Who is the 5 president

The former senator and presidential candidate offers a provocative new assessment of the first "national security president"

James Monroe is remembered today primarily for two things: for being the last of the "Virginia Dynasty"―following George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison―and for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, his statement of principles in 1823 that the western hemisphere was to be considered closed to European intervention. But Gary Hart sees Monroe as a president ahead of his time, whose priorities and accomplishments in establishing America's "national security" have a great deal in common with chief executives of our own time.

Unlike his predecessors Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was at his core a military man. He joined the Continental Army at the age of seventeen and served with distinction in many pivotal battles. (He is prominently featured at Washington's side in the iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.) And throughout his career as a senator, governor, ambassador, secretary of state, secretary of war, and president, he never lost sight of the fact that without secure borders and friendly relations with neighbors, the American people could never be truly safe in their independence. As president he embarked on an ambitious series of treaties, annexations, and military confrontations that would secure America's homeland against foreign attack for nearly two hundred years. Hart details the accomplishments and priorities of this forward-looking president, whose security concerns clearly echo those we face in our time.

President James Monroe, 1794 Portrait

James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States and the last president who was a Founding Father, was born at Monroe’s Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia, on April 28, 1758.

He was first tutored at home by his mother Elizabeth, and between the ages of 11 and 16, he studied at Campbell town Academy. Upon his father’s death in 1774, Monroe inherited a small plantation and slaves, officially joining the ruling class of the planter elite in Virginia. Just 16 years old, he formed a close relationship with his maternal uncle, the influential Judge Joseph Jones. The latter had been educated at the Inns of Court in London and was the executor of his father’s estate. That same year, Monroe enrolled in the College of William and Mary.

In early 1776, about a year and a half after his enrollment, Monroe dropped out of college and joined the 3rd Virginia Regiment under General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He was not 19 years old when, as a lieutenant at the Battle of Trenton, he led a squad of men who captured a Hessian battery as it was about to open fire. During the battle, both Monroe and George Washington were wounded. After recuperating from his wound, Monroe joined the Virginia Militia in 1777, was appointed as a lieutenant colonel, and served until 1780. He never returned to school.

Afterward, he studied law with George Wythe, the first American law professor, and then moved to Richmond, Virginia, to study law with Thomas Jefferson. In 1780 the British invaded Richmond, and as Governor, Jefferson commissioned Monroe as a colonel to command the militia and act as a liaison to the Continental Army in North Carolina. Afterward, Monroe resumed studying law under Jefferson. In 1782 he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and the following year, when he was 25 years old, he was a delegate to the Continental Congress.

James Monroe White House portrait, 1819

James Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright (1768–1830) on February 16, 1786, in New York City. He had met her while serving with the Continental Congress, which then met in New York, the temporary capital of the new nation. The couple would have three children.

He was the ambassador to France in 1794, but his course displeased the administration, and he was recalled. From 1799 to 1802, he was governor of Virginia and, in the latter year, was sent to France by President Thomas Jefferson to negotiate the purchase of Louisiana. In 1811 he was again governor of Virginia but served only four months as he was appointed the secretary of State by President James Madison. He also served as Secretary of War at the same time and, as the treasury was empty, pledged his private means for the defense of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

Facing little opposition from the fractured Federalist Party, Monroe was easily elected president in 1816, winning over 80 percent of the electoral vote. He would serve from 1817 to 1825. Monroe was of plain, simple manners, excellent judgment, and the highest integrity. While his career did not stamp him as a man of genius, it proved him to be that which in his situation is better—an absolutely “safe” man to trust with the highest office in the gift of the American people. Under Monroe, the United States made more significant advancements than any previous decade.

Everything united to make his administration successful. The Federal party had disappeared; its members stopped voting or joined the Republicans. Since, therefore, everybody seemed to be agreed with his political views, the period is often referred to as “the era of good feeling,” a condition altogether too ideal to continue long. He is most noted for his proclamation in 1823 of the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further European intervention in the Americas.

