James Monroe, President No. 5 (1817-1825)
Ash Lawn 

It was a drizzly cool May day when we found ourselves yet again in the pursuit of another president — this time James Monroe. To see his plantation, Ash Lawn, we needed to retrace our steps from last January; Ash Lawn is just a few miles from Jefferson’s Monticello, outside Charlottesville, Virginia. (This is no coincidence, but more on that later.)

The admission was $12.00 for each adult ticket but they threw in a nice AAA discount of $1.00 for us. There is no museum per se at Ash Lawn, hence no movie to give us a sense of the man (and a chance to nap). There is a museum at his birthplace, just outside Fredericksburg, Va.

Note that the home has not always been called Ash Lawn. It was called Highland in Monroe’s day. Subsequent owners renamed it Ash Lawn for the majestic ash trees that line the entrance drive.

We were greeted at the house by Allison, a self-proclaimed history buff. She was extremely knowledgeable, but Tom had a hard time following her rapid-fire delivery. Cathy was forced into the note-taking role.

The first thing we learned is that the majority of the house is not from Monroe’s era. It is only the “white” portion of the home that is original. It consists of five rooms on a single floor.

As noted above, it is no coincidence that Monroe lived so close to Jefferson. He sought to live close to his friend (and father figure), who in fact selected the house site for Monroe. James and his wife, Elizabeth, occupied the house from 1799 to 1823 — except for their eight years in the White House.

What we would call the living room holds an original bust of Napoleon. The bust was a gift to Monroe, who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with France while serving as Jefferson’s Minister to France.

The house has many portraits and paintings. Among them are portraits of Washington, Ben Franklin and a print of the signing of the Declaration of Independence – according to tour guide Allison, it was fashionable in the late 1700s and early 1800s to have those three pieces of art hanging in your house.

Highland was pretty small, compared with Monticello and Montpelier. So Monroe didn’t have many house guests. However, James and Dolly Madison, who lived about 30 miles away in Orange, were the first overnight guests. The Marquis de Lafayette also stayed with the Monroes, sleeping in a guest house near the main house. As Allison said, “Lafayette slept everywhere in Virginia.”

Under the house, we visited the kitchen. We learned that the Monroes were the first family in the U.S. to have a waffle iron. They also had a cookie press, which had George Washington’s likeness on it – Pillsbury would be jealous.

We also learned about tea bricks. Tea leaves were very expensive and tea bricks were much cheaper. Yes, they are bricks of tea. Kitchen help would grate off the tea leaves from the brick with something like a lemon grater and then put that into a tea cup. Each square is called a cachet, and each cachet would make 20 cups of tea.

Outside the house, we wandered the rather small but nice grounds and eventually found ourselves in the old ice house. There another guide, Gerald, was giving a lecture on Monroe’s role in the expansion of the United States. Monroe negotiated the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million while serving as Jefferson’s Minister to France.

Who was James Monroe?
Monroe held more political offices than any other U.S. president: Virginia state delegate, member of the Continental Congress, U.S. senator, ambassador to France, Virginia governor, Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and, of course, President.

Throughout his life James Monroe preferred to be called Colonel. He was the first veteran since Washington to be elected president. His Revolutionary War credentials are deep. In December 1776, he crossed the Delaware twice with General Washington--first as a scout and second as a combatant. He was wounded in the Battle of Trenton the next day. He also joined General Washington at the infamous winter at Valley Forge (1777-1778).

Monroe began his political life in 1782 when he was elected to the Virginia General Assembly. He served at the Confederation Congress in Philadelphia from 1783 to 1786.

Allison told us that Monroe is the only person to be fired by two different presidents. He was fired by President Washington for favoring the French too much when John Jay was negotiating “Jay’s Treaty” with Great Britain. Monroe loved France and hated Britain, which obviously was an issue when negotiating treaties and walking a fine line between the two countries, which were constantly quarreling--and the U.S. hadn’t decided yet whose side to take in their spats.

Monroe also was fired by President Jefferson for not negotiating a favorable treaty over Britain’s impressment of American sailors. Monroe had actually negotiated a treaty with Britain in 1806 that would have ended the slave trade in both countries, but Jefferson didn’t like the language regarding the impressment issue. Britain agreed to stop taking American sailors, but the treaty didn’t explicitly say that Britain “didn’t have the right to take” American sailors. Jefferson was furious and refused to send it to the Senate for ratification.

Monroe also served as Secretary of State under President Madison and later was appointed to the second position of Secretary of War.

James Monroe was the last Founding Father to be elected President. He was first elected as President in 1816 and was re-elected in 1820. He is the only president besides George Washington to run unopposed. However, he lost one vote in the electoral college when an elector from New Hampshire voted for John Quincy Adams—the next U.S. president—instead.

Monroe had many legacies in his two terms as president, some large, some small.

His first legacy is probably the expansion of the U.S. during his two terms in office. As president, he bought Florida and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana from the Spanish for $5 million.

He was a tireless proponent of national security and reached treaties with every major power. He convinced Congress to fund a system of coastal fortifications and built forts all along the coasts to protect the U.S. from foreign enemies. He also secured the border with Canada, which was owned by Britain. He vowed never to allow the United States to be attacked as it had been by the British during the War of 1812 when they were able to easily reach Washington, DC and burn it.

In 1820, President Monroe faced the so-called Missouri Compromise, a bill that allowed Missouri to join the Union as a slave state but restricted slavery in future states that were located above latitude 36°30′ north. This was 30 years after the Compromise of 1790 that located the nation’s capital in the slave holding south in exchange for the establishment of the First United States Bank. These compromises were leading inexorably toward the Civil War.

