Kenneth (kensmind) wrote in potus_geeks,
Kenneth
kensmind
potus_geeks

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Is everybody happy?

Another President celebrates a birthday today,(well, insofar as a dead guy can celebrate). It's one of my favourites, James Monroe, who was born on April 28, 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, some 252 years ago today.



Monroe must have been a pretty good President because during most of his time in office everyone got along. They got along so well that historians call this the "era of good feelings." In fact when Monroe ran for re-election in 1820, he ran unopposed. George Washington is the only other President to have this happen.

Monroe is famous for the "Monroe Doctrine" even though his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was the guy who came up with it. In his message to Congress on December 2, 1823, Monroe formally announced the Americas should be free from future European colonization and free from European interference in sovereign countries' affairs. He declared the United States' intention to stay neutral in European wars and wars between European powers and their colonies, but to consider new colonies or interference with independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts toward the United States. (If you're not satisfied with that summary, perhaps you can get Sarah Palin to explain it better.)

On Monroe's watch, five states were added to the union (Mississippi, Illinois, Amabama, Maine and Missouri). When his presidency was over on March 4, 1825, the Monroes moved to Monroe Hill on the grounds of the University of Virginia. This university's modern campus was Monroe's family farm from 1788 to 1817, but he had sold it in the first year of his presidency to the new college.

Monroe had racked up a lot of debt during his years of public life. As a result, he was forced to sell off his Highland Plantation. Throughout his life, he was not financially solvent, and his wife's poor health made matters worse.



After his wife Elizabeth died in 1830, Monroe moved in with his daughter and son-in-law in New York. He died from tuberculosis and heart failure on July 4, 1831. He was the third president to pass away on the 4th of July. (Just five years earlier on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away on the same day.) He was originally buried in New York at the Gouverneur family's vault in the New York City Marble Cemetery. Twenty-seven years later in 1858 the body was re-interred to the President's Circle at the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. The James Monroe Tomb is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.

Tags: george washington, james monroe, john adams, john quincy adams, thomas jefferson
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