[On December 4th,
2016, James Monroe was elected the
fifth president of the United States. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five
histories and contexts linked to Monroe’s life and presidency.]
On three ways Monroe’s
public service reflects a globally and geographically expanding nation.
Thanks in large
part to Hamilton, some of the key
questions and debates from America’s long-forgotten first decade as a
post-Constitution political entity (the
1790s) have become more familiar: the battles between the
Hamilton and Jefferson factions, the questions of federal power and
potency, the visions of what the new nation would truly become and be. But to
my mind, at least as central to 1790s America were a pair of international entanglements:
the conflicts
with North African states and pirates that led to the 1797 Treaty
of Tripoli; and the undeclared war with France that culminated in the 1798 Alien
and Sedition Acts. Distinct and complex as each of these conflicts was,
taken together they reflect a new nation that was expanding its commercial,
military, and diplomatic presence around the globe. And in his position as George
Washington’s Ambassador to France during the particularly tense and touchy
period prior to the Alien and Sedition Acts (and amidst France’s own ongoing and
controversial Revolution), James Monroe both illustrates those globalizing
trends and played a key role in shaping the official response to them.
Although he
returned to Virginia during the Adams administration, beginning his terms as
the state’s Governor in 1799, Monroe remained linked to both the national
Democrat-Republican party and France, and through those connections was sent
by President Thomas Jefferson back to France in January 1803 to help Ambassador Robert
Livingston negotiate the Louisana Purchase. Nearly two decades later, during
his own first term as president, Monroe and his administration (led by John
Quincy Adams, Monroe’s successor as president) signed the 1819 Adams-Onís
Treaty with Spain, purchasing Spanish Florida and integrating it into the
United States. Taken together, the purchase and treaty hugely increased the
total area of the United States, reflecting a nation that was rapidly expanding
from its origins as a small collection of eastern colonies into a continental
presence. Yet the 1819 treaty likewise stipulated that the U.S. would not
pursue any interests in what was (at that time) Spanish Texas, illustrating the
continued territorial and international complexities that would accompany this continental
expansion. Those issues and histories were vital to early 19th
century America, and James Monroe was closely linked to many of them.
Just as vital to
Early Republic America, of course, was the issue of slavery, and there too (in
addition to his personal connections to slavery, about which I wrote yesterday)
Monroe reflected and extended the relationship between a globalizing nation and
this dark historical reality. Monroe was an early member of the American Colonization
Society, the organization founded in 1816 (the same year as his presidential
election) to promote the “resettlement” of freed slaves to Africa. As
president, Monroe helped
secure $100,000 in Federal money to support colonization, funds that
allowed the group to purchase the land that would eventually become the new nation of
Liberia (with a capital, Monrovia, named
after Monroe). As I detailed in yesterday’s post, Monroe was no abolitionist
(although he did, late in
life, describe slavery as a “blight” on the nation), and the colonization efforts
were driven at least as much by racism as by opposition to slavery or (least
consistently) concern for African American communities and lives. Yet in any
case, they represented one more way in which America was expanding its
influence and connections around the globe, and one more such expansion to
which James Monroe was closely linked.
Next
MonroeStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Monroe histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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