49 Fun Facts About James Monroe

Monroe ran two cabinet departments during which war?

The War of 1812 made Monroe: after the British burned the capital, the president handed him the War Department on top of State, and his record there carried him to office as the fifth president.

Monroe's presidency coincided with which famously named political period?

Era of Good Feelings was coined by an opposition newspaper in Boston, the Columbian Centinel, after the new president's warm welcome there on his 1817 tour of the North.

Which political party did Monroe belong to?

Democratic-Republican by label, Monroe hoped to see political parties die out altogether, yet he still refused to appoint a single Federalist to his cabinet.

Monroe spent three years from 1780 studying which profession under Thomas Jefferson?

Law held little interest for Monroe in itself: he saw it as the quickest route to wealth and influence, and in Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, he gained a mentor for life.

Monrovia, a national capital named after Monroe, is the capital of which country?

Liberia's capital took his name in 1824 because Monroe had steered US government money to the American Colonization Society's settlement there for freed African Americans.

Monroe was born in which Virginia county, also the birthplace of George Washington?

Westmoreland County was home only until his teens: orphaned by 16, Monroe became the ward of his uncle Joseph Jones, a Virginia legislator who steered him toward public life.

Monroe suffered a severed artery and nearly died in which 1776 engagement?

Battle of Trenton nearly killed him: a musket ball in the shoulder severed an artery as he charged the Hessian guns, and only a doctor who clamped it on the spot stopped him bleeding to death.

Monroe shared a log hut at Valley Forge in 1777–78 with which future chief justice?

John Marshall had been his schoolmate in Virginia, and four decades after they shared that hut he administered the presidential oath to his old friend.

Which painting is said to show Monroe holding the flag?

Washington Crossing the Delaware was painted in Germany by Emanuel Leutze, who hoped the American example would inspire Europe's reformers after 1848; the river he modelled it on is the Rhine.

Sent to Paris in 1803 with narrow instructions, Monroe instead helped close which far larger deal?

The Louisiana Purchase went far beyond his instructions, which covered only New Orleans and West Florida; offered the whole territory, he and Robert Livingston agreed anyway, and Jefferson backed them.

Which French ruler sold Monroe and Livingston far more land than they came to buy, for $15 million?

Napoleon had lost an army to yellow fever in the Caribbean and faced a new war with Britain, so he gave up his American plans and offered the whole territory to the startled envoys.

In retirement, Monroe served on the governing board of which Virginia institution?

The University of Virginia stands on farmland Monroe had once owned; Jefferson founded it, and Monroe served on its board in retirement until illness forced him to give it up.

Who was Monroe's Federalist opponent in the 1816 presidential election?

Rufus King carried only three states: the Federalists had opposed the war just ended, were branded unpatriotic for it, and never ran a presidential candidate again.

Which of these states did Monroe lose in the 1816 election?

Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware were all the fading Federalists could hold, leaving Monroe 183 of 217 electoral votes; four years later he carried every state in the Union.

An elector from which state cast the only vote against Monroe in the 1820 election?

New Hampshire's William Plumer voted for Monroe's own secretary of state instead; legend says he was guarding Washington's record as the only unanimous choice, but he is said to have simply thought little of Monroe.

Who served as vice president for both of Monroe's terms?

Daniel D. Tompkins had paid for much of New York's wartime defence on his own credit; he spent his vice presidency fighting claims that he had mishandled the money, skipping Senate sessions and drinking heavily.

Which Massachusetts man did Monroe choose as his Secretary of State?

John Quincy Adams was picked partly to soothe Northern resentment at a run of Virginian presidents; the job made him the favourite to follow Monroe into the White House, and he did.

Which South Carolina congressman became Monroe's Secretary of War?

John C. Calhoun was a fallback: Monroe wanted a westerner to run the War Department and turned to the South Carolinian only after his first choices said no.

Which general seized the Spanish capital of Pensacola during Monroe's 1818 Seminole campaign?

Andrew Jackson went well beyond his vague orders, even executing two British subjects; Congress cried undeclared war, but Monroe stood by him and used the raid to press Spain into giving the territory up.

In the 1819 treaty that brought it Florida, the United States gave up its claim to which neighbouring region?

Texas was the price of Florida: Spain took no payment beyond the United States assuming up to $5 million of its own citizens' claims, but Washington had to recognise Spanish sovereignty over Texas.

As a young congressman, Monroe toured the frontier and helped shape which law for the lands beyond the Ohio River?

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 owed something to a journey Monroe made through the western country in 1784: he came back and persuaded Congress to rethink the boundaries it had drawn for new states.

Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in which kind of statement?

An annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823, carried the warning; Europe's powers largely ignored it at the time, and it was not called the Monroe Doctrine until the 1850s.

Which empire's 1821 claim to the Pacific coast of North America provoked the Monroe Doctrine's ban on new colonies?

Russia had decreed in 1821 that the coast down to the 51st parallel was closed to foreign ships; within months of Monroe's warning it agreed by treaty to pull its claim back north to 54°40′.

Which British foreign secretary sought a joint Anglo-American statement in 1823?

George Canning's offer of a joint warning tempted Monroe, and two former presidents advised him to accept; his secretary of state argued America should not 'come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war'.

Which 1817 agreement with Britain regulated naval armaments on the Great Lakes?

The Rush–Bagot Treaty halted a shipbuilding race that had carried on along the lakes after the last war, cutting each navy there to a vessel or two per lake.

The 1818 treaty left which region open to both America and Britain?

