Dunmore wanted to take advantage of the absence of the Burgesses, who had convened to Richmond, and had soldiers of the Royal Navy confiscate the weapons of the Virginian militia, which alarmed militiamen and students of the College of William & Mary, including Monroe.

[3] In early 1776, about a year and a half after his enrollment, Monroe dropped out of college and joined the 3rd Virginia Regiment in the Continental Army, despite mourning the death of his brother Spence, who had died shortly before.

At the Battle of Brandywine, he formed a close friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer who encouraged him to view the war as part of a wider struggle against religious and political tyranny.

After the British captured Savannah, the Virginia legislature decided to raise four regiments, and Monroe returned to his native state, hoping to receive his own command.

With letters of recommendation from Washington, Stirling, and Alexander Hamilton, Monroe received a commission as a lieutenant colonel and was expected to lead one of the regiments, but recruitment again proved to be a problem.

Jefferson appointed Monroe as a military commissioner with the task of maintaining contact with the Southern Continental Army, under the command of General Johann von Kalb, and the Virginia Militia.

[13][14] He was not particularly interested in legal theory or practice, but chose to take it up because he thought it offered "the most immediate rewards" and could ease his path to wealth, social standing, and political influence.

[28] Monroe called for the Constitution to include guarantees regarding free navigation on the Mississippi River and to give the federal government direct control over the militia in case of defense.

In 1794, hoping to find a way to avoid war with both countries, Washington appointed Monroe as his minister (ambassador) to France, after Madison and Robert R. Livingston had declined the offer.

Monroe's passionate and friendly message of greeting at the inaugural ceremony before the National Convention was later criticized by Jay for its sentimentality, and Washington viewed the speech as "not well devised" in terms of venue and in light of American neutrality in the First Coalition War.

[41] Immediately after Timothy Pickering succeeded Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, who had been the only Francophile member of Washington's cabinet, in December 1795, he worked to dismiss Monroe.

[45] In 1797, Monroe published A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the United States: Connected with the Mission to the French Republic, During the Years 1794, 5, and 6, which sharply attacked Washington's government and accused it of acting against America's interests.

[22] The executions sparked compassionate feelings among the people of Virginia, and Monroe worked with the legislature to secure a location where free and enslaved African Americans suspected of "conspiracy, insurgency, Treason, and rebellion" would be permanently banished outside the United States.

The plan to sell his second house in Loudon County, Oak Hill, in order to renovate and expand Highland with the proceeds, failed due to the low real estate prices.

[73] When British warships appeared in the Potomac River estuary in the summer of the same year, Monroe urged that defensive measures be taken for Washington, D.C., and that a military intelligence service should be established to Chesapeake Bay, which Armstrong dismissed as unnecessary.

[75] When a British fleet of 50 warships and 5,000 soldiers massed in the mouth of the Potomac, Monroe scouted the Chesapeake Bay with a troop and on August 21 sent the President a warning of the impending invasion so that Madison and his wife could flee in time and the state's assets and inhabitants could be evacuated.

[85] Monroe largely ignored old party lines in making federal appointments, which reduced political tensions and augmented the sense of "oneness" that pervaded the United States.

After General Andrew Jackson declined appointment as Secretary of War, Monroe turned to South Carolina Congressman John C. Calhoun, leaving the Cabinet without a prominent Westerner.

[93] Though they did not solve every outstanding issue between the U.S. and Britain, the treaties allowed for greater trade between the United States and the British Empire and helped avoid an expensive naval arms race in the Great Lakes.

[95] In October 1817, the United States cabinet held several lengthy meetings to address the declarations of independence by former Spanish colonies in South America and the increasing piracy, particularly from Amelia Island.

[98][99][100] Monroe later fixed the government's official position in a letter from Adams to Spanish Ambassador Luis de Onís, which he edited accordingly by removing all justifications for Jackson's actions.

The United States renounced all claims to the west and south of this boundary (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, Nevada), so Spain surrendered any title she had to the Northwest (Oregon Country).

[103] Monroe was deeply sympathetic to the revolutionary movements against Spain, and was determined that the United States should never repeat the policies of the Washington administration during the French Revolution, when the nation had failed to demonstrate its sympathy for the aspirations of peoples seeking to establish republican governments.

While Monroe thought that Spain was unlikely to re-establish its colonial empire on its own, he feared that France or the Holy Alliance might seek to establish control over the former Spanish possessions.

[109] Finally, he stated that European countries should no longer consider the Western Hemisphere open to new colonization, a jab aimed primarily at Russia, which was attempting to expand its colony on the northern Pacific Coast.

This rapid expansion resulted in a growing economic divide between the regions and a change of power in Congress to the detriment of the southern states, which viewed their plantation economy, which was dependent on slavery, as increasingly threatened.

[116] During the following session, the House passed a similar bill with an amendment, introduced on January 26, 1820, by John W. Taylor of New York, allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state.

In a speech to Congress on March 30, 1824, Monroe advocated the resettlement of Native Americans living within the territory of the United States to lands beyond the western frontier where they could continue their ancestral way of life.

Monroe began work on a book of political theory The People the Sovereigns, Being a Comparison of the Government of the United States with those of the Republics Which Have Existed Before, with the Causes of their Decadence and Fall.

The work was designed to highlight the difference between governments and people of the United States and other countries, ancient and modern, to show that certain issues that produced disastrous effects in them were not present in America.