James Monroe (1758-1831) was an American statesman who served as the fifth president of the United States (1817-1825). The fourth president to belong to the so-called 'Virginia Dynasty', and the last of the generation of the Founding Fathers to hold the office, Monroe is primarily remembered for the Monroe Doctrine and the Era of Good Feelings.
James Monroe was born on 28 April 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was the eldest son of Spence Monroe, a craftsman, and Elizabeth Jones Monroe, the daughter of a family of wealthy Welsh immigrants. James grew up on the 600-acre family farm on which he was born, and, at the age of eleven, he was enrolled in Campbelltown Academy, considered the best school in Virginia. Here, he excelled in Latin and mathematics and befriended fellow student John Marshall, future chief justice of the US Supreme Court. In the early 1770s, both of Monroe's parents died, forcing him to drop out of school to take care of his younger siblings and to look after the property he had inherited, which included several enslaved people. In 1774, Monroe was able to return to school and attended the College of William and Mary, where he became increasingly involved in Whig politics and the opposition to Parliamentary taxes.
For the past decade, British Parliament had imposed a series of direct taxes on the colonies that American Whigs, or 'Patriots', had condemned as unconstitutional, on the basis that they were not represented in Parliament. The conflict had gradually escalated until, in April 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out between Britain and the rebellious colonies. In the days leading up to the war, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, dissolved the colony's elected legislative body, the House of Burgesses, and sent British soldiers to confiscate arms and ammunition belonging to the colony's militias. Outraged, Monroe and hundreds of other Virginians followed Patriot leader Patrick Henry to the Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg, to demand the weapons' return; the conflict, later known as the Gunpowder Incident, was de-escalated when Dunmore agreed to pay the Patriots £330. Monroe, feeling this was not good enough, later broke into the Governor's Mansion with 23 other students and stole hundreds of muskets and swords for the Patriot cause.
In 1776, Monroe dropped out of college and enlisted in the 3rd Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army. That December, he crossed the icy Delaware River with General George Washington and participated in the ensuing Battle of Trenton (26 December 1776). During the battle, he was severely wounded in the shoulder while capturing a Hessian cannon and nearly died of his injuries. After recovering, he was promoted to captain for his valor and saw further action at the Battle of Brandywine (11 September 1777) and Battle of Germantown (4 October 1777). He spent the winter shivering with the rest of the Continental Army at Valley Forge, where he befriended Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and shared a cabin with his old schoolmate John Marshall. The following year, he served at the Battle of Monmouth (28 June 1778) and was later promoted to lieutenant colonel, with recommendations from both Washington and Alexander Hamilton.
American War of Independence, 1775 - 1783
Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)
In 1780, Monroe resigned from the army and returned to Williamsburg to study law. Here, he was mentored by none other than Thomas Jefferson, who took Monroe under his wing and influenced his political development. In 1782, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, which he used as a stepping stone to win election to the Confederation Congress the following year. During his three years in Congress, Monroe supported the westward expansion of the United States as well as the Northwest Ordinance, which laid out the procedure whereby such lands could be admitted into the Union as states. He strongly supported the right of the US to navigate the Mississippi River – which was a point of contention with Spain – and argued against the need for a stronger central government than the one laid out in the Articles of Confederation.
On 16 February 1786, the 27-year-old Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright, the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent New York City family. Monroe retired from Congress that same year, and the couple settled in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Monroe opened a law practice. The couple would have two daughters: Eliza (1786-1840) and Maria (1802-1850); a son, James, was born in 1799 but tragically died sixteen months later. Monroe re-entered politics in 1788 when he attended the Virginia Ratifying Convention, tasked with ratifying the newly drafted US Constitution for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Though by now Monroe agreed that the feeble Articles of Confederation should be amended, he was concerned that the Constitution left the federal government too powerful and ultimately voted against it. Nevertheless, Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution by a narrow margin, and it went into effect nationwide in March 1789, with Washington elected as the first president.
