Who was president in 1817?

James Monroe (; April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. He is perhaps best known for his foreign policy principle, known as the "Monroe Doctrine", which prohibited further European colonization of the Americas (beginning in 1823). Monroe was the last president of the Virginia dynasty, and his presidency ushered in what is known as the Era of Good Feelings. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Monroe was of the planter class and fought in the American Revolutionary War. He was wounded in the Battle of Trenton with a musket ball to the shoulder. After studying law under Thomas Jefferson from 1780 to 1783, he served as a delegate in the Continental Congress.

James Monroe

As an Anti-Federalist delegate to the Virginia convention that considered ratification of the United States Constitution, Monroe opposed, claiming it gave too much power to the central government. Nonetheless, he took an active part in the new government, and in 1790 was elected to the Senate of the first United States Congress, where he joined the Democratic-Republicans. He gained experience as an executive as the Governor of Virginia and rose to national prominence as a diplomat in France when he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. During the War of 1812, Monroe served in critical roles as Secretary of State and the secretary of war under President James Madison.

Facing little opposition from the waning Federalist Party, Monroe was easily elected president in 1816, winning over eighty percent against Rufus King (who hadn't even been chosen by a convention since the Federalists were too weak to organize) of the electoral vote and becoming the last president during the First Party System era of American politics. As president, he sought to ease partisan tensions, embarking on a tour of the country that was well received. Monroe sought to appease the antagonisms and bridge the divisions that had marked American political life since the War of 1812, quietly using his influence as president to encourage compromises and endorsing a consensual form of American patriotism. This method of leadership led historian William E. Weeks to name him the first American "hidden hand president" in reference to Eisenhower's similar practices. With the ratification of the Treaty of 1818 under the successful diplomacy of his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the United States extended its reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific by acquiring harbor and fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest; the United States and Britain jointly occupied the Oregon Country. In addition to the acquisition of Florida, the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty secured the westernmost section of the southern border of the United States along the 42nd Parallel to the Pacific Ocean and represented America's first determined attempt at creating an "American global empire". As American patriotism surged, partisan acrimony subsided. This swell of national purpose and political harmony subsided somewhat when the Panic of 1819 struck and a dispute over the admission of Missouri roiled the country in 1820. Nonetheless, Monroe won near-unanimous reelection.

Monroe supported the founding of colonies in Africa for freed slaves that would eventually form the nation of Liberia, whose capital, Monrovia, is named in his honor. In 1823, he announced the United States' opposition to any European intervention in the recently independent countries of the Americas with the Monroe Doctrine, which became a landmark in American foreign policy. His presidency concluded the first period of American presidential history before the beginning of Jacksonian democracy and the Second Party System era. Following his retirement in 1825, Monroe was plagued by financial difficulties. He died in New York City on July 4, 1831. He has been generally ranked as an above-average president.

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in his parents' house located in a wooded area of Westmoreland County, Virginia. The marked site is one mile from the unincorporated community known today as Monroe Hall, Virginia. The James Monroe Family Home Site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. His father Spence Monroe (1727–1774) was a moderately prosperous planter who also practiced carpentry. His mother Elizabeth Jones (1730–1772) married Spence Monroe in 1752 and they had five children: Elizabeth, James, Spence, Andrew, and Joseph Jones.

His paternal 2nd great grandfather Patrick Andrew Monroe emigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century, and was part of an ancient Scottish clan known as Clan Munro. In 1650 he patented a large tract of land in Washington Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia. Monroe's mother was the daughter of a wealthy Welsh immigrant who had settled in nearby King George County, Virginia. Also among James Monroe's ancestors were French Huguenot immigrants, who came to Virginia in 1700.

At age eleven, Monroe was enrolled in the lone school in the county. Monroe attended this school for only eleven weeks a year, as his labor was needed on the farm. During this time, Monroe formed a lifelong friendship with an older classmate, John Marshall. Monroe's mother died in 1772, and his father died two years later. Though he inherited property from both of his parents, the sixteen-year-old Monroe was forced to withdraw from school to support his younger brothers. His childless maternal uncle, Joseph Jones, became a surrogate father to Monroe and his siblings. A member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jones took Monroe to the capital of Williamsburg, Virginia and enrolled him in the College of William and Mary. Jones also introduced Monroe to important Virginians such as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. In 1774, opposition to the British government grew in the Thirteen Colonies in reaction to the "Intolerable Acts," and Virginia sent a delegation to the First Continental Congress. Monroe became involved in the opposition to Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor of Virginia, and he took part in the storming of the Governor's Palace.

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. As the fledgling army valued literacy in its officers, Monroe was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant, serving under Captain William Washington. After months of training, Monroe and seven hundred Virginia infantrymen were called north to serve in the New York and New Jersey campaign. Shortly after the Virginians arrived, George Washington led the army in a retreat from New York City into New Jersey and then across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. In December, Monroe took part in a surprise attack on a Hessian encampment. Though the attack was successful, Monroe suffered a severed artery in the battle and nearly died. In the aftermath of the battle, George Washington cited Monroe and William Washington for their bravery, and promoted Monroe to the rank of captain. After his wounds healed, Monroe returned to Virginia to recruit his own company of soldiers. Monroe's participation in the battle was memorialized in John Trumbull's painting, "The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, December 26, 1776", as well as Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware."

Lacking the wealth to induce soldiers to join his company, Monroe instead asked his uncle to return him to the front. Monroe was assigned to the staff of General William Alexander, Lord Stirling. During this time, Monroe formed a close friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer who encouraged Monroe to view the war as part of a wider struggle against religious and political tyranny. Monroe served in the Philadelphia campaign and spent the winter of 1777–1778 at the encampment of Valley Forge, sharing a log hut with Marshall. After serving in the Battle of Monmouth, the destitute Monroe resigned his commission in December 1778 and joined his uncle in Philadelphia. 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 an issue. On the advice of Jones, Monroe returned to Williamsburg to study law, becoming a protege of Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson.

With the British increasingly focusing their operations in the Southern colonies, the Virginians moved the capital to the more defensible city of Richmond, and Monroe accompanied Jefferson to the new capital. As Governor of Virginia, Jefferson held command over the state's militia, and he appointed Monroe to the rank of colonel, and Monroe established a messenger network to coordinate with the Continental Army and other state militias. Still unable to raise an army due to a lack of interested recruits, Monroe traveled to his home in King George County, and thus was not present for the British raid of Richmond. As both the Continental Army and the Virginia militia had an abundance of officers, Monroe did not serve during the Yorktown campaign, and, much to his frustration, Monroe did not take part in the Siege of Yorktown. Although Andrew Jackson served as a courier in a militia unit at age thirteen, Monroe is regarded as the last U.S. President who was a Revolutionary War veteran, since he served as an officer of the Continental Army and took part in combat.
Monroe resumed studying law under Jefferson and continued until 1783. 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. Monroe was admitted to the Virginia bar and practiced in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

On February 16, 1786, Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright (1768–1830) in New York City. She was the daughter of Hannah Aspinwall Kortright and Laurence Kortright, a wealthy trader and former British officer. Monroe met her while serving in the Continental Congress.

After a brief honeymoon on Long Island, New York, the Monroes returned to New York City to live with her father until Congress adjourned. They then moved to Virginia, settling in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1789. They bought an estate in Charlottesville known as Ash Lawn–Highland, settling on the property in 1799. The Monroes had three children.

Monroe sold his small inherited Virginia plantation in 1783 to enter law and politics. He later fulfilled his youthful dream of becoming the owner of a large plantation and wielding great political power, but his plantation was never profitable. Although he owned much more land and many more slaves, and speculated in property, he was rarely on-site to oversee the operations. Overseers treated the slaves harshly to force production, but the plantations barely broke even. Monroe incurred debts by his lavish and expensive lifestyle and often sold property (including slaves) to pay them off. Overseers moved or separated slave families from different Monroe plantations in accordance with production and maintenance needs of each satellite plantation. One of Monroe's slaves named Daniel often ran away from his plantation in Albermarle County, to visit other slaves or separated family members. Monroe commonly referred to Daniel as a "scoundrel" and described the "worthlessness" of Daniel as a runaway slave. The practice of moving and separating slave families was common treatment of slaves in the South.

Monroe was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782. After serving on Virginia's Executive Council, he was elected to the Congress of the Confederation in November 1783 and served in Annapolis until Congress convened in Trenton, New Jersey in June 1784. He had served a total of three years when he finally retired from that office by the rule of rotation. By that time, the government was meeting in the temporary capital of New York City. While serving in Congress, Monroe became an advocate for western expansion, and played a key role in the writing and passage of the Northwest Ordinance. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, providing for federal administration of the territories West of Pennsylvania and North of the Ohio River. During this period, Jefferson continued to serve as a mentor to Monroe, and, at Jefferson's prompting, he befriended another prominent Virginian, James Madison.

Monroe resigned from Congress in 1786 to focus on his legal career, and he became an attorney for the state. In 1787, Monroe won election to another term in the Virginia House of Delegates. Though he had become outspoken in his desire to reform the Articles, he was unable to attend the Philadelphia Convention due to his work obligations. In 1788, Monroe became a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention. In Virginia, the struggle over the ratification of the proposed Constitution involved more than a simple clash between federalists and anti-federalists. Virginians held a full spectrum of opinions about the merits of the proposed change in national government. Washington and Madison were leading supporters; Patrick Henry and George Mason were leading opponents. Those who held the middle ground in the ideological struggle became the central figures. Led by Monroe and Edmund Pendleton, these "federalists who are for amendments," criticized the absence of a bill of rights and worried about surrendering taxation powers to the central government. After Madison reversed himself and promised to pass a bill of rights, the Virginia convention ratified the constitution by a narrow vote, though Monroe himself voted against it. Virginia was tenth state to ratify the Constitution, and all thirteen states eventually ratified the document.

Henry and other anti-federalists hoped to elect a Congress that would amend the Constitution to take away most of the powers it had been granted ("commit suicide on [its] own authority," as Madison put it). Henry recruited Monroe to run against Madison for a House seat in the First Congress, and he had the Virginia legislature draw a congressional district designed to elect Monroe. During the campaign, Madison and Monroe often traveled together, and the election did not destroy their friendship. Madison prevailed over Monroe, taking 1,308 votes compared to Monroe's 972 votes. Following his defeat, Monroe returned to his legal duties and developed his farm in Charlottesville. After the death of Senator William Grayson in 1790, Monroe was elected to serve the remainder of Grayson's term.

During the presidency of George Washington, U.S. politics became increasingly polarized between the supporters of Secretary of State Jefferson and
the Federalists, led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Monroe stood firmly with Jefferson in opposing Hamilton's strong central government and strong executive. The Democratic-Republican Party coalesced around Jefferson and Madison, and Monroe became one of the fledgling party's leaders in the Senate. He also helped organize opposition to John Adams in the 1792
election, though Adams defeated George Clinton to win re-election. As the 1790s progressed, the French Revolutionary Wars came to dominate U.S. foreign policy, with British and French raids both threatening U.S. trade with Europe. Like most other Jeffersonians, Monroe supported the French Revolution, but Hamilton's followers tended to sympathize more with Britain. In 1794, hoping to find a way to avoid war with both countries, Washington appointed Monroe as his minister (ambassador) to France. At the same time, he appointed the anglophile Federalist John Jay as his minister to Britain.

After arriving in France, Monroe addressed the National Convention, receiving a standing ovation for his speech celebrating republicanism. He experienced several early diplomatic successes, including the protection of U.S. trade from French attacks. He also used his influence to win the release of Thomas Paine and Adrienne de La Fayette, the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette. Months after Monroe arrived in France, the U.S. and Great Britain concluded the Jay Treaty, outraging both the French and Monroe—not fully informed about the treaty prior to its publication. Despite the undesirable effects of the Jay Treaty on Franco-American relations, Monroe won French support for U.S. navigational rights on the Mississippi River—the mouth of which was controlled by Spain—and in 1795 the U.S. and Spain signed Pinckney's Treaty. The treaty granted the U.S. limited rights to use the port of New Orleans.

Washington decided Monroe was inefficient, disruptive, and failed to safeguard the national interest. He recalled Monroe in November 1796. Returning to his home in Charlottesville, he resumed his dual careers as a farmer and lawyer. Jefferson and Madison urged Monroe to run for Congress, but Monroe chose to focus on state politics instead.

In 1798 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 ". It was a long defence of his term as Minister to France. He followed the advice of his friend Robert Livingston who cautioned him to "repress every harsh and acrimonious" comment about Washington. However, he did complain that too often the U.S. government had been too close to Britain, especially regarding the Jay Treaty. Washington made notes on this copy, writing, "The truth is, Mr. Monroe was cajoled, flattered, and made to believe strange things. In return he did, or was disposed to do, whatever was pleasing to that nation, reluctantly urging the rights of his own."

Back in 1792, then-Senator Monroe was investigating charges of corruption and misuse of Federal funds earmarked as pay for Revolutionary War veterans, when he encountered claims that Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton was involved. Monroe, Frederick Muhlenberg, and Abraham Venable determined that Hamilton had been making payments to James Reynolds, a co-conspirator in the financial scheme using government money. The investigating committee prepared a report for George Washington, but confronted Hamilton before sending it. Hamilton confessed not to the corruption charge, but instead to an affair with Reynolds' wife, Maria. He claimed Reynolds had found out and was blackmailing him, and offered letters to prove his story. The investigators immediately dropped the matter, and Monroe promised Hamilton he would keep the matter private.

When another suspect in that investigation, Jacob Clingman, told Maria Reynolds about the claim she'd had an affair with Hamilton, she denied it, claiming the letters had been forged to help cover up the corruption. Clingman went to Monroe about this. Monroe added that interview to his notes, and sent the entire set to a friend, possibly Thomas Jefferson, for safekeeping. Unfortunately, the secretary who was involved in managing the notes of the investigation made copies and gave them to scandal writer James Callender.

Five years later, shortly after Monroe was recalled from France, Callender published accusations against Hamilton based on those notes. Hamilton and his wife thought this was retaliation on the part of Monroe for the recall., and confronted by Hamilton via letter. In a subsequent meeting between the two of them, where Hamilton had suggested each bring a "second", Hamilton accused Monroe of lying, and challenged him to a duel. While such challenges were usually hot air, in this case Monroe replied "I am ready, get your pistols". Their seconds interceded, and an arrangement was made to give Hamilton documentation on what had occurred with the investigation.

Hamilton was not satisfied with the subsequent explanations, and at the end of an exchange of letters the two were threatening duels, again. Monroe chose Aaron Burr as his second. Burr worked as a negotiator between the two parties, believing they were both being "childish", and eventually helped settle matters.

