Episode 5.9 The Monroe Presidency

[Transcript]

Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.

Episode 5.9 The Monroe Presidency

We left off last week in the early part of 1818. Elizabeth and James had hosted their first New Year’s Day Open House in the renovated President’s House, and we spent some time hearing about their entertaining style. So now, let’s return to politics and hear about what actually happened during James Monroe’s two terms as president.

Most of what I’m going to talk about can be put into two overarching buckets: relations with Spain, and the problem of slavery. Relations with Spain sub-divide into two further categories: the Floridas and South America.

James and his Cabinet had decided to remain neutral when it came to the Spanish colonies in South America declaring and fighting for independence. He wasn’t ready to recognize these nascent countries, because he was afraid of sparking war with Spain by doing so, but he wanted to send a few emissaries to Buenos Aires to monitor developments and report back.

Speaker of the House Henry Clay was his most vocal critic on this front. Clay believed that the United States, born of revolution, should be giving its support to other colonies revolting against their colonizers. He also thought the mission to Buenos Aires was a waste of money. It was estimated to cost about $30,000, and Clay pointed out that salary and expenses for a formal minister there would cost only $18,000.

Congress ultimately sided with the president, voting 115-45 to remain neutral.

The situation in Florida also had to be tip-toed around in order to avoid war with Spain. You may recall from our discussion of the Louisiana Purchase earlier this season that the Americans had thought Florida was included in the purchase, whereas Spain, and ultimately France, said it was not. Debate over this had been on-going for well over a decade at this point.

I briefly mentioned Amelia Island and Galveston last week, but let’s talk about them a bit more now. Amelia Island is one of Florida’s barrier islands in the Atlantic Ocean, about 30 miles northeast of Jacksonville. Pirates based on the island were harassing American shipping. The same problem existed in Galveston, which is an island in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Texas. While Texas itself was not a part of the United States, the U.S. claimed the island of Galveston as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

In Spanish Florida, escaped slaves and members of the Seminole tribe were raiding and burning farms across the border in Georgia, which of course was a U.S. state.

Monroe and Secretary of War Calhoun wanted to send General Edmund Pendleton Gaines from New Orleans into Florida to stop the raids. His orders were to pursue the raiders only up until they sought shelter in a Spanish fort. At that point, to pursue further would be essentially to declare war on Spain, and they definitely did not want to do that.

The only problem with this is that by the time the orders for Gaines got to New Orleans, Gaines had already left on a separate mission to wrest control of Amelia Island from the pirates. He was successful in this mission, but that left the question of who would lead the mission against the raiders from Florida. The answer: Andrew Jackson.

Calhoun gave Jackson instructions to “adopt the necessary measures to terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of the President, from considerations of humanity, to avoid; but which is now made necessary by their settled hostilities.” James then also told Jackson that the Seminoles had “long violated our rights and insulted our national character. … great interests are at issue, and until our course is carried through triumphantly…you ought not to withdraw your active support from it.”

Jackson replied to the president, “Let it be signified to me through any channel…that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable and in sixty days it will be accomplished.” James could not, in fact, order Jackson to seize the Floridas, because that would be a declaration of war, and only Congress could declare war. In fact, James would later claim that he didn’t even read Jackson’s letter at the time, because he was sick with the flu. He claims that he asked Calhoun to read the letter and Calhoun said merely that it required the president’s attention. The letter was then supposedly misfiled, and James did not read it for a year. At least, that what he said later. Who knows for sure.

For some reason, in their communications to Jackson, neither Calhoun nor Monroe included the instructions “pursue only up to the point where they seek shelter in a Spanish fort.” Monroe did tell Calhoun to give that instruction to Jackson separately, but Calhoun never did. Thus laying the groundwork for what was essentially a one-man war against Spanish Florida.

Jackson led 1000 troops into Florida, first seizing Spanish posts at St. Marks, which was about 40 miles south of Georgia. They then captured the Seminole village of Bowleg’s Town and burned several hundred houses. Then they marched west across the Florida panhandle, burning or otherwise destroying every Seminole or Black village or fort they came across. 