It is prescient that during the contentious Congressional debates, Georgia Congressman Thomas W. Cobb screamed at New York Congressman James Tallmadge, Jr. that “if you persist, the Union will be dissolved. You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish.” Tallmadge replied: “ Let it come!” And it would…40 years later (May, 2008).

His most enduring legacy is the Principles of 1823, which later became known as the Monroe Doctrine. These were actually three paragraphs in a speech he gave to Congress in December 1823. He thought the U.S. was too weak to fight lots of wars, so he thought a policy of sticking to affairs in the Western Hemisphere would be advantageous to the fledgling country. As well, South American countries were declaring their independence from Spain and Portugal and he wanted to keep them secure from recolonization. Essentially he told Europe to stay the heck out of the of the Americas and the United States would stay the heck out of Europe. (Not that the United States was actually powerful enough to do much in Europe.) (Historians are divided on how much of the Monroe Doctrine is attributable to Monroe and how much to his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.)

But other small legacies are important, too. For example, he was the first president to make rules about where people sat at dinner in the White House, a European custom. And his daughter Maria Hester was the first presidential daughter to be married in the White House.

Monroe struggled financially his entire life. Plantations were not big money makers, and Monroe suffered when tobacco prices dived. He did try to diversify, and ran a quarry, grist mill, blacksmith shop and added a sheep farm. He also started switching to wheat when tobacco prices fell. And one of his slaves was a spinner, who was able to make lots of money for Monroe with her woven goods.

But he was able to acquire a lot of land out west in poker games, since land often was used as payment. And he was able to exchange land grants for items he wanted to buy for the house.

Yes, we continue to be amazed by the lack of financial acumen by the Founding Fathers. Although Allison told us that Jefferson was actually a great financial adviser, though he was deeply in debt when he died.

Jefferson’s death affected Monroe, particularly the fact that Monticello and all of Jefferson’s belongings had to be auctioned off because he was so deeply in debt. At that point, Monroe started trying to get his financial house in order. Still, his son-in-law had to sell all of Monroe’s 3,000 books – and all of his slaves -- when he died.

It is worth noting that in the early days of the United States, the pay for public service was not high and public servants were required to pay much of their expenses out of pocket. According to Hart (2005), Monroe petitioned Congress and several presidents for unpaid expenses. His entreaties were largely ignored and he died destitute.

Following our tour we asked Allison her impressions of Monroe. She said that she was aware that many people think Monroe did whatever Jefferson and Madison told him to do. But she believes that he was very much his own man—although admittedly a better administrator and delegator than intellectual thinker.

Monroe’s French Connection
Monroe loved France, and you can tell by looking around his house. The design of the house, which was built by Jefferson, is French. Much of the décor inside is French, including the French wallpaper, which many rich colonists used to convey their status to guests. And Monroe’s French-designed serving pieces are in the White House. Monroe and his family were the only Americans to attend Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of France in 1804. This is no coincidence since Monroe’s daughter, Eliza, was close friends with the daughter of Empress Josephine, Hortense, from a previous marriage.

Monroe was in quandary the first time he went to Paris. The French Revolution was underway, Robespierre had been to the guillotine, and the Republic had taken over. He didn’t know who to present his official diplomatic papers to, so he presented them to the Assembly, which was a first. (The French turmoil was advantageous to Monroe and Elizabeth, though – the Republic needed money and was auctioning off Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s possessions at Versailles, so the Monroes were able to buy lots of French stuff at a discount.)

Monroe and Slavery
Monroe did the most of the Founding Fathers to end slavery, but he never freed any himself.

He had about 30 slaves on his plantation doing everything from working the tobacco crops to spinning yarn and making candles. He, like Jefferson, thought slavery was evil but couldn’t figure out how to deal with it.

The big hang-up, apparently, was that he and other politically active slave-owners thought it was the state’s responsibility to pay landowners for freeing the slaves since the slaves were considered property. He also believed that freeing the slaves would lead to a never-ending race war. (While governor of Virginia, he quashed a planned 1800 slave revolt and had 26 slaves hanged including the instigator, Gabriel Prosser.)

The United States abolished the slave trade in 1808 when Monroe was Secretary of State under Madison. However, the law allowed states to decide what to do with any slaves captured from slave ships sailing from Africa caught off the states’ shores. And since slaves were valuable, selling slaves quickly became a good way for states to make money. Rhode Island, for example, was a big slave-trading state. And many New England states traded slaves down to the Caribbean since they didn’t allow slavery themselves.

And as the country expanded south and west, slaves became more valuable in those areas, where new and successful crops were being grown, such as cotton and sugar cane. Slaves sometimes were sold in New Orleans and Georgia for twice what they would go for in Virginia.

In fact, Monroe had a problem with slaves trying to run away. So he threatened to sell them to landowners in New Orleans, which had a much higher death rate than Virginia.

Skin color also determined the value of a female slave – the lighter skin the better, particularly in New Orleans. Why? Because light-skinned slaves could be used for prostitution.

And of course female slaves were more valuable than male slaves for the obvious reason that they could produce offspring. But also, their jobs were year-round since they did the kitchen and house work. Men worked the fields, but not in the winter.

Although Monroe never freed his own slaves, he did support the American Colonization Society, which established Liberia in West Africa as a place for freed slaves to colonize. Its capital was named Monrovia in his honor.

References

Hart, G. 2005. James Monroe. Henry Holt and Company. New York, NY.

May, G.  2008.  John Tyler.  Henry Holt and Company.  New York, NY. 

Unger, H.G. 2009. The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness. Da Capo Press. Philadelphia, PA.