James Monroe

F

1

War of 1812

Although Monroe had been opposed to war, when the War of 1812 was declared he loyally supported Madison and his cause. Monroe served as secretary of state throughout the war, and simultaneously as secretary of war for the latter part of it.

Monroe was back in uniform briefly at the time of the British attack on Washington. He led the Maryland militia in an unsuccessful attempt to stave off the British at Bladensburg. After Washington was invaded and burned in 1814, the secretary of war was dismissed and Monroe took on the full responsibilities of that post. There were many problems facing Madison's administration: a bankrupt treasury, an army badly led and badly equipped, a rebellious New England, and a hostile Congress. Monroe helped to resolve some of them. He obtained loans from District of Columbia banks, although he could offer no warranty but his word for their repayment. He doubled the land bounty offered to enlistees in the army, lowered the enlistment age to include minors, and authorized the incorporation of state troops into the regular army at federal expense.

In August 1814 a U.S. peace commission, headed by expert diplomat John Quincy Adams, met at Ghent (Gent), Belgium, to negotiate peace with Britain. On December 24, 1814, a peace treaty acceptable to Madison and Monroe was signed at Ghent. It ended the war but failed to resolve most of the issues that had started it, including the blockading of ports, searching of ships, and impressment of sailors. In 1815 Monroe returned to the normal peacetime duties of the secretary of state.

G

Election of 1816

At the end of Madison's second term, Monroe was the logical presidential nominee for the Democratic-Republicans. The Federalist Party had been ruined by its opposition to the War of 1812 and could offer no effective opposition. Monroe received the electoral votes of all but three states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. These went to Rufus King of New York, the Federalist candidate. On March 4, 1817, two old schoolmates met again as Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office to President James Monroe. Daniel D. Tompkins of New York served as Monroe's vice president.

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IV

President of the United States

A

Inaugural Address

Monroe's inaugural address provided a preview of much of the policy for which the fifth president became renowned. The failures of Jefferson's and Madison's foreign policy, as well as the futility of the War of 1812, had impressed Monroe. They had made him think about other ways to safeguard American rights. He proposed the establishment of an adequate army and navy. “Our land and naval forces,” he said, “should be moderate, but adequate to do the necessary purposes” of protection against invasion and “maintaining the neutrality of the United States with dignity in the wars of other powers.”

B

Cabinet

Monroe's Cabinet was a remarkable group, undoubtedly one of the strongest Cabinets in U.S. history. The outstanding appointment was that of John Quincy Adams as secretary of state. Adams, son of a Federalist president and a convert to the Democratic-Republican Party, was unquestionably one of the greatest secretaries of state in U.S. history. The eight-year association between Adams and Monroe was marked by a growing mutual trust and respect that culminated in the Monroe Doctrine. Other distinguished Cabinet members included John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, secretary of war; William A. Crawford of Georgia, secretary of the treasury; and William Wirt of Maryland, attorney general. Monroe also had access throughout his presidency to the experienced counsel of his predecessors and friends, Madison and Jefferson, although on several occasions he offended Jefferson by not acting on his suggestions.

C

Purchase of Florida

Monroe's first administration faced two major crises, one foreign and one domestic. In late 1817 members of the Seminole tribe in Spanish-held Florida began a series of raids along the Georgia border in retaliation for incursions by U.S. troops looking for escaped slaves. Monroe sent General Andrew Jackson to drive them out. Jackson did so, but he also swept on into Florida, captured Pensacola and Saint Marks, and executed two British subjects for inciting the raids. The incident brought a threat of war with both Britain and Spain. Monroe entrusted Adams with the delicate task of smoothing the ruffled feelings of Britain and of negotiating with Spain not only for peace, but also for the long-hoped-for purchase of Florida.

Adams's negotiations were a combination of toughness and daring. He backed Jackson's invasion, persuaded Britain that its subjects had been in Florida illegally and had not been entitled to British protection, and told Spain that if it could not police Florida, it should cede it to the United States. On February 22, 1819, after long negotiations, Spain gave in and the Transcontinental Treaty was signed. Spain relinquished Florida in return for the assumption by the United States of $5 million in debts owed by Spaniards to American citizens, and a guarantee that the United States would renounce its claim to Texas. Of even greater importance, Adams succeeded in extending the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, which had been undetermined, all the way to the Pacific coast. The boundary began at the mouth of the Sabine River, extended along the Red and Arkansas rivers, ran north to the 42nd parallel (the present northern boundary of California), then straight west to the Pacific.

Adams also negotiated settlement of long-standing disputes with Britain. In the Convention of 1818, the United States obtained limited fishing rights in Canadian waters, the northern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase was fixed to run along the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, and the Oregon country, which Britain and the United States both claimed, was placed under joint occupancy for ten years.