On a party-line vote, the Virginia legislature elected Monroe as Governor of Virginia in 1799. He would serve as governor until 1802. The constitution of Virginia endowed the governor with very few powers aside from commanding the militia when the Assembly called it into action. But Monroe used his stature to convince legislators to enhance state involvement in transportation and education and to increase training for the militia. Monroe also began to give State of the Commonwealth addresses to the legislature, in which he highlighted areas in which he believed the legislature should act. Monroe also led an effort to create the state's first penitentiary, and imprisonment replaced other, often harsher, punishments. In 1800, Monroe called out the state militia to suppress Gabriel's Rebellion, a slave rebellion originating on a plantation six miles from the capital of Richmond. Gabriel and 27 other enslaved people who participated were all hanged for treason.

Monroe thought that foreign and Federalist elements had created the Quasi War of 1798–1800, and he strongly supported Thomas Jefferson's candidacy for president in 1800. Federalists were likewise suspicious of Monroe, some viewing him at best as a French dupe and at worst a traitor. With the power to appoint election officials in Virginia, Monroe exercised his influence to help Jefferson win Virginia's presidential electors. He also considered using the Virginia militia to force the outcome in favor of Jefferson. Jefferson won the 1800 election, and he appointed Madison as his Secretary of State. As a member of Jefferson's party and the leader of the largest state in the country, Monroe emerged as one of Jefferson's two most likely successors, alongside Madison.

Shortly after the end of Monroe's gubernatorial tenure, President Jefferson sent Monroe back to France to assist Ambassador Robert R. Livingston in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. In the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, France had acquired the territory of Louisiana from Spain; at the time, many in the U.S. believed that France had also acquired West Florida in the same treaty. The American delegation originally sought to acquire West Florida and the city of New Orleans, which controlled the trade of the Mississippi River. Determined to acquire New Orleans even if it meant war with France, Jefferson also authorized Monroe to form an alliance with the British if the French refused to sell the city.

Meeting with François Barbé-Marbois, the French foreign minister, Monroe and Livingston agreed to purchase the entire territory of Louisiana for $15 million; the purchase became known as the Louisiana Purchase. In agreeing to the purchase, Monroe violated his instructions, which had only allowed $9 million for the purchase of New Orleans and West Florida. The French did not acknowledge that West Florida remained in Spanish possession, and the United States would claim that France had sold West Florida to the United States for several years to come. Though he had not ordered the purchase of the entire territory, Jefferson strongly supported Monroe's actions, which ensured that the United States would continue to expand to the West. Overcoming doubts about whether the Constitution authorized the purchase of foreign territory, Jefferson won congressional approval for the Louisiana Purchase, and the acquisition doubled the size of the United States. Monroe would travel to Spain in 1805 to try to win the cession of West Florida, but, with the support of France, Spain refused to consider relinquishing the territory.

After the resignation of Rufus King, Monroe was appointed as the ambassador to Great Britain in 1803. The greatest issue of contention between the United States and Britain was that of the impressment of U.S. sailors. Many U.S. merchant ships employed British seamen who had deserted or dodged conscription, and the British frequently impressed sailors on U.S. ships in hopes of quelling their manpower issues. Many of the sailors they impressed had never been British subjects, and Monroe was tasked with persuading the British to stop their practice of impressment. Monroe found little success in this endeavor, partly due to Jefferson's alienation of the British minister to the United States, Anthony Merry. Rejecting Jefferson's offer to serve as the first governor of Louisiana Territory, Monroe continued to serve as ambassador to Britain until 1807.

In 1806 he negotiated the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty with Great Britain. It would have extended the Jay Treaty of 1794 which had expired after ten years. Jefferson had fought the Jay Treaty intensely in 1794–95 because he felt it would allow the British to subvert American republicanism. The treaty had produced ten years of peace and highly lucrative trade for American merchants, but Jefferson was still opposed. When Monroe and the British signed the new treaty in December 1806, Jefferson refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification. Although the treaty called for ten more years of trade between the United States and the British Empire and gave American merchants guarantees that would have been good for business, Jefferson was unhappy that it did not end the hated British practice of impressment, and refused to give up the potential weapon of commercial warfare against Britain. The president made no attempt to obtain another treaty, and as a result, the two nations drifted from peace toward the War of 1812. Monroe was severely pained by the administration's repudiation of the treaty, and he fell out with Secretary of State James Madison.

On his return to Virginia in 1807, Monroe received a warm reception, and many urged him to run in the 1808 presidential election. After Jefferson refused to submit the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty, Monroe had come to believe that Jefferson had snubbed the treaty out of the desire to avoid elevating Monroe above Madison in 1808. Out of deference to Jefferson, Monroe agreed to avoid actively campaigning for the presidency, but he did not rule out accepting a draft effort. The Democratic-Republican Party was increasingly factionalized, with "Old Republicans" or "Quids" denouncing the Jefferson administration for abandoning what they considered to be true republican principles. The Quids tried to enlist Monroe in their cause. The plan was to run Monroe for president in the 1808 election in cooperation with the Federalist Party, which had a strong base in New England. John Randolph of Roanoke led the Quid effort to stop Jefferson's choice of Madison. The regular Democratic-Republicans overcame the Quids in the nominating caucus, kept control of the party in Virginia, and protected Madison's base. Monroe did not publicly criticize Jefferson or Madison during Madison's campaign against Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and refused to support Madison. Madison defeated Pinckney by a large margin, carrying all but one state outside of New England. Monroe won 3,400 votes in Virginia, but received little support elsewhere. After the election Monroe quickly reconciled with Jefferson, but did not speak with Madison until 1810. Returning to private life, he devoted his attentions to farming at his Charlottesville estate.

Monroe returned to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was elected to another term as governor in 1811, but served only four months. In April 1811, Madison appointed Monroe as Secretary of State in hopes of shoring up the support of the more radical factions of the Democratic-Republicans. Madison also hoped that Monroe, an experienced diplomat with whom he had once been close friends, would improve upon the performance of the previous Secretary of State, Robert Smith. Madison assured Monroe that their differences regarding the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty had been a misunderstanding, and the two resumed their friendship. On taking office, Monroe hoped to negotiate treaties with the British and French to end the attacks on American merchant ships. While the French agreed to reduce the attacks and release seized American ships, the British were less receptive to Monroe's demands. Monroe had long worked for peace with the British, but he came to favor war with Britain, joining with "war hawks" such as Speaker of the House Henry Clay. With the support of Monroe and Clay, Madison asked Congress to declare war upon the British, and Congress complied on June 18, 1812, thus beginning the War of 1812.

The war went very badly, and the Madison administration quickly sought peace, but were rejected by the British. The U.S. Navy did experience several successes after Monroe convinced Madison to allow the Navy's ships to set sail rather than remaining in port for the duration of the war. After the resignation of Secretary of War William Eustis, Madison asked Monroe to serve in dual roles as Secretary of State and Secretary of War, but opposition from the Senate limited Monroe to serving as acting Secretary of War until Brigadier General John Armstrong won Senate confirmation. Monroe and Armstrong clashed over war policy, and Armstrong blocked Monroe's hopes of being appointed to lead an invasion of Canada. As the war dragged on, the British offered to begin negotiations in Ghent, and the United States sent a delegation led by John Quincy Adams to conduct negotiations. Monroe allowed Adams leeway in setting terms, so long as he ended the hostilities and preserved American neutrality.

When the British burned the U.S. Capitol and the White House on August 24, 1814, Madison removed Armstrong as Secretary of War and turned to Monroe for help, appointing him Secretary of War on September 27. Monroe resigned as Secretary of State on October 1, 1814, but no successor was ever appointed and thus from October 1814 to February 28, 1815, Monroe effectively held both Cabinet posts. Now in command of the war effort, Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to defend against a likely attack on New Orleans by the British, and he asked the governors of nearby states to send their militias to reinforce Jackson. He also called on Congress to draft an army of 100,000 men, increase compensation to soldiers, and establish a new national bank to ensure adequate funding for the war effort. Months after Monroe took office as Secretary of War, the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The treaty resulted in a return to the status quo ante bellum, and many outstanding issues between the United States and Britain remained. But Americans celebrated the end of the war as a great victory, partly due to the news of the treaty reaching the United States shortly after Jackson's victory in the Battle of New Orleans. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British also ended the practice of impressment. After the war, Congress authorized the creation a national bank in the form of the Second Bank of the United States.

Monroe decided to seek the presidency in the 1816 election, and his war-time leadership had established him as Madison's heir apparent. Monroe had strong support from many in the party, but his candidacy was challenged at the 1816 Democratic-Republican congressional nominating caucus. Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford had the support of numerous Southern and Western Congressmen, while Governor Daniel D. Tompkins was backed by several Congressmen from New York. Crawford appealed especially to many Democratic-Republicans who were wary of Madison and Monroe's support for the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Despite his substantial backing, Crawford decided to defer to Monroe on the belief that he could eventually run as Monroe's successor, and Monroe won his party's nomination. Tompkins won the party's vice presidential nomination. The moribund Federalists nominated Rufus King as their presidential nominee, but the party offered little opposition following the conclusion of a popular war that they had opposed. Monroe received 183 of the 217 electoral votes, winning every state but Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.

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. He made two long national tours to build national trust. At Boston, a newspaper hailed his 1817 visit as the beginning of an "Era of Good Feelings". Frequent stops on his tours included ceremonies of welcome and expressions of good-will. The Federalist Party continued to fade during his administration; it maintained its vitality and organizational integrity in Delaware and a few localities, but lacked influence in national politics. Lacking serious opposition, the Democratic-Republican Party's Congressional caucus stopped meeting, and for practical purposes the party stopped operating.

Monroe appointed a geographically-balanced cabinet, through which he led the executive branch. At Monroe's request, Crawford continued to serve as Treasury Secretary. Monroe also chose to retain Benjamin Crowninshield of Massachusetts as Secretary of the Navy and Richard Rush of Pennsylvania as Attorney General. Recognizing Northern discontent at the continuation of the Virginia dynasty, Monroe chose John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts as Secretary of State, making Adams the early favorite to eventually succeed Monroe. An experienced diplomat, Adams had abandoned the Federalist Party in 1807 in support of Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy, and Monroe hoped that the appointment would encourage the defection of more Federalists. 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. In late 1817, Rush was appointed as the ambassador to Britain, and William Wirt succeeded him as Attorney General. With the exception of the Crowninshield, Monroe's cabinet appointees remained in place for the remainder of his presidency.

In February 1819, a bill to enable the people of the Missouri Territory to draft a constitution and form a government preliminary to admission into the Union came before the House of Representatives. During these proceedings, Congressman James Tallmadge, Jr. of New York "tossed a bombshell into the Era of Good Feelings" by offering the Tallmadge Amendment, which prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and required that all future children of slave parents therein should be free at the age of twenty-five years. After three days of rancorous and sometimes bitter debate, the bill, with Tallmadge's amendments, passed. The measure then went to the Senate, where both amendments were rejected. A House–Senate conference committee was unable to resolve the disagreements on the bill, and so the entire measure failed. The ensuing debates pitted the northern "restrictionists" (antislavery legislators who wished to bar slavery from the Louisiana territories) against southern "anti-restrictionists" (proslavery legislators who rejected any interference by Congress inhibiting slavery expansion).

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. The question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama, a slave state, making the number of slave and free states equal. In addition, there was a bill in passage through the House (January 3, 1820) to admit Maine as a free state. The Senate decided to connect the two measures. It passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, excluding slavery from the Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north (the southern boundary of Missouri), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri. The House then approved the bill as amended by the Senate. The legislation passed, which became known as the Missouri Compromise, won the support of Monroe and both houses of Congress, and compromise temporarily settled the issue of slavery in the territories.

As the United States continued to grow, many Americans advocated a system of internal improvements to help the country develop. Federal assistance for such projects evolved slowly and haphazardly—the product of contentious congressional factions and an executive branch generally concerned with avoiding unconstitutional federal intrusions into state affairs. Monroe believed that the young nation needed an improved infrastructure, including a transportation network to grow and thrive economically, but did not think that the Constitution authorized Congress to build, maintain, and operate a national transportation system. Monroe repeatedly urged Congress to pass an amendment allowing Congress the power to finance internal improvements, but Congress never acted on his proposal, in part because many congressmen believed that the Constitution did in fact authorize the federal financing of internal improvements. In 1822, Congress passed a bill authorizing the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road, with the tolls being used to finance repairs on the road. Adhering to stated position regarding internal improvements, Monroe vetoed the bill. In an elaborate essay, Monroe set forth his constitutional views on the subject. Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume jurisdiction over them.

In 1824, the Supreme Court ruled in "Gibbons v. Ogden" that the Constitution's Commerce Clause gave the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed two important laws that, together, marked the beginning of the federal government's continuous involvement in civil works. The General Survey Act authorized the president to have surveys made of routes for roads and canals "of national importance, in a commercial or military point of view, or necessary for the transportation of public mail." The president assigned responsibility for the surveys to the Army Corps of Engineers. The second act, passed a month later, appropriated $75,000 to improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by removing sandbars, snags, and other obstacles. Subsequently, the act was amended to include other rivers such as the Missouri. This work, too, was given to the Corps of Engineers—the only formally trained body of engineers in the new republic and, as part of the nation's small army, available to serve the wishes of Congress and the executive branch.

Two years into his presidency, Monroe faced an economic crisis known as the Panic of 1819, the first major depression to hit the country since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. The panic stemmed from declining imports and exports, and sagging agricultural prices as global markets readjusted to peacetime production and commerce in the aftermath of the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars. The severity of the economic downturn in the U.S. was compounded by excessive speculation in public lands, fueled by the unrestrained issue of paper money from banks and business concerns. Monroe lacked the power to intervene directly in the economy, as banks were largely regulated by the states, and he could do little to stem the economic crisis.

Before the onset of the Panic of 1819, some business leaders had called on Congress to increase tariff rates to address the negative balance of trade and help struggling industries. As the panic spread, Monroe declined to call a special session of Congress to address the economy. When Congress finally reconvened in December 1819, Monroe requested an increase in the tariff but declined to recommend specific rates. Congress would not raise tariff rates until the passage of the Tariff of 1824. The panic resulted in high unemployment and an increase in bankruptcies and foreclosures, and provoked popular resentment against banking and business enterprises.

According to William E. Week, "Monroe evolved a comprehensive strategy aimed at expanding the Union externally while solidifying it internally". He expanded trade and pacified relations with Great Britain while expanding the United States at the expense of the Spanish Empire, from which he obtained Florida and the recognition of a border across the continent. Faced with the breakdown of the expansionist consensus over the question of slavery, the president tried to provide both North and South with guarantees that future expansion would not tip the balance of power between slave and free states, a system that, Weeks remarks, did indeed allow the continuation of American expansion for the best of four decades.

