James Monroe: And the Monroe Doctrine

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was a founding father, lawyer, and president. He is also known for his foreign policy, the Monroe Doctrine.

Being the oldest child in his family he was expected to inherit his father's farm when he died. But when James was just 16 years old, Monroe's father died and things took a turn. When he grew older he ended up selling the farm.

Soon after, James enrolled at the College of William and Mary. But when the Revolutionary War broke out just months later, he dropped out of school and went to fight for independence. After the war, James never returned to school. Instead, he studied law under Thomas Jefferson. Monroe really had no desire to become a lawyer but saw it as a good way to make money.

After passing the bar exam, (the test you take to become a lawyer) Monroe set up a law firm in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Monroe's political career started when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. He also served as an anti-federalist in the Constitutional Convention. This meant that he actually opposed the ratification of the new constitution. But Monroe and a small group alone couldn't stop the ratification of the constitution. It narrowly passed in Virginia and eventually became the new governing document a few years later.

Skipping ahead in time, James Monroe decided he would run for president in the election of 1816. Pretty much uncontested, Monroe became the 5^th President of the U.S. One of the first things that happened in his presidency was the signing of Mississippi into the union on December 10, 1817. Then a year later, both Illinois and Alabama were signed into the union within a week of each other.

Then, only a month after that, the economic downturn of 1819. This was the first economic downturn in America's short history. Real estate values collapsed, and a severe credit contraction (an inability to secure bank loans) inflated the monetary system and caused imports and prices to fall. In March, the price of cotton collapsed. The conservative policies of the Second Bank of the United States, founded in 1816, accelerated the crisis. Things didn't get much better until 1823.

In 1820 the Missouri Compromise happened. This “compromise” stated that everything above a certain line could not be a slave state except for Missouri. It also said that when a slave child, who lived in Missouri, grew to be older than 21 he or she was now a free person. So that meant that there would be slaves in Missouri for a while but when all the old slaves died there would only be slaves above 21, meaning everyone would be free.

In 1823 Monroe introduced what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. It stated that any European country that tried to colonize any part of the independent Americas (North America and South America) would be seen as an act of aggression. If this happened, the U.S. would start intervening and send troops to that new settlement. At the same time, the doctrine noted that the United States would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies. This policy was put in place at the same time that the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America were gaining independence. This policy has been used by many other presidents including Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, and Ronald Reagan. The intent and impact of the Monroe Doctrine continued with only minor variations for more than a century.