James Monroe (April 28, 1758-July 4, 1831) was the 5th President of the United States, 1817-25, having served in public office for fifty years.
He acquired Florida from Spain, 1819; added Maine, Illinois, Missouri, Alabama and Mississippi to the Union, and proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, 1823, which forbade European powers from interfering with the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere.
He was Regent of University of Virginia, 1826-31; Secretary of State under James Madison, 1811-17; Secretary of War, 1814-15; Governor of Virginia, 1811; U.S. Minister to Great Britain and Spain, 1803-07; helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, 1803, which doubled the size of the United States; Governor of Virginia, 1799-1802; U.S. Minister to France, 1794-96; U.S. Senator, 1790-94; member of the Virginia State Convention, 1788; served in the Virginia Assembly, 1786-88; married Eliza Kortwright, 1786; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1783; Officer in the Continental Army, 1776-79; graduated from the College of William and Mary, 1776; and
home-schooled as a child by the Reverend William Douglas, being fellow- students with John Marshall, who became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, March 4, 1817, in his First Inaugural Address, President James Monroe stated:
<Under this Constitution...the States, respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power, a just proportion of the sovereignty...are the best proofs of wholesome laws well administered....
And if we look to the condition of individuals what a proud spectacle does it exhibit! On whom has oppression fallen in any quarter of our Union? Who has been deprived of any right of person or property? Who restrained from offering his vows in the mode which he prefers to the Divine Author of his being? It is well known that all these blessings have been enjoyed in their fullest extent...
Such, then, is the happy Government under which we live...a government which protects every citizen in the full enjoyment of his rights, and is able to protect the nation against injustice from foreign powers...
What raised us to the present happy state?...The Government has been in the hands of the people. To the people, therefore, and to the faithful and able depositories of their trust is the credit due...It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin...
If we persevere in the career in which we have advanced so far and in the path already traced, we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence, to attain the high destiny which seems to await us....
I enter on the trust to which I have been called by the suffrages of my fellow-citizens with my fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.> 1758JM001
On December 2, 1817, in his First Annual Message to Congress, President James Monroe stated:
<For advantages so numerous and highly important it is our duty to unite in grateful acknowledgments to that Omnipotent Being from whom they are derived, and in unceasing prayer that He will endow us with virtue and strength to maintain and hand them down in their utmost purity to our latest posterity.> 1758JM002
On November 16, 1818, in his Second Annual Message to Congress, President James Monroe stated:
<For these inestimable blessings we can not but be grateful to that Providence which watches over the destiny of nations....
When we view the blessings with which our country has been favored, those which we now enjoy, and the means which we possess of handing them down unimpaired to our latest posterity, our attention is irresistibly drawn to the source from whence they flow. Let us then, unite in offering our most grateful acknowledgements for these blessings to the Divine Author of All Good.> 1758JM003
On Tuesday, November 14, 1820, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, President James Monroe stated:
<When, then, we take into view the prosperous and happy condition of our country...it is impossible to behold so gratifying, so glorious a spectacle
without being penetrated with the most profound and grateful acknowledgements to the Supreme Author of All Good for such manifold and inestimable blessings....And more especially by the multiplied proofs which it has accumulated of the great perfection of our most excellent system of government, the powerful instrument in the hands of our All-merciful Creator in securing to us these blessings.> 1758JM004
On Monday, March 5, 1821, in his Second Inaugural Address, President James Monroe stated:
<That these powerful causes exist, and that they are permanent, is my fixed opinion; that they may produce a like accord in all questions touching, however remotely, the liberty, prosperity, and happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good....
With full confidence in the continuance of that candor and generous indulgence from my fellow-citizens at large which I have heretofore experienced, and with a firm reliance on the protection of Almighty God, I shall forthwith commence the duties of the high trust to which you have called me.> 1758JM005
On December 3, 1821, in his Fifth Annual Message to Congress, President James Monroe stated:
<Deeply impressed with the blessings which we enjoy, and of which we have such manifold proofs, my mind is irresistibly drawn to that Almighty Being, the great source from whence they proceed and to whom our most grateful acknowledgments are due.> 1758JM006
On Tuesday, December 7, 1824, in his Eighth Annual Message to Congress, President James Monroe stated:
<The view which I have now to present to you of our affairs, foreign and domestic, realizes the most sanguine anticipations which have been entertained of the public prosperity....For these blessings we owe to Almighty
God, from whom we derive them, and with profound reverence, our most grateful and unceasing acknowledgments....
Having commenced my service in early youth, and continued it since with few and short intervals, I have witnessed the great difficulties to which our Union has been exposed, and admired the virtue and intelligence with which they have been surmounted. From the present prosperous and happy state I derive a gratification which I can not express. That these blessings may be preserved and perpetuated will be the object of my fervent and unceasing prayers to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.> 1758JM007
President James Monroe, who was a member of the Episcopalian Church, admonished:
<The establishment of our institutions forms the most important epoch that history hath recorded...To preserve and hand them down in their utmost purity to the remotest ages will require the existence and practice of the virtues and talents equal to those which were displayed in acquiring them.> 1758JM008
James Monroe stated:
<Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms...If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachments, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.> 1758JM009
--
American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1758JM001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, March 4, 1817, Tuesday, in his First Inaugural Address, delivered on the steps of the Capitol. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, pp. 4-10. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States-From George Washington 1789 to Richard Milhous Nixon 1969 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office; 91st Congress, 1st Session, House Document 91-142, 1969), pp. 29-36. Davis Newton Lott, The Inaugural Addresses of the American Presidents (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 38. Charles E. Rice, The Supreme Court and Public Prayer (New York: Fordham University Press, 1964), p. 180. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Chief Executive (NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1965), pp. 33-34. J. Michael Sharman, J.D., Faith of the Fathers (Culpeper, Virginia: Victory Publishing, 1995), pp. 31-32.
1758JM002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, December 2, 1817, in his First Annual Message to Congress. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, p. 12.
1758JM003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, November 16, 1818, in his Second Annual Message to Congress. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, p. 39. Edmund Fuller and David E. Green, God in the White House-The Faiths of American Presidents (NY: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1968), p. 51.
1758JM004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, November 14, 1820, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, pp. 74-75.
1758JM005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, March 5, 1821, Monday, in his Second Inaugural Address. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, pp. 86-94. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States-From George Washington 1789 to Richard Milhous Nixon 1969 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office; 91st Congress, 1st Session, House Document 91-142, 1969), pp. 37-45. Davis Newton Lott, The Inaugural Addresses of the American Presidents (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 48. Charles E. Rice, The Supreme Court and Public Prayer (New York: Fordham University Press, 1964), pp. 180-181. J. Michael Sharman, J.D., Faith of the Fathers (Culpeper, Virginia: Victory Publishing, 1995), p. 33.
1758JM006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, December 3, 1821, in his Fifth Annual Message to Congress. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, p. 109.
1758JM007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, December 7, 1824, in his Eighth Annual Message to Congress. James D. Richardson (U.S. Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907, 1910), Vol. II, p. 248, 263-264.
1758JM008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864). Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, "The Providential Perspective" (Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, P.O. Box 6759, Charlottesville, Va. 22906, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 4.
1758JM009. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). James Monroe, statement. http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/James.Monroe.Quote.B688