Happy Birthday to James Monroe (b. April 28, 1758, in Monroe Hall, VA), the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825 and the final Founding Father to be president. He was against the very idea of political parties and tried unsuccessfully to eliminate them entirely. This was a relatively common idea in his generation’s elite circles, which generally associated parties with monarchies rather than republics. He also became president at an interesting point in American history. As historian Harry Ammon points out “He was the first President to enter office during an era of peace and internal economic stability . . . Monroe’s first term not only coincided with the restoration of peace, but his inauguration took place in an atmosphere of fiscal stability and seeming prosperity. Consequently, freed of the problems besetting his predecessors, Monroe had the unique opportunity of working in a positive way to realize the long-held aspirations of the nation.” He hoped to capitalize on this to build an American national identity but failed because the American people disagreed about many things.
Citations: Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), xvi-xvii, https://archive.org/details/jamesmonroequest0000ammo; John Vanderlyn, “James Monroe,” oil painting on canvas (location unknown, 1816), collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), public domain, https://www.si.edu/object/james-monroe:npg_NPG.70.59.
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