James Monroe
James Monroe carried Revolutionary service into the presidency of 1817-1825, where the Monroe Doctrine and Era of Good Feelings defined the direction of the Early Republic.
Born April 28, 1758 / Died July 4, 1831
On April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Colony of Virginia, James Monroe was born into the planter world of the Tidewater. He entered the College of William and Mary in 1774, but the Revolutionary War soon pulled him into the Continental Army, where he fought at Trenton and later studied law under Thomas Jefferson. Military service and Jeffersonian mentorship together launched his political career.
Monroe served in the Confederation Congress, as minister to France, as governor of Virginia, and as secretary of state and secretary of war before reaching the presidency in 1817. During two presidential terms he presided over the Era of Good Feelings, supported the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Those measures tied domestic expansion and western settlement to a new diplomatic posture toward European empires in the Americas.
The Monroe Doctrine became a lasting pillar of United States foreign policy and was repeatedly reinterpreted in later crises from the Roosevelt Corollary to Cold War diplomacy. Monroe's presidency also helped define the political transition from the Revolutionary generation to the competitive party system of the Antebellum republic.
Key Contributions
- He was the last Founding Father to serve as president as well as the last president of the Virginia dynasty.
- Monroe was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and his presidency coincided with the Era of Good Feelings, concluding the First Party System era of American politics.
- He issued the Monroe Doctrine, a policy of limiting European colonialism in the Americas.
Related Events
Monroe Doctrine announced
On December 2, 1823, James Monroe told Congress that the United States would oppose new European colonization or intervention in the Western Hemisphere.
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