James Monroe: Our Least Celebrated Successful President
Robert Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University and teaches in the Harvard Extension School. He has received the Extension School’s Petra Shattuck Award for teaching and has been awarded the Suffolk’s Student Government Association award for teaching three times. Professor Allison has written books about the American Revolution, the history of Boston, and the Barbary Wars, and is co-editor of The Essential Debate on the Constitution. He is an elected Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
Overview
James Monroe may be the most successful of American presidents, and his years in the White House were called “the era of good feelings.” His administration secured the country’s northern and southern borders, established an American presence in the Pacific, and–in the Monroe Doctrine that still bears his name (though he never called it that)–announced the United States would not tolerate European interference in the Western Hemisphere. The last Revolutionary veteran to serve as President, Monroe was the only President aside from Washington to be re-elected with no opposition. This course asks, “Who was James Monroe, and why was he so successful?”