Compiled and edited by Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated February 2022.

Also See:

American Revolution

Presidents of the United States

The Louisiana Purchase

Who’s Who in American History

Sources:

Morris, Charles; A New history of the United States: The greater Republic; 1899
Wikipedia

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James Monroe, (born April 28, 1758, Westmoreland county, Virginia [U.S.]—died July 4, 1831, New York, New York, U.S.), fifth president of the United States (1817–25), who issued an important contribution to U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European nations against intervening in the Western Hemisphere. The period of his administration has been called the Era of Good Feelings.

Monroe’s father, Spence Monroe, was of Scottish descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Jones Monroe, of Welsh descent. The family were owners of a modest 600 acres (240 hectares) in Virginia. At age 16 Monroe entered the College of William and Mary but in 1776 left to fight in the American Revolution. As a lieutenant he crossed the Delaware with General George Washington for what became the Battle of Trenton. Suffering a near fatal wound in the shoulder, Monroe was carried from the field. Upon recovering, he was promoted to captain for heroism, and he took part in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. Advanced to major, he became aide-de-camp to General William Alexander (Lord Stirling) and with him shared the suffering of the troops at Valley Forge in the cruel winter of 1777–78. Monroe was a scout for Washington at the Battle of Monmouth and served as Lord Stirling’s adjutant general.

In 1780, having resigned his commission in the army, he began the study of law under Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, and between the two men there developed an intimacy and a sympathy that had a powerful influence upon Monroe’s later career. Jefferson also fostered a friendship between Monroe and James Madison.

Monroe was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and was chosen a member of the governor’s council. From 1783 to 1786 he served in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the new nation. During his term he vigorously insisted on the right of the United States to navigate the Mississippi River, then controlled by the Spanish, and attempted, in 1785, to secure for the weak Congress the power to regulate commerce, thereby removing one of the great defects in the existing central government. In 1786 Monroe, 27 years old, and Elizabeth Kortright of New York, 17 years old, were married. They had two daughters, Eliza Kortright and Maria Hester, and a son who died in infancy. Eliza often was at her father’s side as official hostess when he was president, substituting for her ailing mother. Maria’s marriage to a cousin, Samuel L. Gouverneur, in 1820 was the first wedding performed in the President’s House, as the White House was then called.

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Retiring from Congress in 1786, Monroe began practicing law at Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was chosen a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1787 and in 1788 a member of the state convention at which Virginia ratified the new federal Constitution. In 1790 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he vigorously opposed President George Washington’s administration. Nevertheless, in 1794 Washington nominated him as minister to France.

It was the hope of the administration that Monroe’s well-known French sympathies would secure for him a favourable reception and that his appointment would also conciliate France’s friends in the United States. His warm welcome in France and his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, which he regarded as a natural successor to the American Revolution, displeased the Federalists (the party of Alexander Hamilton, which encouraged close ties not to France but to England) at home. Monroe did nothing, moreover, to reconcile the French to the Jay Treaty, which regulated commerce and navigation between the United States and Great Britain during the French Revolutionary wars.

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Without real justification, the French regarded the treaty as a violation of the French-American treaty of commerce and amity of 1778 and as a possible cause for war. Monroe led the French government to believe that the Jay Treaty would never be ratified by the United States, that the administration of George Washington would be overthrown as a result of the obnoxious treaty, and that better things might be expected after the election in 1796 of a new president, perhaps Thomas Jefferson. Washington, though he did not know of this intrigue, sensed that Monroe was unable to represent his government properly and, late in 1796, recalled him.

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Monroe returned to America in the spring of 1797 and in the following December published a defense of his course in a pamphlet of 500 pages entitled A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the United States. Washington seems never to have forgiven Monroe for this stratagem, though Monroe’s opinion of Washington and Jay underwent a change in his later years. In 1799 Monroe was chosen governor of Virginia and was twice reelected, serving until 1802.