Monroe pursued warmer relations with Britain in the aftermath of the War of 1812. In 1817 the United States and Britain signed the Rush–Bagot Treaty, which regulated naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain and demilitarized the border between the U.S. and British North America. The Treaty of 1818, also with Great Britain, was concluded October 20, 1818, and fixed the present Canada–United States border from Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains at the 49th parallel. The accords also established a joint U.S.–British occupation of Oregon Country for the next ten years. 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. Late in Monroe's second term, the U.S. concluded the Russo-American Treaty of 1824 with the Russian Empire, setting the southern limit of Russian sovereignty on the Pacific coast of North America at the 54°40′ parallel (the present southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle).

Spain had long rejected repeated American efforts to purchase Florida. But by 1818, Spain was facing a troubling colonial situation in which the cession of Florida made sense. Spain had been exhausted by the Peninsular War in Europe and needed to rebuild its credibility and presence in its colonies. Revolutionaries in Central America and South America were beginning to demand independence. Spain was unwilling to invest further in Florida, encroached on by American settlers, and it worried about the border between New Spain and the United States. With only a minor military presence in Florida, Spain was not able to restrain the Seminole warriors who routinely crossed the border and raided American villages and farms, as well as protected southern slave refugees from slave owners and traders of the southern United States.

In response to these Seminole attacks, Monroe ordered a military expedition to cross into Spanish Florida and attack the Seminoles. The expedition, led by Andrew Jackson, defeated numerous Seminoles but also seized the Spanish territorial capital of Pensacola. With the capture of Pensacola, Jackson established de facto American control of the entire territory. While Monroe supported Jackson's actions, many in Congress harshly criticized what they saw as an undeclared war. With the support of Secretary of State Adams, Monroe defended Jackson against domestic and international criticism, and the United States began negotiations with Spain.

Spain faced revolt in all her American colonies and could neither govern nor defend Florida. On February 22, 1819, Spain and the United States signed the Adams–Onís Treaty, which ceded the Floridas in return for the assumption by the United States of claims of American citizens against Spain to an amount not exceeding $5,000,000. The treaty also contained a definition of the boundary between Spanish and American possessions on the North American continent. Beginning at the mouth of the Sabine River the line ran along that river to the 32nd parallel, then due north to the Red River, which it followed to the 100th meridian, due north to the Arkansas River, and along that river to its source, then north to the 42nd parallel, which it followed to the Pacific Ocean. As the United States renounced all claims to the west and south of this boundary (Texas), so Spain surrendered any title she had to the Northwest (Oregon Country).

Monroe was deeply sympathetic to the Latin American revolutionary movements against Spain. He 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. He did not envisage military involvement but only the provision of moral support, as he believed that a direct American intervention would provoke other European powers into assisting Spain. Monroe initially refused to recognize the Latin American governments due to ongoing negotiations with Spain over Florida.

In March 1822, Monroe officially recognized the countries of Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico, all of which had won independence from Spain. Secretary of State Adams, under Monroe's supervision, wrote the instructions for the ministers to these new countries. They declared that the policy of the United States was to uphold republican institutions and to seek treaties of commerce on a most-favored-nation basis. The United States would support inter-American congresses dedicated to the development of economic and political institutions fundamentally differing from those prevailing in Europe. Monroe took pride as the United States was the first nation to extend recognition and to set an example to the rest of the world for its support of the "cause of liberty and humanity".

For their part, the British also had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, with all the trade restrictions mercantilism imposed. In October 1823, Richard Rush, the American minister in London, advised that Foreign Secretary George Canning was proposing that the U.S. and Britain issue a joint declaration to deter any other power from intervening in Central and South America. Adams vigorously opposed cooperation with Great Britain, contending that a statement of bilateral nature could limit United States expansion in the future. He also argued that the British were not committed to recognizing the Latin American republics and must have had imperial motivations themselves.

Two months later, the bilateral statement proposed by the British became a unilateral declaration by the United States. 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. On December 2, 1823, in his annual message to Congress, Monroe articulated what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. He first reiterated the traditional U.S. policy of neutrality with regard to European wars and conflicts. He then declared that the United States would not accept the recolonization of any country by its former European master, though he also avowed non-interference with existing European colonies in the Americas. 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.

The collapse of the Federalists left Monroe with no organized opposition at the end of his first term, and he ran for reelection unopposed, the only president other than Washington to do so. A single elector from New Hampshire, William Plumer, cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, preventing a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. He did so because he thought Monroe was incompetent. Later in the century, the story arose that he had cast his dissenting vote so that only George Washington would have the honor of unanimous election. Plumer never mentioned Washington in his speech explaining his vote to the other New Hampshire electors.

Five new states were admitted to the Union while Monroe was in office:

When his presidency ended on March 4, 1825, James Monroe resided at Monroe Hill, what is now included in the grounds of the University of Virginia. He served on the university's Board of Visitors under Jefferson and under the second rector James Madison, both former presidents, almost until his death. He and his wife lived at Oak Hill in Aldie, Virginia, until Elizabeth's death on September 23, 1830. In August 1825, the Monroes had received the Marquis de Lafayette and President John Quincy Adams as guests there.

Monroe incurred many unliquidated debts during his years of public life. He sold off his Highland Plantation. It is now owned by his "alma mater", the College of William and Mary, which has opened it to the public as a historic site. Throughout his life, he was financially insolvent, and this was exacerbated by his wife's poor health.

Monroe was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830. He was one of four delegates elected from the senatorial district made up of his home district of Loudoun and Fairfax County. In October 1829, he was elected by the Convention to serve as the presiding officer, until his failing health required him to withdraw on December 8, after which Philip Pendleton Barbour of Orange County was elected presiding officer.

Upon Elizabeth's death in 1830, Monroe moved to New York City to live with his daughter Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, who had married Samuel L. Gouverneur. Monroe's health began to slowly fail by the end of the 1820s. On July 4, 1831, Monroe died from heart failure and tuberculosis, thus becoming the third president to have died on Independence Day. His death came 55 years after the United States Declaration of Independence was proclaimed and 5 years after the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Monroe was originally buried in New York at the Gouverneur family's vault in the New York City Marble Cemetery. Twenty-seven years later, in 1858, his body was re-interred at the President's Circle in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. The James Monroe Tomb is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.

"When it comes to Monroe's thoughts on religion," historian Bliss Isely notes, "less is known than that of any other President." No letters survive in which he discussed his religious beliefs. Nor did his friends, family or associates comment on his beliefs. Letters that do survive, such as ones written after the death of his son, contain no discussion of religion.

Monroe was raised in a family that belonged to the Church of England when it was the state church in Virginia before the Revolution. As an adult, he attended Episcopal churches. Some historians see "deistic tendencies" in his few references to an impersonal God. Unlike Jefferson, Monroe was rarely attacked as an atheist or infidel. In 1832 James Renwick Willson, a Reformed Presbyterian minister in Albany, New York, criticized Monroe for having "lived and died like a second-rate Athenian philosopher."

Monroe owned dozens of slaves. According to William Seale, he took several slaves with him to Washington to serve at the White House from 1817 to 1825. This was typical of other slaveholders, as Congress did not provide for domestic staff of the presidents at that time.

As president of Virginia's constitutional convention in the fall of 1829, Monroe reiterated his belief that slavery was a blight which, even as a British colony, Virginia had attempted to eradicate. "What was the origin of our slave population?" he rhetorically asked. "The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown." To the dismay of states' rights proponents, he was willing to accept the federal government's financial assistance to emancipate and transport freed slaves to other countries. At the convention, Monroe made his final public statement on slavery, proposing that Virginia emancipate and deport its bondsmen with "the aid of the Union."

Monroe was part of the American Colonization Society, which supported the establishment of colonies outside of the United States for free African-Americans. The society helped send several thousand freed slaves to the new colony of Liberia in Africa from 1820 to 1840. Slave owners like Monroe and Andrew Jackson wanted to prevent free blacks from encouraging slaves in the South to rebel. With about $100,000 in federal grant money, the organization also bought land for the freedmen in what is today Liberia. The capital of Liberia was named Monrovia after President Monroe.

When Monroe was Governor of Virginia in 1800, hundreds of slaves from Virginia planned to kidnap him, take Richmond, and negotiate for their freedom. Due to a storm on August 30, they were unable to attack. What became known as Gabriel's slave conspiracy became public knowledge. In response, Governor Monroe called out the militia; the slave patrols soon captured some slaves accused of involvement. Sidbury says some trials had a few measures to prevent abuses, such as an appointed attorney, but they were "hardly 'fair'". Slave codes prevented slaves from being treated like whites, and they were given quick trials without a jury. Monroe influenced the Executive Council to pardon and sell some slaves instead of hanging them. Historians say the Virginia courts executed between 26 and 35 slaves. None of the executed slaves had killed any whites because the uprising had been foiled before it began.

Manuel Robles Pezuela (23 May 1817 – 23 March 1862). He was unconstitutional provisional President of Mexico from 1858 to 1859 on the conservative side in the Mexican War of the Reform, serving by appointment of a military junta in opposition to the constitutional President Benito Juárez, who was the head of the liberal party.

Manuel Robles Pezuela

During the War of the French Intervention, Robles Pezuela was captured and shot under direct orders of Benito Juárez for siding with his enemy faction.

When he took office in 1817, President James Monroe's first choice for Secretary of War was Henry Clay, who declined the poaition. The post ultimately went to Calhoun. The result was that Johnson became chair of the Committee on Expenditures where he wielded considerable influence over defense policy in the Department of War during the Fifteenth Congress. In 1817, Congress investigated General Andrew Jackson's execution of two British subjects during the First Seminole War. Johnson chaired the inquiry committee. The majority of the committee favored a negative report and a censure for Jackson. Johnson, a Jackson supporter, drafted a minority report that was more favorable to Jackson and opposed the censure. The ensuing debate pitted Johnson against fellow Kentuckian Clay. Johnson's report prevailed, and Jackson was spared censure. This disagreement between Johnson and Clay, however, marked the beginning of a political separation between the two that lasted for the duration of their careers.

Richard Mentor Johnson

Richard Mentor Johnson (October 17, 1780 – November 19, 1850) was the ninth vice president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. He is the only vice president ever elected by the United States Senate under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Johnson also represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate; he began and ended his political career in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1806. He became allied with fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay as a member of the War Hawks faction that favored war with Britain in 1812. At the outset of the War of 1812, Johnson was commissioned a colonel in the Kentucky Militia and commanded a regiment of mounted volunteers from 1812 to 1813. He and his brother James served under William Henry Harrison in Upper Canada. Johnson participated in the Battle of the Thames. Some reported that he personally killed the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, which he later used to his political advantage.

After the war, Johnson returned to the House of Representatives. The legislature appointed him to the Senate in 1819 to fill the seat vacated by John J. Crittenden. As his prominence grew, his interracial relationship with Julia Chinn, an octoroon slave, was more widely criticized. It worked against his political ambitions. Unlike other upper class leaders who had African American mistresses but never mentioned them, Johnson openly treated Chinn as his common law wife. He acknowledged their two daughters as his children, giving them his surname, much to the consternation of some of his constituents. The relationship is believed to have led to the loss of his Senate seat in 1829, but his Congressional district returned him to the House the next year.

In 1836, Johnson was the Democratic nominee for vice-president on a ticket with Martin Van Buren. Campaigning with the slogan "Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh", Johnson fell one short of the electoral votes needed to secure his election. Virginia's delegation to the Electoral College refused to endorse Johnson, abstaining instead. However, he was elected to the office by the Senate. Johnson proved such a liability for the Democrats in the 1836 election that they refused to renominate him for vice-president in 1840. President Van Buren campaigned for re-election without a running mate. He lost to William Henry Harrison, a Whig. Johnson tried to return to public office but was defeated. He finally was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1850, but he died on November 19, 1850, just two weeks into his term.

Richard Mentor Johnson was born on October 17, 1780, the fifth of Robert and Jemima (Suggett) Johnson's eleven children, and the second of eight sons. His parents had married in 1770. Robert Johnson had purchased lands in what is now Kentucky, but was then a part of Virginia, from Patrick Henry and from James Madison, while Jemima Johnson "came from a wealthy and politically connected family." Richard was born in the settlement of "Beargrass", now part of Louisville, Kentucky.
About the time of Richard's birth, the family moved to Bryan's Station, near present-day Lexington. This was a fortified outpost, as there was much Native American resistance to white settlement. Johnson's mother was remembered as among the heroic women of the community because what was told of her actions during Simon Girty's raid on Bryan's Station in August 1782. According to later reports, with Indian warriors hidden in the nearby woods and the community short on water, Jemima Johnson led the women to a nearby spring, laughing and acting unconcerned, and the confused attackers allowed them to return to the fort with the water. The residents were able to beat off the attack. Robert Johnson was absent during the siege, as he had been elected to the Virginia House of Delegates for Fayette County.

Beginning in 1783, Kentucky was considered safe enough for settlers that they began to leave the fortified stations to establish farms, and the Johnsons settled on the land Robert had purchased at Great Crossing. As a surveyor, Robert Johnson became successful through well-chosen land purchases and being early in the region when huge land grants were made.

According to Miles Smith in his doctoral thesis on Richard Johnson, "Richard developed a cheery disposition and seems to have been a generally happy and content child". Richard lived on the family farm until he was 16. Then, in 1796, he was sent briefly to a local grammar school, and then to Transylvania University, the first college west of the Appalachian Mountains. While at the Lexington college, where his father was a trustee, he read law as a legal apprentice with George Nicholas and James Brown. He was admitted to the bar in 1802.

Johnson was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1802, and opened his office at Great Crossing. Later, he owned a retail store and pursued a number of business ventures with his brothers. Johnson often worked "pro bono" for poor people, prosecuting their cases when they had merit. He also opened his home to disabled veterans, widows, and orphans.

Family tradition holds that Johnson broke off an early marital engagement when he was about sixteen years old because of his mother's disapproval. Purportedly Johnson vowed revenge for his mother's interference. Despite the fact that the engagement was broken off, a daughter named Celia was born. She was raised by the Johnson family and later married to Wesley Fancher, one of the men who served in Johnson's regiment at the Battle of the Thames.

After his father died, Richard Johnson inherited Julia Chinn, an octoroon slave (one-eighth African, seven-eighths European in ancestry), born into slavery around 1790 and a person who had grown up in the same household as him. Johnson began a long-term relationship with her and treated her as his common-law wife. Chinn was, simply put, the concubine of Johnson, later having the role as mother of their children and manager of plantation. With this, both Chinn and Johnson championed the "notion of a diverse society" with the multiracial Chinn-Johnson family. They were prohibited from marrying because she was a slave. When Johnson was away from his Kentucky plantation, he authorized Chinn to manage his business affairs. She died in an epidemic of cholera in the summer of 1833, to Johnson's great grief.