Oregon Country lay beyond the Rocky Mountains, where the new border line stopped; unable to agree on how to divide it, the two nations left it open to both for ten years.

Which later president added a famous 'corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904?

Theodore Roosevelt turned Monroe's idea on its head: a warning to Europe to stay out of the Americas became a justification for the United States to intervene in Latin America itself.

Which free state joined the Union with Missouri under the 1820 compromise Monroe signed?

Maine, until then the northern district of Massachusetts, came in free to keep the Senate balanced; Monroe had threatened to veto any bill that singled Missouri out for restrictions on slavery.

Which later measure repealed the Missouri Compromise line Monroe signed?

The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers vote on slavery north of 36°30′, where the compromise had banned it for 34 years; three years later the Supreme Court ruled the old ban unconstitutional anyway.

Which New York congressman's 1819 amendment touched off the Missouri crisis?

James Tallmadge Jr. proposed barring new slaves from Missouri and freeing those born there at 25; the House passed it, the Senate threw it out, and the sectional quarrel it started ended only with the compromise of 1820.

Monroe vetoed an 1822 bill to collect tolls on which route?

Cumberland Road tolls failed his constitutional test: Congress could pay for roads, he said, but not run them. Within three years he had changed his mind and signed a bill extending the same road into Ohio.

Whose credit squeeze deepened the Panic of 1819?

The Second Bank of the United States cut back its lending, state banks failed and foreclosures spread; Monroe did little, believing slumps were a natural part of a growing economy that would soon right itself.

As Virginia's governor in 1800, Monroe called out the militia to suppress which planned slave uprising?

Gabriel's Rebellion aimed to seize Richmond and take Monroe himself hostage; rain and informers foiled it, and after Jefferson warned against revenge Monroe had some of the condemned sold out of state rather than hanged.

Which treaty with Britain, kept from Monroe, wrecked his mission to France?

The Jay Treaty outraged the French, and Monroe, never sent its terms, could not explain it away; President Washington recalled him, and Monroe hit back with a published attack on the administration.

Which revolutionary writer did Monroe get released from prison in 1794 and take into his own home?

Thomas Paine had spent most of a year in a Paris prison; Monroe won his release and housed him, but they parted once Paine, against Monroe's wishes, set about attacking President Washington in print.

At Brandywine in 1777, Monroe befriended which French volunteer?

The Marquis de Lafayette's family later owed the Monroes a great deal: with his wife in a Paris prison expecting the guillotine, Monroe's wife rode there in her carriage and asked to see her, and she was soon freed.

Who beat Monroe in the race for a Virginia seat in the first US Congress?

James Madison won even though Patrick Henry had drawn the district to keep him out of Congress; the two rivals travelled to their debates together and came out of the campaign still friends.

Jefferson refused to send Monroe's 1806 treaty with Britain to the Senate because it ignored which grievance?

Impressment, the Royal Navy's seizure of sailors from American ships, was the grievance that mattered most; a treaty silent on it was dead on arrival, and the snub opened a rift between Monroe and his old friends.

Whom did Monroe marry in 1786 while serving in Congress?

Elizabeth Kortright was the daughter of a merchant who lost much of his fortune in the Revolution; as First Lady her health was often poor, so their daughter Eliza stood in as White House hostess.

Which of these newly independent countries did the United States recognise under Monroe?

Mexico was recognised together with Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru; Monroe had sympathised with the rebels for years but waited until his treaty with Spain was safely ratified.

Where did Monroe die on July 4, 1831?

New York City was his daughter Maria's home: widowed in 1830 and deep in debt, he moved in with her family, and he lay buried there until Virginia brought his body back to Richmond in 1858.

What did Monroe name the estate he bought near Monticello?

Highland sat beside Monticello because Jefferson urged his friend to buy there; the small house long shown to visitors turned out to be a guest house when archaeologists uncovered the foundations of Monroe's real home.

Which founding document did Monroe vote against at Virginia's convention in 1788?

The US Constitution, he argued, needed a bill of rights and direct election of presidents and senators; pressure from critics like him helped bring about the first ten amendments three years later.

Monroe left which school in 1776 to join the Continental Army?

College of William & Mary students were drilling on campus by 1775, and Monroe joined a raid on the royal governor's palace that carried off hundreds of muskets and swords for the Virginia militia.

What was the title of the book on government that Monroe abandoned late in life?

The People the Sovereigns set out to compare the United States with the failed republics of the past; Monroe gave it up to write his autobiography instead, and died without finishing that either.

Which faction of 'Old Republicans' tried to enlist Monroe for the 1808 election?

Quids, led by the fiery John Randolph of Roanoke, accused Jefferson of abandoning true republican principles; Monroe let them put his name forward for president, never campaigned, and lost badly.

From his first years in Congress, Monroe pressed for Americans' right to navigate freely on which river?

The Mississippi River was the western settlers' road to market, and Spain controlled its mouth; Monroe argued for access in Congress, at Virginia's ratifying convention and again as a diplomat in Europe.

Who stepped in and talked Monroe and Alexander Hamilton out of fighting a duel in 1797?

Aaron Burr, who called the quarrel childish, brokered a truce after Hamilton blamed Monroe for the leak that exposed his affair with Maria Reynolds; seven years later Burr himself shot Hamilton dead in a duel.

Who turned down Monroe's War Department because he wanted State?

Henry Clay took the snub badly: as Speaker he opposed holding the inauguration in the House chamber, the ceremony moved outdoors, and he stayed away from it himself.