him, besides those already quoted, have left on record their appreciation of his abilities and their esteem for his character.

His numerous state papers are not remarkable in style or in thought, but his views were generally sound, the position which he took in later life on public questions was approved by the public voice, and his administration is known as the "era of good feeling." His attention does not seem to have been called in any special manner to the significance of slavery as an element of political discord, or as an evil in itself. If he foresaw, he did not foretell the great conflict. He does not seem expert in the principles of national finance, though his views are often expressed on such matters.

The one idea which he represents consistently from the beginning to the end of his career is this, that America is for Americans. He resists the British sovereignty in his early youth; he insists on the importance of free navigation in the Mississippi; he negotiates the purchase of Louisiana and Florida; he gives a vigorous impulse to the prosecution of the second war with Great Britain, when neutral rights were endangered; finally he announces the "Monroe doctrine."

It is clear that he was under great obligations to Jefferson. The aid and counsel of this

sagacious man are apparent from the time when Monroe began the study of law, in adverse and in prosperous times, in public and in private matters, throughout their long lives. Madison's friendship was also a powerful support. But both these men could not have sustained Monroe through his varied career, in circumstances which required popular approbation, if he had not possessed some very uncommon qualities. As a youth he must have been bright and attractive. In early manhood he was devoted to his party beyond the requirements of party, so that he nearly involved the country in war. As he grew older he was less of a partisan. He retained an accurate remembrance of the men and measures with which he had been associated, and he acquired experience in almost every variety of public station, the judiciary excepted, until he reached the very highest office in the land. He was trained for the presidency in the school of affairs and not in a ring. An ideal preparation for the duties of that high station would hardly involve any kind of discipline to which the business of life had not subjected him. He made enemies; the Federalists, South as well as North, disliked him and undervalued him; but notwithstanding their hostile criticism he sustained himself so well that but one electoral vote was given

against his reëlection, and it is said that this was cast by an elector who did not wish to see a second President chosen with the same unanimity which had honored Washington.

Certainly a career like this will never be forgotten. As time goes on some careful hand will collect the scattered memoirs of Monroe, and his work as a legislator, an envoy, a cabinet minister, and a President, will be more accurately estimated. It will always reveal the mind and heart of a patriot, in new and trying situauations, true to the idea of American independence from European interference.

Monroe died in New York, July 4, 1831, and was buried there with appropriate honors. Years afterward Virginians desired that his dust should mingle with the soil of his native State. His body was carried to Richmond, under the escort of a favorite regiment of New York, and re-interred in the public cemetery just one hundred years after his eyes first saw the light.

APPENDIX.

I.

GENEALOGY.

I HAVE not been successful in tracing the pedigree of James Monroe. Mr. R. C. Brock, of the Virginia Historical Society, has kindly searched the Virginia archives, and finds that successive grants of land were made to Andrew Monroe from 1650 to 1662, and to John Monroe from 1695 to 1719. He has also come upon an old statement that Andrew Monroe came to this country in 1660, after the defeat of the Royal army, in which he had the rank of major, and settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia. With this citation it is curious to compare a recent paragraph, in respect to the Monroes of Eastern Massachusetts, in F. B. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau :

"The Monroes of Lexington and Concord are descended from a Scotch soldier of Charles II.'s army, captured by Cromwell at the battle of Worcester in 1651, and allowed to go into exile in America. His powerful kinsman, General George Monro, who commanded for Charles at the battle of Worcester, was,

at the Restoration, made commander-in-chief for Scotland." 1

Mr. Brock suggests that the family of Jones, to which the mother of James Monroe belongs, was the same with that of Adjutant-General Robert Jones, Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones, General Walker Jones, and other distinguished Americans.

The private residence of Monroe during the latter part of his life was at Oak Hill, near Aldie, Loudoun County, Virginia, on a turnpike running south from Leesburg to Aldie, about nine miles from the former and three from the latter place.

Major R. W. N. Noland has been so kind as to prepare (at the suggestion of Professor J. M. Garnett of the University of Virginia) a sketch of Oak Hill, which will here be given :

The Oak Hill house was planned by Mr. Monroe, but the building superintended by Mr. William Benton, an Englishman, who occupied the mixed relation to Mr. Monroe of steward, counsellor, and friend. The house is built of brick in a most substantial manner, and handsomely finished; it is, perhaps, about 90 x 50 feet, three stories (including basement), and has a wide portico, fronting south, with massive Doric columns thirty feet high, and is surrounded by a grove of magnificent oaks covering several acres. While the location is not as commanding as many others in that section, being in lower Loudoun where the rolling character of the Piedmont region begins to loose itself in the flat lands of tide water, the house in two directions commands an attractive and somewhat extensive view, but on the other sides it is hemmed in by mountains, for the local names of which, "Bull Run" and

1 Compare Savage, New England Genealogical Dictionary, iii. 256, 257.