The relationship between Johnson and Chinn shows the contradictions within slavery at the time. For one, not only does it indicate that even then that "kin could also be property", but it is an interesting case because Johnson was open about his relationship with Chinn, calling her "my bride" on at least one occasion, with both of them acting like a married couple, and oral tradition recalling that other slaves at Great Crossings worked on their wedding. As part of their relationship, Chinn gained more responsibilities. As she spent much of her time in the "plantation's big house", a two-story brick home, she managed Johnson's estate for at least half of each year, with her purview later expanding to all of his property, even acting as "Richard's representative" and allowing her to handle money. This gave, as historical scholar Christina Snyder argues, some independence, since Johnson told his white employees that Chinn's authority must be respected, and her role allowing her children's lives to be different from "others of African descent at Great Crossings", giving them levels of privileged access within the plantation. This was further complicated by the fact that Chinn was still enslaved but supervised the work of slaves, which the Chinn family never sold or mortgaged off, but she did not have the power to "challenge the institution of slavery or overturn the government that supported it", she only had the power to gain some personal autonomy, with Johnson never legally emancipating her. This may have been because, as Snyder says, liberating her from human bondage would erode "ties that bound her to him" and keeping her enslaved supported his idea of being a "benevolent patriarch."

Johnson and Chinn had two daughters, Adaline (or Adeline) Chinn Johnson and Imogene Chinn Johnson, whom he acknowledged and gave his surname, with Johnson and Chinn preparing them "for a future as free women." Johnson taught them morality and basic literacy, with Julia undoubtedly teaching her own skills, with both later pushing for both of them to "receive regular academic lessons" which he later educated at home to prevent the scorn of neighbors and constituents. Later Johnson would provide for Adaline and Imogene's education. Both daughters married white men. Johnson gave them large farms as dowries from his own holdings. There is confusion about whether Adeline Chinn Scott had children; a 2007 account by the Scott County History Museum said she had at least one son, Robert Johnson Scott (with husband Thomas W. Scott) who became a doctor in Missouri. Meyers said that she was childless. There is also disagreement about the year of her death. Bevins writes that Adeline died in the 1833 cholera epidemic. Meyers wrote she died in 1836. The Library of Congress notes that she died in February 1836.

Although Johnson treated these two daughters as his own, according to Meyers, the surviving Imogene was prevented from inheriting his estate at the time of his death. The court noted she was illegitimate, and so without rights in the case. Upon Johnson's death, the Fayette County Court found that "he left no widow, children, father, or mother living." It divided his estate between his living brothers, John and Henry.

Bevins's account, written for the Georgetown & Scott County Museum, says that Adeline's son Robert Johnson Scott, her first cousin, Richard M. Johnson, Jr., and Imogene's family (husband Daniel Pence, first daughter Malvina and son-in-law Robert Lee, and second daughter and son-in-law Josiah Pence) "acquired" Johnson's remaining land after his death.

After Chinn's death, Johnson began an intimate relationship with another family slave. When she left him for another man, Johnson had her picked up and sold at auction. Afterward he began a similar relationship with her sister, also a slave.

After passing the bar, Richard Johnson returned to Great Crossing, where his father gave him a plantation and slaves to work it. The many lawsuits over ownership of land provided him with much legal work, and, combined with his agricultural interests, he quickly became prosperous.

Johnson ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1803, but finished third, behind the winner, Thomas Sandford, and William Henry. At that time, following the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, many young, democratically-minded aspiring politicians were seeking office. While Jefferson and Johnson agreed on the need for greater democracy, Jefferson felt that the people should be led by the elite, such as himself, while Johnson took a more populist view.

In 1804, Johnson ran for the Kentucky House of Representatives for Scott County (where Great Crossing is) and this time was elected, the first native Kentuckian to serve in the state's legislature. Although the Kentucky Constitution imposed an age requirement of twenty-four for members of the House of Representatives, Johnson was so popular that no one raised questions about his age, and he was allowed to take his seat. Seeking to protect his constituents, most of whom were small farmers, he introduced a proposed U.S. constitutional amendment limiting the power of the federal courts to matters involving the U.S. constitution. Throughout his political career, Johnson sought to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts, which he deemed undemocratic.

In 1806, Johnson was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the United States House of Representatives, serving as the first native Kentuckian to be elected to Congress. In the three-way election, he defeated Congressman Sandford and James Moore. At the time of his election in August 1806, he did not meet the U.S. Constitution's for service in the House (25), but by the time the congressional term began the following March, he had turned 25. He was re-elected and served six consecutive terms. From 1807 to 1813, he represented Kentucky's Fourth District.

Johnson took his seat in the House on October 26, 1807; Congress had been called into special session by President Jefferson to consider how to react to the "Chesapeake"–"Leopard" affair, the forcible boarding of an American naval ship by a British vessel, with four sailors seized as deserters and one hanged. Jefferson had tried to maintain neutrality with the main combatants in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain and France, and at his urging, Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807, with Johnson voting in support, finding economic warfare preferable to the use of guns: "we fear no nation, but let the time for shedding human blood be protracted, when consistent with our safety".

Over the following year, Congress attempted to tighten the Embargo, which was widely evaded, especially in the Northeast, with Johnson voting in favor each time. Johnson generally supported Jefferson's proposals, and those of his successor James Madison: all three were Democratic-Republicans, and Johnson saw the party's proposals as superior to any suggested by the Federalists, whom he saw as not acting in the best interests of the country. In 1809, Johnson supported Jefferson in adopting the administration's proposal to replace the Embargo Act with the Non-Intercourse Act, as the Embargo had proven ineffective except in causing a serious recession in the United States.

Although Johnson is considered one of the War Hawks, the young Southern and Western Democratic-Republicans who sought expansion and development of the nation, he was cautious in the runup to the War of 1812. Johnson saw Britain as the major obstacle to United States control of North America, but worried about what a war might bring. By the time Congress met in late 1811, he had come around to war, and joined the War Hawks in electing one of their own, Henry Clay of Kentucky, as Speaker. Like the other War Hawks, though, he was initially unwilling to support increased taxes and borrowing to finance the construction of naval vessels. When Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war against Britain in June 1812, Johnson voted in favor as the House passed the resolution, 79–49. Madison signed the declaration on June 18, 1812.

He secured one of Kentucky's at-large seats in the House from 1813 to 1815, and represented Kentucky's Third District from 1815 to 1819. He continued to represent the interests of the poor as a member of the House. He first came to national attention with his opposition to rechartering the First Bank of the United States.

Johnson served as chairman of the Committee on Claims during the Eleventh Congress (1809–1811). The committee was charged with adjudicating financial claims made by veterans of the Revolutionary War. He sought to influence the committee to grant the claim of Alexander Hamilton's widow to wages which Hamilton had declined when serving under George Washington. Although Hamilton was a champion of the rival Federalist Party, Johnson had compassion for Hamilton's widow; before the end of his term, he secured payment of the wages.

Within a week of the declaration of war, Johnson urged the House of Representatives to recommend the raising of troops in the western states, lest disaster befall settlers on the frontier. After the adjournment, Johnson returned to Kentucky to recruit volunteers. So many men responded that he chose only those with horses, and raised a body of mounted rifles. The War of 1812 was extraordinarily popular in Kentucky; Kentuckians depended on sea trade through the port of New Orleans and feared that the British would stir up another Indian war. The land war fought in the Northern United States pitted American troops against British forces and their Indian allies. Johnson recruited 300 men, divided into three companies, who elected him major. They merged with another battalion, forming a regiment of 500 men, with Johnson as colonel, with the merged volunteer forces becoming a brigade commanded by General Edward W. Tupper of Ohio. The Kentucky militia was under the command of General William Henry Harrison, the Governor of the Indiana Territory.

Johnson's force was originally intended to join General William Hull at Detroit, but Hull surrendered Detroit on August 16 and his army was captured. Harrison by then was in command of the entire Northwest frontier, and ordered Johnson to relieve Fort Wayne in the northeast of the Territory, which was already being attacked by the Indians. On September 18, 1812, Johnson's men reached Fort Wayne in time to save it, and turned back an Indian ambush. They returned to Kentucky and disbanded, going out of their way to burn Potawatomi villages along the Elkhart River en route.

Johnson returned to his seat in Congress in the late fall of 1812. Based on his experience, he proposed a plan to defeat the mobile, guerrilla warfare of the Indians. American troops moved slowly, dependent on a supply line. Indians would evade battle and raid supplies until the American forces withdrew or were overrun. Mounted riflemen could move quickly, carry their own supplies, and live off the woods. If they attacked Indian villages in winter, the Indians would be compelled to stand and fight for the supplies they used to wage war, and could be decisively defeated. Johnson submitted this plan to President James Madison and Secretary of War John Armstrong, who approved it in principle. They referred the plan to Harrison, who found winter operations impracticable. Johnson was permitted to try the tactics in the summer of 1813; later the US conducted Indian wars in winter with his strategy.

Johnson left Washington, D.C. just before Congress adjourned. He raised one thousand men, nominally part of the Kentucky militia under Governor Isaac Shelby, but largely operating independently. He disciplined his men, required that every man have arms in prime condition and ready to hand, and hired gunsmiths, blacksmiths, and doctors at his own expense. He devised a new tactical system: when any group of men encountered the enemy, they were to dismount, take cover, and hold the enemy in place. All groups not in contact were to ride to the sound of firing, and dismount, surrounding the enemy when they got there. Between May and September, Johnson raided throughout the Northwest, burning the war supply centers of Indian villages, surrounding their fighting units and scattering them, killing some warriors each time.

In September, Oliver Hazard Perry destroyed most of the British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie, taking control of the lake. This made the British army, then at Fort Malden (now Amherstburg, Ontario) vulnerable to having its supply lines cut. The British, under General Henry Procter, withdrew to the northeast, followed by Harrison, who had advanced through Michigan while Johnson kept the Indians engaged. The Indian chief Tecumseh and his allies covered the British retreat, but were countered by Johnson, who had been called back from a raid on Kaskaskia that had taken the post where the British had distributed arms and money to the Indians. Johnson's cavalry defeated Tecumseh's main force on September 29, took British supply trains on October 3, and was one of the factors inducing Procter to stand and fight at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, as Tecumseh had been demanding he do. One of Johnson's slaves, Daniel Chinn, accompanied Johnson to the battle.
At the battle itself, Johnson's forces were the first to attack. One battalion of five hundred men, under Johnson's elder brother, James Johnson, engaged the British force of eight hundred regulars; simultaneously, Richard Johnson, with the other, now somewhat smaller battalion, attacked the fifteen hundred Indians led by Tecumseh. There was too much tree cover for the British volleys to be effective against James Johnson; three quarters of the regulars were killed or captured.

The Indians were a harder fight; they were out of the main field of battle, skirmishing on the edge of an adjacent swamp. Richard Johnson ordered a suicide squad of twenty men to charge with him and draw the Indians' fire, with the rest to attack as the Indians reloaded. But he was unable to push his troops through the enemy position due to the swampy ground. Johnson had to order his men to dismount and hold until Shelby's infantry came up. By then, under the pressure of Johnson's attack, the Native American force broke and fled into the swamp, during which time Tecumseh was slain.

The question of who shot and killed Tecumseh was highly controversial in Johnson's lifetime, as he was most often named as the shooter. Johnson himself did not publicly say that he had killed Tecumseh, stating that he had killed "a tall, good-looking Indian", but initial published accounts named him, and it was not until 1816 that another claimant, a man named David King, appeared. John Sugden, in his book on the Battle of the Thames, found that Johnson's "claim is surely the stronger." Jones suggested that the issue did not truly catch the public's attention until Johnson became a potential candidate for national office in the 1830s, and was promoted through such means as a campaign biography, stage play and song. In any event, he found, "Colonel Johnson truly was a war hero at the Battle of the Thames. By ... leading the suicide mission on horseback, more lives were saved than lost. Johnson was lucky to have been only wounded, since fifteen men died instantly during the charge."

There are reports from Indians that support Johnson's account, but most were made decades after the battle, by which time the question of whether Johnson shot Tecumseh had become politically charged. Tecumseh was said to have been shot from a firearm pointed at a downward angle, as if from a horse, with a ball and three buckshot, which Johnson's pistol was said to be loaded with. Evidence that it was so loaded is lacking, and the angle of the wound did not exclude the possibly that he had been stooping when shot. Some accounts have muskets loaded with cartridges containing a ball and three buckshot being commonly carried by American soldiers, and whether the Americans identified the proper body as Tecumseh (whose death was attested to by British officers who had been at the battle) is another source of contention.

On April 4, 1818, an act of Congress requested that the President of the United States present to Johnson a sword in honor of his "daring and distinguished valor" at the Battle of the Thames. The sword was presented to Johnson by President James Monroe in April 1820. Johnson was one of only 14 military officers to be presented a sword by an act of Congress prior to the American Civil War.

With the American success at the Battle of the Thames, the war in the Northwest was effectively over. Although there was no organized resistance to his presence in Canada, Harrison withdrew to Detroit because of supply problems. Johnson remained, wounded, at Detroit as his men began their return to Kentucky. Once he had recovered enough to bear the journey, he was conveyed home in a bed in a carriage, arriving there in early November 1813. It took him five months to recover, though he was still left with a damaged left arm and hand, and was later described as walking with a limp. He returned to Congress in February 1814, but due to his wounds was unable to participate in debates until the following session of Congress. He received a hero's welcome, still suffering from war wounds that would plague him for the rest of his life.

In August 1814, British forces attacked Washington, D.C. and burned the White House and Capitol, and when Congress reconvened on September 19, with Johnson present, it was in temporary quarters. On September 22, Johnson moved for the appointment of a committee to look into why the British had been allowed to burn the city, and he was appointed as chairman. Johnson's committee compiled a voluminous report, but it was objected to by Representative Daniel Webster, who felt the report, including much correspondence, needed to be printed so that all congressmen could study it. This postponed any debate to 1815, by which time the Treaty of Ghent had been ratified, and the United States was again at peace. With Congress having little interest in debating the matter, it was dropped. Had the war continued, Johnson was ready to return to Kentucky to raise another military unit.

With the end of the war, Johnson, who was made chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, turned his legislative attention to issues such as securing pensions for widows and orphans and funding internal improvements in the West. There were widespread reports of Americans, including women and children, captured by Indians during the war, and Johnson used his congressional office to investigate these matters, and to try to secure the release of captives. Western Democratic-Republicans like Johnson strongly supported the military and urged aid for the veterans; in December 1815, Johnson introduced legislation for the "relief of the infirm, disabled, and superannuated officers and soldiers". Fearing that the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York produced dandies, not soldiers, Johnson expanded on a proposal by President Madison to establish three additional military academies, urging the placement of one of them in Kentucky. Despite the support of such influential members of the House as Clay and John C. Calhoun, the proposal did not pass, but Johnson worked to have federal facilities built in the West throughout his time in Congress.

