James Monroe: A Life - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tim McGrath is a two-time winner of the Commodore John Barry Book Award, as well as the author of the critically acclaimed biography John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail, and Give Me a Fast Ship: The Continental Navy and America's Revolution at Sea, recepient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature. He lives outside of Philadelphia.

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Chapter One

“A Worthy and Respectable Citizen”

We then rallied and returned to the action.

—James Monroe

Like most land-owning families in colonial Virginia, the Monroes traced their presence in the New World to an Old World adventurer.

In 1314, during the battle of Bannockburn, when a desperate army of Scotsmen thrashed King Edward II’s forces, winning a brief respite of independence from England, a Munro fought against the tyrant Crown.

By the 1640s, Scottish troops found themselves fighting for the English king, Charles I, not against him, over the expulsion of Presbyterians from Parliament by Oliver Cromwell. At the Battle of Preston in 1648, Charles’ forces, Captain Andrew Munro among them, were soundly defeated by Cromwell’s “Roundheads,” ending the efforts of Charles’ cavaliers to keep him on the throne. Charles I lost his head and Munro lost his homeland. He returned to the family homestead, Foulis Castle, before departing for the new world.

The exiled Munro somehow obtained a tract of land in the colony of Virginia and found passage on a ship carrying other Scots across the Atlantic. The colonists of Virginia were the precursors of the “rugged individualists” of American legend. Many, like Munro, were truly exiles; others were sons who sought in the New World the riches that were denied them at home by an older brother’s birthright. Munro’s tract of land was in Westmoreland County along Virginia’s Northern Neck.

By 1660, news of Cromwell’s death and the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II reached Virginia. Andrew, now spelling his name “Monroe,” visited Scotland After convincing some relations to accompany him back to Virginia, Andrew was awarded with another tract of land.

Eleven hundred acres is an empire in the twenty-first century but not so in the eighteenth. The Monroes were well thought of but not well off. The men in the family were farmers, and often required another trade to put enough food on the table and clothe their family. Westmoreland County was also home to families whose surnames would be etched in American history: Washington, Madison, and Lee among them. The Washingtons were actually neighbors, as far as the eighteenth-century goes, as they lived a short three miles away when baby George was born in 1732 (shortly afterwards, they moved to King George’s County).

For Andrew Monroe, son of the first Andrew’s son, William, that line of work came in public service. For years he served as Westmoreland County’s sheriff. He married his cousin’s widow, Christine Taylor Monroe, and they had four children. Their second, Spence, was born in 1727.

When his father died, Spence inherited five hundred acres (his older brother got the other six hundred). Like his forebears, records listed him as a “planter,” but on the lower rungs of the gentry. He frequently worked as a carpenter, a trade he learned as a youth –and he was good at it. When he took on his own apprentice just before his marriage, Spence proudly signed “Cabinet maker” to the contract. Being a “tradesman” was not an impediment to being known as a “gentleman.”

Spence was industrious and ambitious, especially in his choice of a wife. In fact, he married up. Elizabeth Jones’ father, James, had emigrated from Wales and quickly established his reputation as a successful attorney and a man of property in King George’s County. The Joneses were comfortably well-off, and Elizabeth had more than her share of suitors. Her family remembered her as “particularly well educated for [a woman of] colonial days.” When James Jones died, he did something remarkable for his time: he divided his estate between his son Joseph, a budding attorney, and his daughter. His generosity increased Spence and Elizabeth’s holdings by 300 acres.

The home Spence and Elizabeth shared after their marriage was anything but lavish. A descendant called it a simple structure “within a stone’s throw of a virgin forest.” The house was two stories, dominated by a great room on the first floor. Open windows and half-doors let any breeze in to fight the summer humidity; chimneys at each end warded off the cold winter winds.

In 1753, Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Elizabeth, after her mother. Five years passed before the second child and first son, James, named after Elizabeth’s father, was born, on April 28, 1758.

The Monroes already had a cradle from their daughter’s early months, made of wood or wicker; a carpenter like Spence could guarantee a handsome one. Infants were swaddled and in some cases wore as many as three small caps on their heads, not just for warmth but to help close the “soft spot” on the skull. From birth through the toddling years, boys were raised predominantly by their mothers. If the first-born was a boy, that brought pride, but a first-born girl was more of a practical blessing. It gave Elizabeth an extra set of hands and eyes to help with the younger siblings. In 1759 the Monroes welcomed another son whom they named Spence; five years later, a third son, Andrew, was born.

James later described his mother as “a very amiable and respectable woman, possessing the best domestic qualities, a good wife and a good parent.” During their toddler years, Elizabeth adjusted to the chore of minding the boys in addition to her domestic and kitchen duties. When James was about five years old he was “breeched,” meaning that Spence Monroe assumed the main responsibility of raising him. James now followed his father around the property, learning firsthand a farm boy’s tasks regarding livestock, fieldwork, and mending anything not requiring a needle and thread. Young Spence was left behind with his mother and sister. Beset by one malady after another in his early years, he was deemed too frail and unhealthy to be of much physical use, and spared the chores assigned daily to his older siblings.

Spence Monroe was not desperate for hands; over the course of his marriage he acquired at least eight known enslaved people, ranging in ages from an elderly man named “Cuffee” to one “Negro boy Ralph,” and at least one indentured servant. He had likely built two dwellings for his slaves, another outhouse, and a freestanding kitchen to the property. Cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, and geese roamed the grounds.

At day’s end the family had dinner in the living room, where James’ mother kept a “slow wood fire” burning in the large fireplace. Bedtime coincided with darkness, with the exhausted children off to bed: Elizabeth in a room next to her parents, while James and Spence shared a small bedroom upstairs. At dawn the routine began all over again.

Daily life was pleasantly interrupted by visits from family and friends. A particular favorite was Elizabeth’s brother, Joseph Jones. A solidly built, moonfaced man, a surviving portrait gives the impression he was also a happy one. As a youth he was sent to London to study law at the Inns of the Temple. Joseph was now a King’s Attorney with a thriving law practice in Fredericksburg. The same year Elizabeth gave birth to James, Joseph married Mary Taliaferro from Spotsylvania, daughter of a militia colonel.

As James got older, his father rewarded completion of his rudimentary chores by taking him hunting and fishing. The boy took to the outdoors immediately, enthusiastically learning to read a trail, detect tell-tale signs of a change in weather, where to find the different fowl that made the tastiest meal, to lie in wait for the Canada geese during the migrating seasons,...