like other Virginia planters of his generation he held enslaved people throughout his life, while supporting the American Colonization Society, whose settlement in West Africa took the name Monrovia in his honour. [1]
He moved to New York City to live with his daughter after his wife's death and died there on 4 July 1831, the third president to die on Independence Day. He is remembered chiefly for the doctrine bearing his name and for the territorial and diplomatic consolidation of the young republic. [3]