Johnson believed that Congressional business was too slow and tedious, and that the "per diem" system of compensation encouraged delays on the part of members. To remedy this, he sponsored legislation to pay annual salaries of $1,500 to congressmen rather than a $6 "per diem" for the days the body was in session. At the time, this had the effect of increasing the total compensation from about $900 to $1500. Johnson noted that congressmen had not had a pay increase in 27 years, during which time the cost of living had greatly increased, and that $1,500 was less than the salaries of 28 of the clerks employed by the government. The popular Johnson's sponsorship of the measure provided political cover for proponents; Maryland's Robert Wright wondered how his colleagues would feel if, “the highly honorable mover of this bill, who slew Tecumseh with his own hands ... he who came up here covered with wounds and glory, with his favorite war-horse and his more favorite servant—his attendant in the army, his nurse and necessary assistant" was "obliged to sell his war-horse or his servant"; salaries would prevent such things from coming to pass. The bill passed the House and Senate quickly and was made law on March 19, 1816. But, the measure proved extremely unpopular with voters, in part because it gave Congress an immediate pay raise, rather than waiting until after the next election. Many members who supported the bill lost their seats as a result, including Johnson's colleague Solomon P. Sharp from Kentucky. Johnson's overall popularity helped him retain his seat against a challenge, one of only 15 of 81 who voted to pass the bill to keep their seats in the House. The old Congress met for a lame-duck session in December, repealed the new law effective when the new Congress was sworn in, but at Johnson's suggestion, did not revive the old "per diem", thus forcing the new legislators to act on the matter if they wanted to get paid. Compensation for members of Congress remained on a "per diem" basis until an annual salary of $3,000 was prescribed in 1855. According to Edward J. McManus, who wrote Johnson's entry in the "American National Biography", "Johnson, instead of defending the merits of the reform, avoided the backlash by pledging to work for the repeal of his own measure. He justified his reversal by arguing that representatives should reflect the popular will, but lack of political stamina may have been closer to the truth."

Johnson disliked the idea of a national bank, and had voted in 1811 not to renew the charter of the First Bank of the United States. Calhoun's bill for a Second Bank of the United States passed Congress in early 1816. Johnson was opposed, but was absent for the vote, busy with other matters. A bonus was to be paid to the government by the Second Bank, and a bill was introduced early in 1817 to spend that money on internal improvements. Although Johnson was opposed to the national bank, he supported the bill, believing that the improvements to transportation would benefit his constituents, and the bill passed the House by two votes. Madison, then in his final days in office, vetoed the bill. Johnson joined the effort to override the veto, but it failed. The break from the administration was unusual for Johnson, but he believed the war had shown the need for better roads and canals.

In 1818, Calhoun approved an expedition to build a military outpost near the present site of Bismarck, North Dakota on the Yellowstone River; Johnson awarded the contract to his brother James. Although the Yellowstone Expedition was an ultimate failure and expensive to the U.S. Treasury, the Johnsons escaped political ill will in their home district because the venture was seen as a peacekeeping endeavor on the frontier. However, the Panic of 1819 caused Congress to investigate the Yellowstone matter, and in 1820, a report found that James Johnson had overcharged the government by $76,000. Richard and James Johnson, as well as other family members, remained in debt until 1824, when arrangements were made with the largest creditor, the Second Bank of the United States, to settle the liabilities.

Johnson announced his intent to retire from the House in early 1818. Sources differ on why he did; David Petriello, in his biography of Johnson, stated that the Kentucky congressman had determined to move on to the Senate; an earlier biographer, Leland Winfield Meyer stated that Johnson's departure from the House was because he believed in rotation in office and felt he had served there long enough. Jones stated that Johnson planned to return to private life to deal with family business interests.

Under the original federal Constitution, state legislators, not the voters, elected U.S. senators, and the Kentucky General Assembly was to elect a replacement for outgoing senator Isham Talbot in December 1818. Johnson was considered a strong contender if he entered the race, and in October he let it be known through the press that he would accept the Senate seat if the General Assembly elected him. On December 18, 1818, legislators chose William Logan over Johnson, 67–55. Newspapers noted that the former congressman had never officially declared his candidacy, and that Johnson's political friends intended to nominate him for governor in the 1820 election.

Johnson's term in the House expired March 3, 1819, but by August, he had been elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, where he worked to secure passage of a law that abolished imprisonment for debtors in the state, though it did not pass until 1821. But when Senator John J. Crittenden resigned in November 1819, the legislature was called upon to fill the seat. The following month, the General Assembly elected Johnson to the Senate in a 68–53 vote over John Adair, who would be Kentucky's next governor.

Johnson was sworn in on January 3, 1820. The Senate was at that time grappling with the admission of the Missouri Territory and the Maine District (then part of Massachusetts) as states. When a bill was introduced which would bar slavery in the territories north and west of Missouri, Johnson was assigned to a select committee of five senators to consider it. The Maine and Missouri questions had been combined into one bill; Johnson voted against an amendment to separate them, which was defeated.
On February 17, the Senate voted to bar slavery outside Missouri in the part of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ north latitude line, with Johnson voting in favor. The bill passed, and was signed by President Monroe in March. Missouri's admission was delayed due to controversial clauses in its draft constitution, such as one forbidding the entry to the state of free African-Americans. Johnson served on the committee of House and Senate members which brokered a resolution, enabling Missouri's admission in August 1821.

Johnson was re-elected to a full term in 1822, so that in total, his Senate tenure ran from December 10, 1819 to March 4, 1829. In 1821, he introduced legislation chartering Columbian College (later The George Washington University) in Washington, D.C. During this time period, his views on Western expansion were clear. He believed that the US "empire of liberty" should extend across the continent, arguing in debates leading up to the Missouri Compromise that western expansion and emancipation should go hand in hand, acknowledging issues with white racism but advocating for gradual emancipation. Furthermore, he went against the ideas put forward by sympathizers of the Colonization movement, arguing in "favor of meaningfully incorporating people of color into a multiracial empire."

In December 1822, Johnson introduced legislation to abolish imprisonment for debt at the federal level. He first spoke to the issue in the Senate on December 14, 1822, pointing to the positive effects its cessation had effected in his home state. The bill failed, but Johnson persisted in re-introducing it every year. In 1824, it passed the Senate, but was too late to be acted upon by the House. It passed the Senate a second time in 1828, but again, the House failed to act on it, and the measure died for some years, owing to Johnson's exit from the Senate the next year. Passage would only have made a modest impact, since few were imprisoned for debt at the federal level, but Johnson hoped to advance the cause of abolishing it in the states. The reform was opposed by the business community, but Jackson's support after he became president in 1829 eventually gave the movement fresh life, and a limited bill was passed in 1832. Within ten years after that, imprisonment for debt had been abolished in most states.

Johnson also sought help for debtors not in prison, such as some form of bankruptcy legislation, which would help his own problems and those of his neighbors. Johnson knew this politically pressing issue, which he worked on into the 1830s, quite well because it affected him personally. He was in debt himself from his business losses and support for Western expansion. He also continued to advocate for the positions he had held while a member of the House. As the chair of the Committee on Military Affairs, Johnson pushed for higher veterans pensions, and a liberal policy to enable settlers to buy land in the West more easily.

The congressional nominating caucus system for choosing presidential and vice presidential candidate was unpopular by 1824, though a caucus did choose William H. Crawford of Georgia. State legislatures chose the other presidential candidates: Clay, Jackson and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Johnson supported Clay, his fellow Kentuckian, and Clay gained the state's electoral votes. Jackson led in both the popular and electoral vote for president, but did not have a majority, so the election for president was thrown into the House of Representatives, though Calhoun gained a majority of the electoral vote for vice president. Clay had finished fourth in electoral vote, and as the Constitution limits the House's choice to the top three finishers, he was eliminated. Johnson supported Jackson, and there were rumors Johnson would be Secretary of War in a Jackson administration. Clay threw his support to Adams, who was elected, and many believed Clay (who became Secretary of State) and Adams had made a Corrupt Bargain. Johnson was the one who informed Jackson of this. Many of Jackson's supporters were enraged by the outcome, including Johnson, who promised to oppose the Adams administration: "for by the Eternal, if they act as pure as the angels that stand at the right hand of the throne of God, we'll put them down". Johnson opposed Adams's policies, and became a member of the faction, later the Democratic Party, that New York Senator Martin Van Buren was forming to promote Jackson's candidacy in 1828.

Already known for securing government contracts for himself, as well as his brothers and friends, he offered land to establish the Choctaw Academy, a school devoted to the European-American education of Indians from the Southeast tribes. Johnson had tied to establish an Indian school at Great Crossings in 1818, partnering with the Kentucky Baptist Society, but the school folded in 1821 after it didn't gain support of the federal government or private donors. The new academy would come into being a few years later. The academy, sitting on his farm in Scott County in 1825, was overseen by Johnson, not only was part of treaty negotiations with the Choctaw Nation but appealed to his colleagues as a form "peaceful conquest" or "expansion with honor" as Henry Knox put it. Although he never ran afoul of the conflict of interest standards of his day, some of his colleagues considered his actions ethically questionable. Johnson was paid well for the school by the federal government, which gave him a portion of the annuities for the Choctaw. It was promoted by the Baptist Missionary Society as well. Some European-American students also attended the Academy, including his nephew Robert Ward Johnson from Arkansas.

Another pet project Johnson supported was prompted by his friendship with John Cleves Symmes, Jr., who proposed that the Earth was hollow. In 1823, Johnson proposed in the Senate that the government fund an expedition to the center of the Earth. The proposal was soundly defeated, receiving only twenty-five votes in the House and Senate combined.

Johnson served as chairman of the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses. Near the end of his term in the Senate, petitioners asked Congress to prevent the handling and delivery of mail on Sunday because it violated biblical principles about not working on the Sabbath. These petitions were referred to Johnson's committee. In response, Johnson, a practicing Baptist, drafted a report now commonly referred to as "The Sunday Mail Report". In the report, presented to Congress on January 19, 1829, Johnson argued that government was "a civil, and not a religious institution", and as such could not legislate the tenets of any particular denomination. The report was applauded as an elegant defense of the doctrine of separation of church and state. But, Johnson was criticized for conflict of interest in his defense, as he had friends who were contracted to haul mail, and who would have suffered financially from banning of Sunday deliveries.

In 1828, Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election, owing in part to his relationship with the biracial slave Julia Chinn, with whom he lived in a common-law marriage. Although residents of his own district seemed little bothered by the arrangement, slaveholders elsewhere in the state were not so forgiving. The Democratic Party in Kentucky was split, with enough dissidents to be able to join with the opposition to block Johnson's re-election. Johnson's managers withdrew his name and proposed George M. Bibb, who was elected. In his own defense, Johnson said, "Unlike Jefferson, Clay, Poindexter and others I married my wife under the eyes of God, and apparently He has found no objections." (Note: The named men were suspected or known to have similar relationships with slave women.) According to Henry Robert Burke, what people objected to was Johnson trying to introduce his daughters to "polite society". People were used to planters and overseers having relationships with slave women, but they were expected to deny them.

After his failed Senatorial re-election bid, Johnson returned to the House, representing Kentucky's Fifth District from 1829 to 1833, and Thirteenth District from 1833 to 1837. During the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Congresses, he again served as chairman of the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads. In this capacity, he was again asked to address the question of Sunday mail delivery. He drew up a second report, largely similar in content to the first, arguing against legislation preventing mail delivery on Sunday. The report, commonly called "Col. Johnson's second Sunday mail report", was delivered to Congress in March 1830.

Some contemporaries doubted Johnson's authorship of this second report. Many claimed it was instead written by Amos Kendall. Kendall claimed he had seen the report only after it had been drafted and said he had only altered "one or two words." Kendall speculated that the author could be Reverend O.B. Brown, but historian Leland Meyer concludes that there is no reason to doubt that Johnson authored the report himself.

Johnson chaired the Committee on Military Affairs during the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, and Twenty-fourth Congresses. Beginning in 1830, there arose a groundswell of public support for Johnson's "pet project" of ending debt imprisonment. The subject began to appear more frequently in President Jackson's addresses to the legislature. Johnson chaired a House committee to report on the subject, and delivered the committee's report on January 17, 1832. Later that year, a bill abolishing the practice of debt imprisonment passed both houses of Congress, and was signed into law on July 14.

Johnson's stands won him widespread popularity and endorsement by George H. Evans, Robert Dale Owen, and Theophilus Fisk for the presidency in 1832, but Johnson abandoned his campaign when Andrew Jackson announced he would seek a second term. He then began campaigning to become Jackson's running mate, but Jackson favored Martin Van Buren instead. At the Democratic National Convention, Johnson finished a distant third in the vice-presidential balloting, receiving only the votes of the Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois delegations; William B. Lewis had to persuade him to withdraw

After the election of 1832, Johnson continued to campaign for the vice presidency which would be available in 1836; he was endorsed by the New York labor leader Ely Moore on March 13, 1833, nine days after Jackson and Van Buren were inaugurated. Moore praised his devotion to freedom of religion and his opposition to imprisonment for debt.

William Emmons, the Boston printer, published a biography of Johnson in New York dated July 1833. Richard Emmons, from Great Crossing, Kentucky, followed this up with a play entitled "Tecumseh, of the Battle of the Thames" and a poem in honor of Johnson. Many of Johnson's friends and supporters – Davy Crockett and John Bell among them – encouraged him to run for president. Jackson, however, supported Vice-President Van Buren for the office. Johnson accepted this choice, and worked to gain the nomination for vice-president.

Emmons' poem provided the line that became Johnson's campaign slogan: "Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh." Jackson supported Johnson for vice-president, thinking that the war hero would balance the ticket with Van Buren, who had not served in the War of 1812. Jackson made his decision based on Johnson's loyalty but also the president's anger at the primary rival, William Cabell Rives.

Despite Jackson's support, the party was far from united behind Johnson. Van Buren preferred Rives as a running mate. In a letter to Jackson, Tennessee Supreme Court justice John Catron doubted that "a lucky random shot, even if it did hit Tecumseh, qualifies a man for the vice presidency". Although Johnson was a "widower", after Chinn's death in 1833, there was still dissension related to Johnson's open relationship with a slave. The 1835 Democratic National Convention, in Baltimore, in May 1835, was held under the two-thirds rule, largely to demonstrate Van Buren's wide popularity. Although Van Buren was nominated unanimously, Johnson barely obtained the necessary two-thirds of the vote. (A motion was made to change the rule, but it obtained only a bare majority, not two-thirds.)

Tennessee's delegation did not attend the convention. Edward Rucker, a Tennessean who happened to be in Baltimore, was picked to cast its 15 votes, so that all the states would endorse Van Buren. Senator Silas Wright, of New York, prevailed upon Rucker to vote for Johnson, giving him just more than twice the votes cast for Rives, and the nomination.

Jackson's faith in Johnson to balance the ticket proved misplaced. In the general election, Johnson cost the Democrats votes in the South, where his relationship with Chinn was particularly unpopular. He also failed to garner much support from the West, where he was supposed to be strong due to his reputation as an Indian fighter and war hero. He even failed to deliver his home state of Kentucky for the Democrats. Regardless, the Democrats still won the popular vote.