Then he took things a step further and marched into Spanish Pensacola. He captured two British traders who had been fighting alongside the Seminole and escaped slaves, hanging one of them and having the other executed by firing squad. By June, about sixty days after starting his rampage, Jackson had subdued most of northern Florida. He sent a letter to James saying that he had won the Seminole War. If the president could send the Fifth Infantry, he would deliver Fort St. Augustine, and if he could add another regiment and a frigate, he promised to deliver Cuba within a few days.

Unsurprisingly, once Jackson began his march through Florida, but before it was complete, the Spanish ambassador paid a visit to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. The Spanish were honestly in no position to actually wage war against the United States, but this insult to their sovereignty could not go un-protested. Don Luis de Onís made the required protests, but Adams knew that Spanish King Ferdinand was too broke to afford a war. So he suggested that perhaps the United States could make an offer that would be amenable to the Spanish. The ambassador and Adams went back and forth for several weeks, and then de Onís sent word to Madrid for further instructions.

Meanwhile, while all of Jackson’s escapades were unfolding throughout April, May and June, James decided to take an abbreviated tour of some Southern states. Departing from Annapolis, he and several companions traveled mostly by boat down the Atlantic coast, intending to get as far as Savannah.

As with his northern tour the year before, crowds greeted the president at every stop. They only made it as far as Elizabeth City, North Carolina before abruptly ending the trip and returning to Washington. Newspapers were publishing the news that Jackson had executed two British citizens and captured Pensacola, against orders. Jackson’s letter celebrating his victory in a self-declared war didn’t arrive in Washington until July 7.

The British minister was up in arms over the execution of its citizens, and Richard Rush, U.S. minister to Great Britain, sent urgent dispatches home reporting threats of attacks on American shipping by British, Spanish, and possibly even French navies. 

Monroe and his Cabinet debated for a number of days over what to do and how to respond. In the end, they decided that it was best to return Pensacola to the Spanish. While privately admitting to a friend that Jackson had “acted without authority,” James was not ready to publicly hang him out to dry. 

The Cabinet drafted a letter from the president to Minister de Onís that stated Jackson’s reasons for the aggression, without indicating that the U.S. government approved of them. Attorney General Wirt drafted an article for publication in the National Intelligencer also outlining the facts that had led to Jackson’s actions, without blaming him for exceeding his orders.

James was equally cagey in his annual message to Congress at the end of 1818. There was a lot of passive voice happening in that message. One example: “An order was in consequence issued to the general in command there to deliver the posts.” James took absolutely no responsibility for Jackson’s actions, and neither would Secretary of War Calhoun. Congress, for the most part, bought what James was selling, finding most of the fault to be Jackson’s.

Speaker of the House Henry Clay wasn’t willing to let Jackson’s outrageous behavior go unpunished. On January 20, 1819, Clay made a rousing, eloquent three-hour speech before Congress, imploring them to censure Jackson for his actions in Florida. “We are fighting a great moral battle, not only for our country, but for all mankind. Beware how you give a fatal sanction…to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if we would escape the rock, on which we split, we must avoid their errors.” I will note here that Andrew Jackson was sometimes called the Napoleon of the Woods.

But unfortunately for Clay, the public was very much on Jackson’s side in this matter. They thought he was a hero, basically for having the balls to do what no one else would or could do. All of Clay’s attempts to censure Jackson failed, and then the big payoff for Jackson’s actions came soon thereafter: Spanish minister de Onís received approval from King Ferdinand to sell the Floridas to the United States. 

Instead of paying Spain directly for Florida, the U.S. would assume the outstanding amount of claims by Americans against the Spanish government for various losses due to Spain failing to control the Native tribes constantly raiding settlements in territories controlled by Spain. That amount was $5 million, which is just shy of $132 million in today’s dollars. So nowhere near the bargain of the Louisiana Purchase, but finally, the Floridas would officially belong to the United States.

The treaty arranging all this was known as the Adams-Onís Treaty, or alternately, the Transcontinental Treaty. Texas was specifically excluded and was to remain in Spanish hands. But the western boundary of the United States would now be recognized as the Pacific Ocean, vastly extending America’s reach west. The Spanish ceded all claims to the Pacific Northwest, leaving that territory open to the Americans. As Harlow Giles Unger writes in The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, “In sending Jackson to seize Florida, Monroe had seized almost the entire continent.” The Senate unanimously approved the treaty on February 24, and it was sent to Spain for King Ferdinand’s signature.

