On this date in 1758, James Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, about 80 miles south of Mount Vernon. His studies at the College of William and Mary were interrupted by the Revolutionary War. Monroe joined the Continental Army soon after its creation, seeing his first service under Washington’s command at the Battle of Long Island. Following the harrowing retreat from New York, Monroe was one of the few remaining remnants of the Continental Army at the famous Crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776. Monroe appears next to Washington, holding the flag, in this famous, and fanciful, portrait of the crossing by Emanuel Leutze. Monroe was one of the “two Officers and one or two privates wounded” during the successful assault on Trenton. His life was only saved by the chance encounter with a Patriot-sympathizing doctor who had volunteered his services earlier in the day. The other officer wounded was Washington’s own cousin William. Once again, Monroe made an appearance in a work of art, this time in John Trumbull’s “Capture of the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton.” He is the wounded officer to the left of the painting’s center. Washington was impressed by this young, fellow Virginian, writing in 1779 that, “He has in every instance maintained the reputation of a brave active and sensible officer.” After failing to recruit a new regiment of his own in war weary Virginia, Monroe retired from the army and began studying law under Thomas Jefferson. He soon entered politics, gaining election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782. The next year he entered the national government of the Articles of Confederation. Following the ratification of the Constitution, Monroe was defeated by Madison in an election for a House seat, but quickly found redemption in election to the Senate in 1790. Quickly falling under the spell of Madison and Jefferson, the younger man became a combatant in the party wars of the 1790s, but this time on the opposite side of his old commander. Still attempting to hold together a political leadership fracturing along political lines, then President Washington nominated Monroe to be Minister to France in 1794. Once there, Monroe’s partisanship increased, if anything. His party’s close ties and favoritism to France brought him into active opposition of the foreign policy he was charged with advancing. Monroe then published an attack on Washington in the Aurora, the mouthpiece of the Republican opposition. Washington, no longer willing to brook such activity within the administration, recalled Monroe from his diplomatic post. Disgraced, Monroe published a 473 page diatribe against Washington which precipitated the final break in their relationship, one of an increasingly long line of Virginians and other southerners to do so. Politically, Monroe chose the right side to back. After Jefferson’s election of 1800, his Republican Party proceeded to trounce the teetering Federalists to national irrelevance. In his successful bid for the Presidency in 1816, Monroe received 68.2% of the popular, a number that rose over 80% in 1820. This “Era of Good Feelings” was not to last long, if indeed it ever existed. By 1820, the slavery issue made its first major appearance on the national stage as Missouri petitioned for statehood. Although the imminent threat to national existence was neutralized by the Missouri Compromise, it was clear that feelings between sections were indeed strained. The great issue that was to divide the nation for the next four decades had made itself known to anyone paying attention. -Ranger Garrett Images accessed from Wikimedia Commons
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 23:00:00 +0000