When the electoral vote was counted in Congress on February 8, 1837, Van Buren was found to have received 170 votes for president, but Johnson had received only 147 for vice-president. Although Virginia had elected electors pledged to both Van Buren and Johnson, the state's 23 "faithless electors" refused to vote for Johnson, leaving him one electoral vote short of a majority. For the only time, the Senate was charged with electing the Vice President under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. The vote on 8 February 1837 divided strictly along party lines, with Johnson becoming vice-president by a vote of 36, as opposed to 16 for Whig Francis Granger, with three senators absent.

Johnson served as vice president from March 4, 1837, to March 4, 1841. His term was largely unremarkable, and he enjoyed little influence with President Van Buren. His penchant for wielding his power for his own interests did not abate. He lobbied the Senate to promote Samuel Milroy, whom he owed a favor, to the position of Indian agent. When Lewis Tappan requested presentation of an abolitionist petition to the Senate, Johnson, who was still a slaveholder, declined the request.

As presiding officer of the Senate, Johnson was called on to cast a tie-breaking vote fourteen times, more than all of his predecessors save John Adams and John Calhoun. Despite the precedent set by some of his predecessors, Johnson never addressed the Senate on the occasion of a tie-breaking vote; he did once explain his vote via an article in the "Kentucky Gazette".

After the financial Panic of 1837, Johnson took a nine-month leave of absence, during which he returned home to Kentucky and opened a tavern and spa on his farm to offset his continued financial problems. Upon visiting the establishment, Amos Kendall wrote to President Van Buren that he found Johnson "happy in the inglorious pursuit of tavern keeping – even giving his personal superintendence to the chicken and egg purchasing and water-melon selling department".

In his later political career, he became known for wearing a bright red vest and tie. He adopted this dress during his term as vice-president when he and James Reeside, a mail contractor known for his drab dress, passed a tailor's shop that displayed a bright red cloth in the window. Johnson suggested that Reeside should wear a red vest because the mail coaches he owned and operated were red. Reeside agreed to do so if Johnson would also. Both men ordered red vests and neckties, and were known for donning this attire for the rest of their lives.

By 1840, it had become clear that Johnson was a liability to the Democratic ticket. Even former president Jackson conceded that Johnson was "dead weight", and threw his support to James K. Polk. President Van Buren stood for re-election, and the Whigs once again countered with William Henry Harrison. Van Buren was reluctant to drop Johnson from the ticket, fearing that dropping the Democrats' own war hero would split the party and cost him votes to Harrison. A unique compromise ensued, with the Democratic National Convention refusing to nominate Johnson, or any other candidate, for vice-president. The idea was to allow the states to choose their own candidates, or perhaps return the question to the Senate should Van Buren be elected with no clear winner in the vice-presidential race.

Undaunted by this lack of confidence from his peers, Johnson continued to campaign to retain his office. Although his campaign was more vigorous than that of Van Buren, his behavior on the campaign trail raised concern among voters. He made rambling, incoherent speeches. During one speech in Ohio, he raised his shirt in order to display to the crowd the wounds he received during the Battle of the Thames. Charges he leveled against Harrison in Cleveland were so poorly received that they touched off a riot in the city.

In the end, Johnson received only forty-eight electoral votes. One elector from Virginia and all eleven from South Carolina voted for Van Buren for president but selected someone other than Johnson for vice-president. Johnson lost his home state of Kentucky again and added to the embarrassment by losing his home district as well.

After his term as vice-president, Johnson returned to Kentucky to tend to his farm and oversee his tavern. He again represented Scott County in the Kentucky House from 1841 to 1843. In 1845, he served as a pallbearer when Daniel Boone was re-interred in Frankfort Cemetery.

Johnson never gave up on a return to public service. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against John J. Crittenden in 1842. He briefly and futilely sought his party's nomination for president in 1844. He also ran as an independent candidate for Governor of Kentucky in 1848, but after talking with the Democratic candidate, Lazarus W. Powell, who had replaced Linn Boyd on the ticket, Johnson decided to drop out and back Powell. Some speculated that the real object of this campaign was to secure another nomination to the vice-presidency, but this hope was denied.

Johnson finally returned to elected office in 1850, when he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives. By this time, however, his physical and mental health was already failing. On November 9, the "Louisville Daily Journal" reported that "Col. R. M. Johnson is laboring under an attack of dementia, which renders him totally unfit for business. It is painful to see him on the floor attempting to discharge the duties of a member. He is incapable of properly exercising his physical or mental powers."
He died of a stroke on November 19, just two weeks into his term. He was interred in the Frankfort Cemetery, in Frankfort, Kentucky. Ruling that his surviving daughter Imogene was illegitimate, the Frankfort County Court split his estate between his brothers John and Henry.

The counties of five U.S. states bear Johnson's name, namely in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Nebraska. Richard Mentor Johnson is also the namesake of Dick Johnson Township, Indiana.

His political prominence led to a family dynasty: his brothers James and John Telemachus Johnson, and his nephew Robert Ward Johnson were all elected to the House of Representatives, the first two from Kentucky, and Robert from Arkansas. Robert was later elected as a senator before the Civil War. Emmons and Langworthy, contemporary sources, give 1781, and Pratt and Sobel accept this date; this has the effect of making him born in Kentucky, which would be a reason to invent it.
Used in article:

Others:

The presidency of James Monroe began on March 4, 1817, when James Monroe was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1825. Monroe, the fifth United States president, took office after winning the 1816 presidential election by an overwhelming margin over Federalist Rufus King. This election was the last in which the Federalists fielded a presidential candidate, and Monroe was unopposed in the 1820 presidential election. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was succeeded by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

Presidency of James Monroe

Monroe sought to eliminate political parties, and the Federalist Party faded as a national institution during his presidency. The Democratic-Republicans also stopped functioning as a unified political party, and the period during which Monroe served as president is often referred to as the "Era of Good Feelings" due to the lack of partisan conflict. Domestically, Monroe faced the Panic of 1819, the first major recession in the United States since the ratification of the Constitution. He supported many federally-funded infrastructure projects, but vetoed other projects due to constitutional concerns. Monroe supported the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state but excluded slavery in the remaining territories north of the parallel 36°30′ north.

In foreign policy, Monroe and Secretary of State Adams acquired East Florida from Spain with the Adams–Onís Treaty, realizing a long-term goal of Monroe and his predecessors. Reached after the First Seminole War, the Adams–Onís Treaty also solidified U.S. control over West Florida, established the western border of the United States, and included the cession of Spain's claims on Oregon Country. The Monroe administration also reached two treaties with Britain, marking a rapprochement between the two countries in the aftermath of the War of 1812. The Rush–Bagot Treaty demilitarized the U.S. border with British North America, while the Treaty of 1818 settled some boundary disputes and provided for the joint settlement of Oregon Country. Monroe was deeply sympathetic to the revolutionary movements in Latin America and opposed European influence in the region. In 1823, Monroe promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the U.S. would remain neutral in European affairs, but would not accept new colonization of Latin American by European powers.

In the 1824 presidential election, four members of the Democratic-Republican Party sought to succeed Monroe, who remained neutral among the candidates. Adams emerged as the victor over General Andrew Jackson and Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford in a contingent election. Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Monroe as an above-average president.

Monroe's war-time leadership in the Madison administration had established him as the Democratic-Republican heir apparent, but not all party leaders supported Monroe's candidacy in the lead-up to the 1816 presidential election. Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford had the support of numerous Southern and Western Congressmen, many of whom were wary of Madison and Monroe's support for the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. New York Democratic-Republicans resisted the possibility of another Virginian winning the presidency, and they backed the candidacy of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. Though Crawford desired the nomination, he did not strongly oppose Monroe's candidacy, as he hoped to position himself to succeed Monroe in 1820 or 1824. In the congressional nominating caucus held in March 1816, Monroe defeated Crawford in a 65-to-54 vote, becoming his party's presidential nominee. Tompkins won the party's vice presidential nomination.

The moribund Federalist Party nominated Rufus King as their presidential nominee, but the Federalists offered little opposition following the conclusion of the War of 1812, which they had opposed. Some opponents of Monroe tried to recruit DeWitt Clinton, Madison's opponent in the 1812 election, but Clinton declined to enter the race. Monroe received 183 of the 217 electoral votes, winning every state but Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. In the concurrent congressional elections, Democratic-Republicans picked up several seats in the House of Representatives, leaving them with control of over three quarters of the chamber. Monroe was the last president called a Founding Father of the United States, and also the last president of the "Virginia dynasty", a term sometimes used to describe the fact that four of the nation's first five presidents were from Virginia.

Monroe appointed a geographically-balanced cabinet, through which he led the executive branch. At Monroe's request, Crawford continued to serve as Treasury Secretary. Monroe also chose to retain Benjamin Crowninshield of Massachusetts as Secretary of the Navy and Richard Rush of Pennsylvania as Attorney General. Recognizing Northern discontent at the continuation of the Virginia dynasty, Monroe chose John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts to fill the prestigious post of Secretary of State, making Adams the early favorite to eventually succeed Monroe as president. An experienced diplomat, Adams had abandoned the Federalist Party in 1807 in support of Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy, and Monroe hoped that the appointment of Adams would encourage the defection of more Federalists. Monroe offered the position of Secretary of War to Henry Clay of Kentucky, but Clay was only willing to serve in the cabinet as Secretary of State. Monroe's decision to appoint Adams to the latter position alienated Clay, and Clay would oppose many of the administration's policies. After General Andrew Jackson and Governor Isaac Shelby declined appointment as Secretary of War, Monroe turned to South Carolina Congressman John C. Calhoun, leaving the cabinet without a prominent Westerner. In late 1817, Rush was appointed as the ambassador to Britain, and William Wirt succeeded him as Attorney General. With the exception of the Crowninshield, Monroe's cabinet appointees remained in place for the remainder of his presidency.

In September 1823, Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson received a recess appointment from President Monroe to a seat on the Supreme Court that had been vacated by Henry Brockholst Livingston. Officially nominated for the same seat on December 5, 1823, he was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 9. Thompson was on good personal terms with Monroe, had a long record of public service as a jurist and a public official, and, like Livingston, hailed from the state of New York. Monroe also considered Senator Martin Van Buren and jurists Ambrose Spencer and James Kent for the nomination. Thompson was Monroe's lone appointment to the Supreme Court, though Monroe also appointed 21 judges to United States district courts during his presidency.

Like all four of his predecessors, Monroe believed that the existence of political parties was harmful to the United States, and he made the elimination of political parties a major goal of his presidency. He sought to strengthen the Democratic-Republican Party by avoiding divisive policies and welcoming ex-Federalists into the fold, with the ultimate aim being the dissolution of the Federalists. Monroe made two long national tours to build national trust. At Boston, his 1817 visit was hailed as the beginning of an "Era of Good Feelings." Frequent stops on these tours allowed innumerable ceremonies of welcome and expressions of good will. Monroe was seen by more Americans than any previous president, and his travels were reported on in detail in the local and national press. The Federalists failed to develop a unified national program, and Federalist candidates frequently campaigned on local rather than national issues. The Federalists maintained their organizational integrity in Delaware and a few localities, but lacked influence in national politics. Lacking serious opposition, the Democratic-Republican Party's congressional caucus stopped meeting, and for practical purposes the Democratic-Republican Party stopped operating.

Two years into his presidency, Monroe faced an economic crisis known as the Panic of 1819, the first major depression to hit the country since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. The panic stemmed from declining imports and exports, and sagging agricultural prices as global markets readjusted to peacetime production and commerce in the aftermath of the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars. The severity of the economic downturn in the U.S. was compounded by excessive speculation in public lands, fueled by the unrestrained issue of paper money from banks and business concerns. The Second Bank of the United States (B.U.S.) failed to restrict inflation until late 1818, when the directors of the B.U.S. took overdue steps to curtail credit. Branches were ordered to accept no bills but their own, to present all state bank notes for payment at once, and to renew no personal notes or mortgages. These contractionary fiscal policies backfired, as they undermined public confidence in banks and contributed to the onset of the panic.

Monroe had little control over economic policy; in the early 19th century, such power rested largely with the states and the B.U.S. As the panic spread, Monroe declined to call a special session of Congress to address the economy. When Congress finally reconvened in December 1819, Monroe requested an increase in the tariff but declined to recommend specific rates. Congress would not raise tariff rates until the passage of the Tariff of 1824. The panic resulted in high unemployment, an increase in bankruptcies and foreclosures, and provoked popular resentment against banking and business enterprises.

Popular resentment towards the national bank motivated the state of Maryland to implement a tax on the national bank's branch in that state. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of "McCulloch v. Maryland." In a major defeat for states' rights advocates, the Supreme Court forbid states from taxing B.U.S. branches. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall articulated a broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause, holding that the Constitution granted Congress powers that were not expressly defined. The decision fed the popular disdain for the B.U.S. and aroused fears about the growing reach of federal power.

Beginning in 1818, Clay and territorial delegate John Scott sought the admission of Missouri Territory as a state. The House failed to act on the bill before Congress adjourned in April, but took up the issue again after Congress reconvened in December 1818. During these proceedings, Congressman James Tallmadge, Jr. of New York "tossed a bombshell into the Era of Good Feelings" by offering amendments (known collectively as the Tallmadge Amendment) prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into Missouri, and requiring that all children subsequently born therein of slave parents should be free at the age of twenty-five years. The amendments sparked the first major national slavery debate since the ratification of the Constitution, and instantly exposed the sectional polarization over the issue of slavery.

Northern Democratic-Republicans formed a coalition across partisan lines with remnants of the Federalists in support of the exclusion of slavery from Missouri, while Southern Democratic-Republicans were almost unanimously against such a restriction. Northerners focused their arguments on the immorality of slavery, while Southerners focused their attacks on the purported unconstitutionality of banning slavery within a state. Many Southerners, including former President Jefferson, argued that the "diffusion" of slaves into the west would make gradual emancipation more feasible. Both sides also recognized that the status of slavery in Missouri could have important consequences on the balance between slave states and free states in the United States Senate.

The bill, with Tallmadge’s amendments, passed the House in a mostly sectional vote, though ten free state congressmen joined with the slave state congressmen in opposing at least one of the provisions of the bill. The measure then went to the Senate, where both amendments were rejected. A House–Senate conference committee was unable to resolve the disagreements on the bill, and so the whole measure was lost. Congress took up the issue again when it reconvened in December 1819. Monroe, himself a slaveowner, threatened to veto any bill that restricted slavery in Missouri. He also supported the efforts of Senator James Barbour and other Southern Congressmen to win the admission of Missouri as a slave state by simultaneously admitting the free state of Maine, which was at the time a part of Massachusetts.