And to top it all off, Britain decided not to do anything about the two British traders that Jackson had summarily executed. Parliament determined that the men “had been engaged in unauthorized practices…to have deprived them of any claim on their own Government.” Minister to Great Britain Richard Rush, along with Minister to France Albert Gallatin, jointly negotiated a new treaty with the British that amended the Treaty of Ghent that had ended the War of 1812. 

The new treaty, blandly called the Anglo-American Treaty of 1818, marked the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada, which was still British territory. This would bring to an end years, decades really, of skirmishes between Americans and Canadians. The border west of the Rocky Mountains was not addressed, but both countries agreed that the Pacific Northwest would be open territory for ten years under a joint occupation agreement.

With these positive developments behind him, James embarked in the spring of 1819 on the rest of his Southern tour. James and his companions left Washington on March 10, heading by steamboat to Norfolk, Virginia, then it was down the coast to Cape Fear, North Carolina and on to Charleston, South Carolina, where he spent a full week. 

From there it was another steamboat ride to Savannah, Georgia, followed by Augusta and Athens. He continued on into Alabama, and then Tennessee, where he met up with Andrew Jackson in Nashville and then spent a week as Jackson’s guest at his plantation, The Hermitage. From Tennessee, James traveled into Kentucky, and he had originally intended to continue on to St. Louis, but by this point it was July, and he was exhausted. So he cut his trip short and spent three weeks making his way east, toward Highland, stopping for a few days at the mineral waters in Greenville Springs. He arrived at Highland on August 2, after once again completing an epic journey: more than 5000 miles in less than five months, visiting 48 towns and cities. Once again, he had been greeted with cheering crowds and pomp and circumstance at every stop.

Back in Washington, and as Congressmen began to return for the fall 1819 convening of Congress, word came from Spain that King Ferdinand had reneged on his promise to sign the Adams-Onís Treaty and was sending a new minister to replace de Onís. The Cabinet debated whether or not to send troops to seize Florida, which if done officially would need the authorization of Congress. But in the end, they decided it would be better to wait for the new minister to arrive.

Meanwhile, on December 7, 1819, the newly rebuilt Capitol Building hosted Congress for the first time in over five years. And that’s going to bring us to the other major dilemma that would plague James Monroe’s presidency: slavery.

By the end of 1819, there were 22 states; 11 of them had outlawed slavery and 11 of them still permitted it. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress before the new U.S. Constitution was ratified, had prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory, as far south as the Ohio River. By 1819, three states had been carved out of that territory and admitted to the U.S. as free states: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 

Because the membership of the House of Representatives was decided based on population, the number of representatives from free states would gradually outstrip those from slave states, making it harder for southern states to get their way. They wanted to avoid the same fate in the Senate, where representation was equal among all states.

As early as February 1819, debate was underway as to the admission of Missouri to the United States. It was at that point that New York representative James Tallmadge, Jr. proposed that the Missouri Enabling Act, the precursor to statehood, be amended such that “the introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited.”

About half of Congress was outraged. You can guess which half. Thomas Cobb of Georgia declared, “You have kindled a fire which all of the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish.” To which Tallmadge replied, “Sir, if a dissolution of the union must take place, let it be so!”

Tallmadge and his supporters had logic and geography on their side. No one had ever proposed admitting a free state in the south, because that state would be surrounded by slave states, and everyone recognized “the danger of having free blacks visible to slaves.” But Missouri was new territory, bordered by free states, and on the same latitude as the other free states admitted from the Northwest Territory. There was no good reason to admit it as a slave-holding state.

Tallmadge’s amendment passed in the House. There were two separate votes: one to prohibit further slaveholding in the state immediately upon admittance to the Union, which passed, 87 to 76; the second one would have emancipated all children born to slaves when they turned 25, which also passed, 82 to 78.

Both of these measures failed in the Senate though. There was a total of 42 senators at this time (Alabama wasn’t admitted to the Union until December 1819, so when these votes were held in the spring, it didn’t have Congressional representation yet). Only 38 Senators were present on the day the amendment was voted on. Some northerners joined with the southerners to defeat the amendment. The vote on prohibiting further slavery lost 22 to 16, and the vote to emancipate offspring at the age of 25 lost 31 to 7.