In February 1820, Congressman Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois proposed a compromise, in which Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, but slavery would be excluded in the remaining territories north of the parallel 36°30′ north. Like many other Southern leaders, Monroe came to view Thomas's proposal as a reasonable compromise that would defuse stirrings of disunion. The Senate passed a bill that included Thomas's territorial restriction on slavery, and which also provided for the admittance of Maine and Missouri. The House approved the Senate bill in a narrow vote, and after deliberating with his cabinet, Monroe signed the legislation into law in April 1820.

The question of the final admission of Missouri came up again in November 1820. The Missouri constitution included a provision that barred free blacks from entering the state, which deeply offended many northerners. The dispute over Missouri affected the 1820 presidential election, and Congress reported electoral vote totals both with and without Missouri's votes. Through the influence of Clay, an act of admission was finally passed, upon the condition that the exclusionary clause of the Missouri constitution should "never be construed to authorize the passage of any law" impairing the privileges and immunities of any U.S. citizen. This deliberately ambiguous provision is sometimes known as the Second Missouri Compromise. It was a bitter pill for many to swallow and the admission of new states as free or slave became a major issue until the abolition of slavery.

Aside from settling the issue of Missouri's statehood, the Missouri Compromise had several important effects. It helped forestall a split in the Democratic-Republican Party along sectional lines at a time when the Federalists offered little effective opposition, and set a precedent whereby free states and slave states were admitted in pairs in order to avoid upsetting the balance of the Senate. The compromise also elevated the stature of both Henry Clay and the United States Senate. Perhaps most importantly, the Missouri Compromise indicated a shift away from gradual emancipation, a policy that had once held wide support among Southern leaders. The planned slave revolt of Denmark Vesey, who was captured and executed in 1822, further contributed to a hardening of pro-slavery attitudes in the South during Monroe's tenure as president.

As the United States continued to grow, many Americans advocated the construction of a system of internal improvements to help the country develop. Federal assistance for such projects evolved slowly and haphazardly—the product of contentious congressional factions and an executive branch that was concerned about the constitutionality of federal involvement with such projects. Monroe believed that the young nation needed to improve its infrastructure in order to grow and thrive economically, but also worried about the constitutionality of a federal role in the construction, maintenance, and operation of a national transportation system. Monroe repeatedly urged Congress to pass an amendment allowing Congress the power to finance internal improvements, but Congress never acted on his proposal, in part because many congressmen believed that the Constitution did in fact authorize the federal financing of internal improvements.

The United States had begun construction on the National Road in 1811, and by the end of 1818 it linked the Ohio River and the Potomac River. In 1822, Congress passed a bill authorizing the collection of tolls on the National Road, with the tolls being used to finance repairs on the road. Adhering to his stated position regarding internal improvements, Monroe vetoed the bill. In an elaborate essay, Monroe set forth his constitutional views on the subject. Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it could not undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume jurisdiction over them. In 1823, Monroe proposed that Congress work with the states to build a system of canals to connect the rivers leading to the Atlantic Ocean with the western territories of the United States, and he eventually signed a bill providing for investment in the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company. Monroe's call for canals was inspired by the impending completion of the Erie Canal, which would link New York City with the Great Lakes.

In 1824, the Supreme Court ruled in "Gibbons v. Ogden" that the Constitution's Commerce Clause gave the federal government broad authority over interstate commerce. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed two important laws that, together, marked the beginning of the federal government's continuous involvement in civil works. The General Survey Act authorized the president to have surveys made of routes for roads and canals "of national importance." The president assigned responsibility for the surveys to the Army Corps of Engineers. The second act, passed a month later, appropriated $75,000 to improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by removing sandbars, snags, and other obstacles. Subsequently, the act was amended to include other rivers such as the Missouri.

In the years before Monroe took office, a movement supporting the colonization of Africa by free blacks became increasingly popular. Congressman Charles F. Mercer of Virginia and Reverend Robert Finley of New Jersey established the American Colonization Society (ACS) to further the goal of African colonization. Most adherents of the society supported colonization as a way to provide for the gradual emancipation of slaves and diversify the Southern economy, but the ACS also appealed to pro-slavery Southerners whose primarily goal was the removal of free blacks from the country. The ACS attracted several prominent supporters, including Madison, Associate Justice Bushrod Washington, and Henry Clay. In 1819, the Monroe administration agreed to provide some funding to the ACS, and, much like the national bank, the society operated as a public-private partnership. The U.S. Navy helped the ACS establish a colony in West Africa, which would be adjacent to Sierra Leone, another colony that had been established for free blacks. The new colony was named Liberia, and Liberia's capital took the name of Monrovia in honor of President Monroe. By the 1860s, over ten thousand African Americans had migrated to Liberia. Though initially intended to be a permanent U.S. colony, Liberia would declare independence in 1847.

Monroe took a close interest in the Western American frontier, which was overseen by Secretary of War Calhoun. Calhoun organized an expedition to the Yellowstone River to extend American influence in and knowledge of the northwest region of the Louisiana Purchase. The expedition suffered several setbacks, but the efforts of scientists such as Edwin James advanced U.S. knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region.

The federal government had taken control of the Yazoo lands from Georgia in the Compact of 1802; as part of that agreement, President Jefferson promised to remove Native Americans from the region. Georgians pressed Monroe to remove the remaining Native Americans to regions west of the Mississippi River, but the Native Americans rejected the Monroe administration's offers to purchase their land. As Monroe was unwilling to forcibly evict the Native American tribes, he took no major actions regarding Indian removal.

Near the beginning of Monroe's first term, the administration negotiated two important accords with Great Britain that resolved border disputes held over from the War of 1812. The Rush-Bagot Treaty, signed in April 1817, regulated naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, demilitarizing the border between the U.S. and British North America. The Treaty of 1818, signed in October 1818, fixed the present Canada–United States border from Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains at the 49th parallel. Britain ceded all of Rupert's Land south of the 49th parallel and east of the Continental Divide, including all of the Red River Colony south of that latitude, while the U.S. ceded the northernmost edge of the Missouri Territory above the 49th parallel. The treaty also established a joint U.S.–British occupation of Oregon Country for the next ten years. Together, the Rush-Bagot Treaty and the Treaty of 1818 marked an important turning point in Anglo–American and American–Canadian relations, although they did not solve all outstanding issues. The easing of tensions contributed to expanded trade, particularly cotton, and played a role in Britain's decision to refrain from becoming involved in the First Seminole War.

Spain faced a troubling colonial situation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, as revolutionaries in Central America and South America were beginning to demand independence. The United States had taken control of part of West Florida in 1810, and, by the time Monroe took office, American settlers also encroached on Spanish territory in East Florida and New Spain. With a minor military presence in the Floridas, Spain was unable to restrain the Seminole Indians, who routinely conducted cross-border raids on American villages and farms and protected slave refugees from the United States. Acquisition of the Floridas was a long-held goal of Monroe, Adams, and other leading Democratic-Republicans, as authority over the region would consolidate U.S. control of its southeastern lands against British and Spanish influence.

To stop the Seminole from raiding Georgia settlements and offering havens for runaway slaves, the U.S. Army led increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory. In early 1818, Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to the Georgia–Florida border to defend against Seminole attacks. Monroe authorized Jackson to attack Seminole encampments in Spanish Florida, but not Spanish settlements themselves. In what became known as the First Seminole War, Jackson crossed over into Spanish territory and attacked the Spanish fort at St. Marks. He also executed two British subjects whom he accused of having incited the Seminoles to raid American settlements. Jackson claimed that the attack on the fort was necessary as the Spanish were providing aid to the Seminoles. After taking the fort St. Marks, Jackson moved on the Spanish position at Pensacola, capturing it in May 1818.

In a letter to Jackson, Monroe reprimanded the general for exceeding his orders, but also acknowledged that Jackson may have been justified given the circumstances in the war against the Seminoles. Though he had not authorized Jackson's attacks on Spanish posts, Monroe recognized that Jackson's campaign left the United States with a stronger hand in ongoing negotiations over the purchase of the Floridas, as it showed that Spain was unable to defend its territories. The Monroe administration restored the Floridas to Spain, but requested that Spain increase efforts to prevent Seminole raids. Some in Monroe's cabinet, including Secretary of War John Calhoun, wanted the aggressive general court-martialed, or at least reprimanded. Secretary of State Adams alone took the ground that Jackson's acts were justified by the incompetence of Spanish authority to police its own territory, arguing that Spain had allowed East Florida to become "a derelict open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them." His arguments, along with the restoration of the Floridas, convinced the British and Spanish not to retaliate against the United States for Jackson's conduct.

News of Jackson's exploits caused consternation in Washington and ignited a congressional investigation. Clay attacked Jackson's actions and proposed that his colleagues officially censure the general. Even many members of Congress who tended to support Jackson worried about the consequences of allowing a general to make war without the consent of Congress. In reference to popular generals who had taken power through military force, Speaker of the House Henry Clay urged his fellow congressmen to "remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Julius Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte." Dominated by Democratic-Republicans, the 15th Congress was generally expansionist and supportive of the popular Jackson. After much debate, the House of Representatives voted down all resolutions that condemned Jackson, thus implicitly endorsing the military intervention. Jackson's actions in the First Seminole War would be the subject of ongoing controversy in subsequent years, as Jackson claimed that Monroe had secretly ordered him to attack the Spanish settlements, a claim that Monroe denied.

Negotiations over the purchase of the Floridas began in early 1818. Don Luis de Onís, the Spanish Minister at Washington, suspended negotiations after Jackson attacked Spanish settlements, but he resumed his talks with Secretary of State Adams after the U.S. restored the territories. On February 22, 1819, Spain and the United States signed the Adams–Onís Treaty, which ceded the Floridas in return for the assumption by the United States of claims of American citizens against Spain to an amount not exceeding $5,000,000. The treaty also contained a definition of the boundary between Spanish and American possessions on the North American continent. Beginning at the mouth of the Sabine River, the line ran along that river to the 32nd parallel, then due north to the Red River, which it followed to the 100th meridian, due north to the Arkansas River, and along that river to its source, then north to the 42nd parallel, which it followed to the Pacific Ocean. The United States renounced all claims to the lands west and south of this boundary, while Spain surrendered its claim to Oregon Country. Spanish delay in relinquishing control of the Floridas led some congressmen to call for war, but Spain peacefully transferred control of the Floridas in February 1821.

Monroe was deeply sympathetic to the Latin American revolutionary movements against Spain. He 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. He did not envisage military involvement but only the provision of moral support, as he believed that a direct American intervention would provoke other European powers into assisting Spain. Despite his preferences, Monroe initially refused to recognize the Latin American governments due to ongoing negotiations with Spain over Florida.

In March 1822, Monroe officially recognized the countries of Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Secretary of State Adams, under Monroe's supervision, wrote the instructions for the ambassadors to these new countries. They declared that the policy of the United States was to uphold republican institutions and to seek treaties of commerce on a most-favored-nation basis. The United States would support inter-American congresses dedicated to the development of economic and political institutions fundamentally differing from those prevailing in Europe. Monroe took pride as the United States was the first nation to extend recognition and to set an example to the rest of the world for its support of the "cause of liberty and humanity". In 1824, the U.S. and Gran Colombia reached the Anderson–Gual Treaty, a general convention of peace, amity, navigation, and commerce that represented the first treaty the United States entered into with another country in the Americas. Between 1820 and 1830, the number of U.S. consuls assigned to foreign countries would double, with much of that growth coming in Latin America. These consuls would help merchants expand U.S. trade in the Western Hemisphere.

The British had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, as the Spanish followed a mercantilist policy that imposed restrictions on trade between Spanish colonies and foreign powers. In October 1823, Ambassador Rush informed Secretary of State Adams that Foreign Secretary George Canning desired a joint declaration to deter any other power from intervening in Central and South America. Canning was motivated in part by the restoration of King Ferdinand VII of Spain by France. Britain feared that either France or the "Holy Alliance" of Austria, Prussia, and Russia would help Spain regain control of its colonies, and sought American cooperation in opposing such an intervention. Monroe and Adams deliberated the British proposal extensively, and Monroe conferred with former presidents Jefferson and Madison.

Monroe was at first inclined to accept Canning's proposal, and Madison and Jefferson both shared this preference. Adams, however, vigorously opposed cooperation with Great Britain, contending that a statement of bilateral nature could limit U.S. expansion in the future. Additionally, Adams and Monroe shared a reluctance to appear as a junior partner in any alliance. Rather than responding to Canning's alliance offer, Monroe decided to issue a statement regarding Latin America in his 1823 Annual Message to Congress. In series of meetings with the cabinet, Monroe formulated his administration's official policy regarding European intervention in Latin America. Adams in particular played a major role in these cabinet meetings, and the Secretary of State convinced Monroe to avoid antagonizing the members of the Holy Alliance with unduly belligerent language.

Monroe's annual message was read by both houses of Congress on December 2, 1823. In it, he articulated what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine reiterated the traditional U.S. policy of neutrality with regard to European wars and conflicts, but declared that the United States would not accept the recolonization of any country by its former European master. Monroe 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. At the same time, Monroe avowed non-interference with existing European colonies in the Americas.

The Monroe Doctrine was well received in the United States and Britain, while Russia, French, and Austrian leaders privately denounced it. The European powers knew that the U.S. had little ability to back up the Monroe Doctrine with force, but the United States was able to "free ride" on the strength of the British Royal Navy. Nonetheless, the issuance of the Monroe Doctrine displayed a new level of assertiveness by the United States in international relations, as it represented the country's first claim to a sphere of influence. It also marked the country's shift in psychological orientation away from Europe and towards the Americas. Debates over foreign policy would no longer center on relations with Britain and France, but would instead focus on western expansion and relations with Native Americans.

In the 18th century, Russia had established Russian America on the Pacific coast. In 1821, Tsar Alexander I issued an edict declaring Russia's sovereignty over the North American Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel north. The edict also forbade foreign ships to approach within 115 miles of the Russian claim. Adams strongly protested the edict, which potentially threatened both the commerce and expansionary ambitions of the United States. Seeking favorable relations with the U.S., Alexander agreed to the Russo-American Treaty of 1824. In the treaty, Russia limited its claims to lands north of parallel 54°40′ north, and also agreed to open Russian ports to U.S. ships.

Five new states were admitted to the Union while Monroe was in office:

During James Monroe’s first term, the country had suffered an economic depression and slavery had emerged as a divisive issue. Despite these problems, the collapse of the Federalists left Monroe with no organized opposition at the end of his first term, and he ran for reelection unopposed, the only president other than George Washington to do so. A single elector from New Hampshire, William Plumer, cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, preventing a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. Plumer also refused to vote for Daniel Tompkins for Vice President, whom he considered "grossly intemperate." His dissent was joined by several Federalist electors who, although pledged to vote for Tompkins, voted for someone else for vice president.

The Federalist Party had nearly collapsed by the end of Monroe's two terms, and all of the major presidential candidates in 1824 were members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay each entered the race with strong followings. Crawford favored state sovereignty and strict constructionism, while Calhoun, Clay, and Adams all embraced internal improvements, high tariffs, and the national bank. As 1824 approached, General Andrew Jackson jumped into the race, motivated in large part by his anger over Clay and Crawford's denunciations of his actions in Florida. The congressional nominating caucus had decided upon previous Democratic-Republican presidential nominees, but had become largely discredited by 1824. Candidates were instead nominated by state legislatures or nominating conventions. With three cabinet members in the race, Monroe remained neutral.

Seeing Jackson's strength, Calhoun dropped out of the presidential race and instead sought the vice presidency. The remaining candidates relied heavily on regional strength. Adams was popular in New England, Clay and Jackson were strong in the West, and Jackson and Crawford competed for the South, despite the latter's health problems. In the 1824 presidential election, Jackson won a plurality in the Electoral College, taking 99 of the 261 electoral votes, while Adams won 84, Crawford won 41, and Clay took 37. As no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, the House was required to hold a contingent election under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment. The House would decide among the top three electoral vote winners, with each state's delegation having one vote; Clay was thus not eligible to be elected by the House.

Jackson's policy views were unclear, but Clay had been outraged by Jackson's actions in Florida, and he feared what Jackson would do in office. He also shared many policies with Adams. Adams and Clay met prior to the contingent election, and Clay agreed to support Adams. On February 9, 1825, Adams became the second president elected by the House of Representatives (after Thomas Jefferson in 1801), when he won the contingent election on the first ballot, taking 13 of the 24 state delegations.

Monroe presided over a period in which the United States began to turn away from European affairs and towards domestic issues. His presidency saw the United States settle many of its longstanding boundary issues through an accommodation with Britain and the acquisition of Florida. Monroe also helped resolve sectional tensions through his support of the Missouri Compromise and by seeking support from all regions of the country. Political scientist Fred Greenstein argues that Monroe was a more effective executive than some of his better-known predecessors, including Madison and John Adams.

Polls of historians and political scientists tend to rank Monroe as an above average president. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Monroe as the eighteenth best president. A 2017 C-Span poll of historians ranked Monroe as the thirteenth best president.

In 1817, President James Monroe selected Caesar Augustus Rodney, John Graham, and Theodorick Bland, as commissioners for a special diplomatic mission to South America, the South American Commission of 1817-1818. Because of his reputation as a botanist, Baldwin was selected to sail on the frigate USS "Congress" as a botanical investigator as well as the ship's surgeon. He embarked late in 1817 and returned to Wilmington in July 1818. During its voyage, "Congress" stopped at the ports of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Maldonado, San Salvador, Brazil, and Margarita Island, Venezuela. During these stops, Baldwin found plenty of opportunity to collect plants that he would press and dry for later study.

William Baldwin (botanist)

William Baldwin (March 29, 1779 – September 1, 1819) was an American physician and botanist who is today remembered for his significant contributions to botany. He lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, and served as a ship's surgeon on two voyages overseas. He published only two scientific papers, but his major contributions were in the knowledge that he imparted to other botanists in his letters to them and in the thousands of specimens that he provided for their herbaria. He wrote letters to Henry Muhlenberg, Stephen Elliott, William Darlington, Zaccheus Collins, and others. His most important collections were from Georgia, Florida, and eastern South America. When he died, he left a large herbarium that proved to be of great value, especially to Lewis David von Schweinitz, John Torrey, and Asa Gray. He had a special interest in the plant family Cyperaceae and his incomplete, unpublished manuscripts were a major source for monographs by John Torrey and Asa Gray. The historian Joseph Ewan has said that "Baldwin's treatment of a number of genera, especially in the Cyperaceae, showed penetrating observation, understanding, and diagnosis". The genus "Balduina" was named for him by Thomas Nuttall. Most of what we know of him is from the biography written by his friend, William Darlington, in 1843.

William Baldwin was born in Newlin Township, Pennsylvania, a small township about one kilometer southeast of Embreeville in Chester County. He was the son of Elizabeth Baldwin (nee Garretson) and Thomas Baldwin, a Quaker minister. He suffered from poor health all of his life because of chronic tuberculosis, and like the rest of his family, he would die of it. At the time, his condition was called hereditary tuberculosis, but it is now known that tuberculosis is an infectious disease.

William Baldwin had little formal education, but he had a thirst for knowledge and became a school teacher at a young age. When he was not teaching class, he was in Downingtown, Chester County, studying medicine under Dr. William A. Todd. It was here that he met Moses Marshall, the nephew of botanist Humphry Marshall. He sometimes went with Moses Marshall to Marshallton in Chester County to study the botanic garden that his uncle had established there. Thus began the young Baldwin's lifelong enthusiasm for botany In 1802, he took one course in medicine at the University of Tennessee, but soon ran out of money, and returned to his studies under Dr. Todd.

It was near the end of 1802 when he began his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. One of his teachers, Benjamin Smith Barton, encouraged his study of botany and taught him much on the subject. Barton occasionally took Baldwin and other students on botanical excursions into the countryside. In particular Barton's classes studied at the botanic collections at Bartram's Garden under William Bartram and at William Hamilton's garden The Woodlands in Philadelphia.

While Baldwin was attending the university, one of his friends and fellow students, William Darlington developed a serious illness. Baldwin devoted much time and effort to assisting his recovery. Thus began a close and lifelong friendship. After one course at the University of Pennsylvania, Baldwin again fell short financially, and in 1803 returned to Dr. Todd to work as his assistant.

In 1805, he secured a position as a surgeon on a ship, and sailed to Antwerp, then to Guangzhou, and returned to Philadelphia in 1806. During this voyage, he earned enough money to complete his studies. He returned to the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded the degree of M.D. in April 1807.

Before the end of 1807, he had moved to Wilmington, Delaware and married Hannah Webster, a young lady who had far more education than most women of her time. They would eventually have four daughters.

William Baldwin and his wife considered themselves to be devout Quakers, but they were thrown out of meeting for getting married by a Presbyterian minister whom the Quakers called a mere "hireling". Baldwin apologized for this and was reinstated.

During his time in Wilmington, he lived by the practice of medicine and spent his leisure hours in botany. In January 1811, he received a letter from Henry Muhlenberg which began as follows:

Thus began an enduring friendship and a correspondence that eventually consisted of 90 letters, continuing to the death of Dr. Muhlenberg in 1815.

In Wilmington, Baldwin's health continued to deteriorate, and in the autumn of 1811, he moved to Georgia to avoid the severity of the northern winters. In January 1812, he visited Stephen Elliott at his plantation in South Carolina. Baldwin sent Elliott many specimens in the following years, and also some descriptions, which Elliott included in his book "A Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia", giving Baldwin full credit for having written them.

The War of 1812 began on June 18 of that year with the declaration of war by the U.S. Congress, and soon thereafter, Baldwin joined the navy as a surgeon. For this, he was thrown out of meeting for the second time by the Quakers. He protested that he had gone to war "not to make wounds, but to heal them", but his membership was never restored in spite of his determined efforts to regain it.

Baldwin's military service lasted nearly 4½ years, from the summer of 1812 to the autumn of 1816. He spent the first 2½ years of his service at St. Marys, Georgia, a small settlement at the mouth of the St. Marys River. The next two years were spent in Savannah. While he lived in Georgia, he sometimes took long journeys on foot, traveling deep into territory occupied by the Creek Indians. He was well received by the natives, and he, in turn, was deeply sympathetic toward them. In his biographical sketch of Baldwin, Darlington writes:

When Baldwin left the navy near the end of 1816, he sent his family back to Wilmington. In the winter of 1816 to 1817 through the spring of 1817, he continued to live in Georgia, making frequent botanical excursions there and in what would soon become the state of Florida. At that time, many Americans called it East Florida.

He returned to Wilmington in 1817 in spite of concerns about his health. In August of that year, while passing through Philadelphia, he met Zaccheus Collins and they became fast friends.

After Baldwin returned to Wilmington in July 1818, he planned to study the large collection of plants that he had accumulated, and he began to prepare manuscripts for publication. He exchanged letters with Zaccheus Collins and William Darlington on "Cyperus", "Scirpus", and "Rhynchospora", members of the family Cyperaceae that he was preparing a treatment of. He wrote to Darlington that "It will not do to hurry - there has been too much hurrying among our botanists."

But his plans were not to be fulfilled. The U.S. government was preparing an expedition, to be led by Major Stephen Long, to explore the upper reaches of the Missouri River. William Darlington and John Eatton Le Conte recommended Baldwin as the botanist for this mission and urged him to go.

William Baldwin dropped his work on the grasses Panicum and Paspalum to accept the appointment as botanist on Major Long's expedition. In March 1819, he traveled to Pittsburgh to join other members of the expedition. There were delays in Pittsburgh, and departure did not occur until May 5.

Baldwin believed that travel would sustain his health, but might have had premonitions of his fate. Soon after he started down the Ohio River, He wrote to Darlington:

In another letter to Darlington, he described the condition of the boat.

A stop was made in Cincinnati for a whole week, partly for repairs, and partly because of the alarming condition of Dr. Baldwin. The expedition reached Franklin, Missouri, a small town across the river from Boonville in mid-July where Baldwin resigned from the expedition to convalesce in the home of John J. Lowry.

The following October, William Darlington received a letter from John J. Lowry, which began as follows:

William Baldwin was among the first of about 100 members of Major Long's expedition to die of disease and deprivation. When word of this reached the U.S. Congress, they immediately declared the expedition a failure and terminated its funding. Thus ended the ill-fated venture which claimed the life of one of America's greatest botanists.

Baldwin was 40 years and 5 months of age at the time of his death. He was buried on the banks of the Missouri River. At the end of his biographical sketch of Baldwin, Darlington, in 1843, wrote:

In January 1844, Lowry wrote to Darlington to tell him that the grave of his friend had been washed away by the floodwaters of the Missouri.

Many of Baldwin's personal papers have been preserved. Some of these are in the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden. Others are in the Asa Gray Archive at the Harvard University Herbarium.

Baldwin's first scientific paper was on two new species of "Rottboellia" that he had found on the coast of Georgia. It was published in the year of his death. His only other paper was read before a meeting of the American Philosophical Society on April 16, 1819 as he made his way down the Ohio River, but it was not published until 1825. Its subject was two species of "Cyperus" from Georgia and four Species of "Kyllinga" from South America.

One of the concerns of botany in the early 21st century is the location of type specimens, the material that formed the basis of the description that was given when the plant was named. The whereabouts of this material is sometimes discovered unexpectedly. For example, a set of 18 specimens that Baldwin gave to the American Philosophical Society in March 1819 was neglected, probably because of its small size, and was not studied until 1978. At that time, it was found to contain the type specimens of some species of "Rhynchospora".

William Baldwin donated generously to the collections of others, often exchanging some of his plants for plants that he desired. He contributed much to the herbaria if Muhlenberg, Elliott, Collins, and Darlington. He also sent specimens to Aylmer Bourke Lambert and Aime Bonpland, and in 1817, he sent some to James Edward Smith. Smith published several new species based on material that Baldwin had sent him. In 1811, he sent moss and lichen specimens to Olof Swartz and Erik Acharius. In 1815, he sent more of the same to Christian Friedrich Schwägrichen.

Upon Baldwin's death, his widow wanted to give his herbarium to William Darlington, but Darlington would not accept it because he thought that she should sell it, and he was unable to pay her what it was worth. Zaccheus Collins bought Baldwin's herbarium, but made no scientific use of it. Collins was a Philadelphia merchant who knew as much botany as anyone, but to the exasperation of botanists of his time, chose to create one of the best herbaria in the United States, but published nothing. Collins died without a will in 1831. He had kept the Baldwin herbarium separate from the rest of his collection. The executor of his estate, his son-in-law, sold the Baldwin herbarium to Lewis von Schweinitz for $105 in 1833. Schweinitz already had a herbarium holding 20,000 species, and the addition of the Baldwin herbarium gave Schwienitz 3000 species that he did not already have. At this time, he wrote to John Torrey, offering him duplicates from the Baldwin herbarium of plants that he already had.

Schweinitz died in 1834, before he could fully mine the riches of the Baldwin herbarium. John Torrey used letters that he had received from Schweinitz to obtain from Schweinitz's widow a part of the Baldwin herbarium which he shared with Asa Gray. The rest of the Baldwin herbarium then went to its present location at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

The plants that Baldwin had given to Collins' main collection were given with that collection to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in the spring of 1837 in payment of a debt owed to Rafinesque by the Collins estate. Rafinesque died in 1840 and his herbarium was acquired the following year by Elias Durand, the curator of the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Durand, a citizen of France, discarded much of the Rafinesque herbarium and sent the remainder to Paris where it remains today as the Herbier Durand in the Herbier National de Paris at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle.

Those plants that Baldwin gave to Darlington are now in the Darlington Herbarium at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Those that he gave to James Edward Smith are in the Smithian Herbarium at Kew Gardens, London. Other plants attributed to Baldwin are at the University of Manchester Herbarium and at the herbarium of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.

The historian Ronald L. Stuckey has found that Thomas Nuttall, Stephen Elliott, Asa Gray, John Torrey, and Constantine Rafinesque together published at least 109 new species based on material provided by William Baldwin. Twelve of these descriptions were actually written by Baldwin, and published by Stephen Elliott in "Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia". Muhlenberg did not record where his specimens came from, but it is known that Baldwin sent him many. James Edward Smith also described new species from material sent by Baldwin.

As with nearly everyone who has contributed greatly to botany, there were plants named after William Baldwin. Thomas Nuttall named the genus "Balduina" for him in 1818, deriving the name from a latinization of "Baldwin". At the bottom of the page where "Balduina" is described, we find the footnote:

John Torrey and Asa Gray changed "Balduina" to "Baldwinia" in 1840, but this orthographical variant was not generally accepted. "Balduina" is now a conserved name.

"Balduina" is a genus of three species native to the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain. Not all authors have put them in one genus and they have had various names, but a revision of Asteraceae in 2007 placed all three of these species together in "Balduina".

Several species of plants have been named for William Baldwin. Among those names that are still in use, we have, including authors, the following names: "Eleocharis baldwinii" (John Torrey) Alvan Wentworth Chapman, "Rhynchospora baldwinii" Asa Gray, "Saccharum baldwinii" Curt Sprengel, "Clematis baldwinii" John Torrey and Asa Gray, "Paronychia baldwinii" (Torrey and Gray) Eduard Fenzl and Wilhelm Walpers, "Eryngium baldwinii" Curt Sprengel, "Vernonia baldwinii" John Torrey, "Xyris baldwiniana" Josef Schultes, and "Matelea baldwyniana" (Robert Sweet) Robert Woodson.

At least six other plants, including "Fimbristylis annua", "Dichanthelium ensifolium", "Ptelea trifoliata", "Silene catesbaei", "Symphyotrichum undulatum", and "Viguiera" ("Rhysolepis") "anchusifolia" have had names that honored Baldwin, but these are no longer in use.