And then that session of Congress ended in the spring of 1819 and everyone went home until the autumn. Now let’s go back in time for a few minutes.

Way back in 1807, at the end of Jefferson’s presidency, Congress had passed the “Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves,” which I will refer to as the Importation Act. It took effect on January 1, 1808, because, as you may recall if you listened to the episode where I read the Constitution aloud, 1808 was the earliest date that Congress could implement any law attempting to limit slavery. The Importation Act only prohibited exactly that, importing slaves from outside the country. But it did nothing to limit the number of slaves already in America, which was constantly growing as enslaved women gave birth to babies who were born enslaved. It also did nothing to limit slave trading within the country.

The Importation Act also did not do as much as it should have to actually limit importation, and some historians estimate that up to 50,000 slaves were imported into the U.S. after 1808, mostly through Florida and Texas, which were still Spanish territories.

Toward the end of 1819, James submitted a plan to Congress to have the Navy actively police for ships transporting contraband cargo, i.e., people intended to be sold into slavery. I’m going to quote here from his letter to Congress, so you’ll have to excuse the antiquated casual racism contained within:

“The obligation to instruct the commanders of all our armed vessels to seize and bring into port all ships or vessels of the United States, wheresoever found, having on board any negro, mulatto, or person of color in violation of former acts for the suppression of the slave trade…was executed without delay. …It is enjoined on the Executive to cause all negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color who may be taken under the act to be removed to Africa.”

But rather than just plopping them on a ship and pointing them in the direction of Africa, a more hands-on approach was taken. Shelter and food would be provided while they remained in America until a suitable place in Africa was found to return them to. Not a lot was known about the west coast of Africa, so James wanted to send a commission to find “the most suitable place on the coast” and prepare adequate facilities. To that end, $100,000 was appropriated by Congress, the equivalent of about $2.8 million today.

To make this already long story a little longer, a location in Africa was eventually secured, and the American Colonization Society—you may remember our discussion of that group from last season, because James Madison was very involved in it—eventually established what is today the country of Liberia. The American Colonization Society purchased land around Cape Mesurado and established a city at first called Christopolis, but in 1824 it was renamed Monrovia in honor of President Monroe. Today, Monrovia is the capital of Liberia. 

What does any of this have to do with Missouri? Nothing. But it’s just another example of how much slavery was coming to dominate politics in the early 19th century.

So let’s get back to Missouri. The year 1820 began with a bitter cold snap, which didn’t prevent the masses from showing up for the annual New Year’s Day Open House at the President’s Mansion. Unlike the first year the Monroes hosted this event, I don’t have a detailed description of the 1819 or 1820 open houses.

Right away, Congress returned to debating the entrance of Missouri to the Union. Also up for consideration was the new state of Maine, which would be carved out of territory previously included with Massachusetts. (Side note: yes, it’s true that Maine and Massachusetts are not contiguous to each other. This is partly why the Mainers wanted to be an independent state and not just a territory of Massachusetts.) 

When the motion to admit Maine was made by Congressman John Holmes, Speaker of the House Henry Clay immediately objected and indicated that Maine would only be admitted if all the proposed restrictions on slavery in Missouri were abandoned. The idea was that Maine would be admitted as a free state and Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, thus keeping the balance equal between slave states and free states. After Alabama had been admitted as a slave state in December 1819, the balance was 11 free and 11 slave states. Admitting Missouri and Maine as a pair would make it 12 free and 12 slave states.

We could spend an entire episode talking about what happened during the contretemps over Missouri and slavery, but I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to try to summarize as much as possible while still including the major points.

Despite professing to be against slavery as an institution, James remained a slave-holder his entire life. And although he had no official role to play in whether a state was admitted to the Union and whether its admission was to be limited or restricted in any way, he did want Missouri to be admitted without any restrictions on slavery. He worked secretly and behind the scenes with a select group of men to help influence the ultimate outcome.

I should also point out here that 1820 was an election year, and James was trying not to anger any one faction of the Republican party too much and jeopardize his chances at being nominated for a second term.

Congress made no progress on the Missouri question, despite it being almost the only item they were working on. At one point, Henry Clay wrote to a friend, “The Missouri subject monopolizes all our conversation. Nobody seems to think or care about anything else.”

On January 3, 1820, the House passed the bill that would admit Maine as a state (a free state), but the Senate did not act, still trying to figure out how to solve the Missouri dilemma.

Finally, someone had an idea. Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas proposed that Missouri be admitted as a slave state, but that slavery be banned north of parallel 36 degrees 30 arcminutes (which means 36 ½ degrees north of the equator). This latitude corresponded with the southern border of what would be the state of Missouri, but to make things extra complicated, Missouri itself would be exempted from the slavery ban, but all other lands falling north of 36 degrees 30 arcminutes would be subject to the ban.

Honestly, when you say it all out loud, it sounds ridiculous and overly complicated. But guess who loves ridiculous and overly complicated things? Congress!

The Senate decided to vote on a joint measure that would admit Maine as a free state and enable the people in the Missouri territory to form a constitution, which was a precursor to statehood. And then a second amendment was adopted, incorporating Senator Thomas’s 36 degrees 30 arcminutes situation. The Senate voted on February 17 and 18, 1820, and passed all of the measures and amendments. It was sent to the House, which also approved it in early March. 

And all that nonsense is what we call the Missouri Compromise. There was more behind the scenes nonsense that I didn’t get into, but I think you should have a pretty good idea of the basics of what happened. No one was really all that happy with the outcome, but that’s generally the hallmark of compromise.

But the debate, rancor, and conspiracy theories that sprang up around the Missouri Compromise had lasting impacts on the country. The Southerners were dead set against letting anyone interfere with their slaves, and the anti-slavery movement in America was getting larger. A good example is a major fire that quite nearly leveled Savannah, Georgia in January. 

At first, donations from all over the country poured in, but as donations from the north began to be sent with caveats like “not for slaveholders” or “to be used for all indigent persons, regardless of color,” the Southerners decided they would rather send back the donations than let Northerners put limits on how the money would be used. One insurance company in Philadelphia even decided that it would stop issuing policies in slave states. The threatened breakup of the Union had been dodged yet again with the Missouri Compromise, but we’re only about 40 years from the Civil War. It’s all downhill from here.

In lighter news, James and Elizabeth’s younger daughter, Maria, was married at the President’s House on March 9, 1820, a mere three days after James signed into law the bill admitting Maine and Missouri to the Union.

Her groom was her cousin, Samuel Gouverneur, who had been serving as James’s secretary since 1818. Samuel was the son of Elizabeth’s sister Hester. So when I say Maria and Samuel were cousins, I don’t mean distant cousins, I mean first cousins.

The wedding was quite small and had been organized by Eliza, because Elizabeth was too ill to manage it. Maria was just a few weeks away from turning 18 when she married, and Samuel was roughly 21. The wife of the editor of the National Intelligencer described Maria’s wedding outfit as “a light blue stiff silk dress, with intricate embroidery of real wheat stalks.” No word on how Samuel was dressed or what James and Elizabeth wore.

The small guest list caused a bit of a gossipy uproar in Washington. Most socialites unfairly blamed Elizabeth, when the blame was really Eliza’s. But since the Monroes always tried to keep Elizabeth’s physical health private, it’s not like they were going to publicize the fact that Elizabeth had had nothing to do with planning the wedding. Louisa Adams dismissed the gossip and the old biddies circulating it: “In all things which do not concern the public, I am very much inclined to do as I please and I think that the President should do so too.”

The National Intelligencer also described the wedding this way: “The New York style was adopted at Maria Monroe’s wedding. Only the attendants, the relations and a few old friends of the bride and groom witnessed the ceremony, and the bridesmaids were told that their company and services would be dispensed with until the following Tuesday, when the bride would receive visitors.”

This does make me wonder how the editor’s wife knew all this. Presumably she was not among the few old friends who were invited.

After the newlywed couple took a honeymoon trip (to where, I don’t know), a large reception was held at the President’s House. Sadly, I don’t have any information on it. 

Next week, we’ll deal with the election of 1820 and James’s second term as president, including the policy that he’s most known for: The Monroe Doctrine. 

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull.