The last founding father

When it comes to the Presidency of James Monroe, things look pretty good on the surface. We have the beginning of the Era of Good Feelings, with the economy expanding, and westward expansion opening up new land opportunities. Monroe was elected to the Presidency by crushing margins, and it seemed like he was doing well. However, if you look just under the beguiled surface, there is trouble brewing on the horizon. This is the admission of Missouri into the Union. This was an issue because it once again brought up the condition of slavery. Those who wanted to have control in the south wanted to have it enter as a slave state, and those in the north wanted it to be kept free. The resulting compromise, where Mane entered as a free state, and Missouri as a slave state, was called the Missouri compromise. It was a temporary solution, at best.

Then there was the potentially nasty issue of an international incident with Spain, Britain, and the US. Seminole Indians had been conducting raids on US settlements in Georgia, only to run back into Florida controlled by Spain. Monroe sends General Andrew Jackson in to the southern part of the US to protect the citizens there. Jackson gets tired of this, and marches into Florida, and captures and hangs British privateers who were helping the Native Americans. Thankfully, this three sided international incident resulted in the annexation of Florida to the United States, instead of an armed conflict.

Then there was what would come to be called the Monroe Doctrine. This was part of Monroe's State of the Union address in 1823. In it, he states an umtimatdum: That any foreign power cannot settle in side the Northern Hemisphere, and that the United States will do whatever it can to stop them from doing so. It becomes a defining moment in Monroe's Presidency, yet he was not the original author. It was written by his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Better still, it was not even recognized as the Monroe Doctrine until the 1850's. This makes Monroe's Presidency one of those that people tend to forget. With no major political crisis or scandals, nor any major political triumphs, it is easy to see why he tends to take a back seat to those like Washington, Jefferson, or even Jackson.

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Well, I think that, so far, this is the worst presidential biography I have read since I did the biography of Thomas Jefferson by R.B. Bernstein. For those of you who do not know, I have made a bit of a new years resolution to read one major biography of every U.S. President. Up until now, the worst of this was the Thomas Jefferson book mentioned above. This was because that, although it did explain a few things about Thomas Jefferson, it was filled with a great many writing about basic Revolutionary era facts that I already knew. I had thought that I had seen the worst of it when I read that book, but now I have stumbled upon something else, something far more insulting to the world of literary Presidential biographies: a book that is filled with such bias that I wondered if it was my fault that I was viewing it harshly. Was I not understanding this book because I had read the superb works of McCullough and Ellis? No. Was it because that I had read the excellently detailed works of Chaney that I was imposing these expectations unfairly upon Unger? No. I have found, after reading this book, that, at best, Unger has left us with insignificant dinner part facts about Monroe, and, at worst, has made up events that simply did not happen.

This book begins with a huge display of professional bias, where Unger states that the previous Presidents after Washington- Adams, Jefferson, and Madison- were all mere placeholders until Monroe took power, and managed to turn the nation around from the brink of collapse. This was something that I personally found hard to swallow. After all, these Presidents that Unger casts aside did a great many things. Adams, for example, managed to create the Navy, and Jefferson managed to double the landmass of the United States for pennies on the dollar. Madison taught us the hard way that in the real world, foreign issues could not be ignored ( unlike what Washington wanted in his farewell address). To so casually dismiss all that they had done to get Monroe to the Presidency is something that had me suspicious as to what Unger was doing.

And the terrible treatment of the Presidential predecessors doesn't stop there. All throughout the book, there are little side comments and hints at Unger's contempt for the past leaders. He calls Adams old and fat, Jefferson's Monticello gaudy and flamboyant, and Madison an incompetent fool as a President. Especially after reading major works on each of these men, these side comments stuck out to me like a sore thumb, and slowly work to show the inherent bias that Unger has for anyone that isn't Monroe or Washington.

This leads to how Unger displays Monroe himself, which is to say that Unger treat him more like a prophet than an actual human being. In this narrative, Monroe has no faults, he creates no issues during his political career, and, indeed, he is never to blame if things go wrong in his life. It is always someone else's fault, say a political appointee, or a wayward brother, but never his fault, no mam. This is especially true when it comes into a key revolation that a reader may not know while reading this book: Monroe was a slave owner. He owned a small number of slaves in an attempt to become part of the Virginia Dynasty, like Jefferson, whom he so deeply admired. Yet, Unger makes absolutely no mention of this. In fact, the only way that one would recognize Monroe as a slave owner is if one were paying attention to a quote by Monroe that Unger left in the book. In it, Monroe casually mentions that he sold off some slaves to pay off some of his many debts. Other than this, slaves are referred to a private servants, and never by their actual name. Now I understand that those people who aspired to be in the rich planter elite needed to hold these slaves, and, of course this is wrong, but I feel that it is almost more wrong not to address this fact to the reader. What is the author, and by extension, the reader, to make of this information? How should this shape our feelings toward Monroe? A good author should take not only the best of his or her subject, but also the worst. McCullough did this in John Adams by showing us how, at the time, the Alien and Sedition Acts seemed like a logical course of action, while a 21st reader may not agree with it. Lynn Cheney makes a point that going to war with Britain in 1812 may not have been the best idea in hindsight, but at the time, it made the most sense because it was the only card we had left to play, even if we were foolish to do so. Every biography tries to show both the positives and the negatives of their subjects and this one should be no different. But Unger, instead, refuses to do this because he simply idolizes Monroe to the point that one even wonders if he was a real person.

If one would think that that is the worst Unger does to Monroe, then they would be wrong. Unger also has a habit of making things up. In my copey of the text on page 314, Unger paints this vivid picture:

“ On December 2, 1823, Monroe strode into Congress to deliver his seventh annual message to that body. He had aged noticeably- still tall and fit, but his hair had grayed and deep worry lines had etched his face. Still wearing knee breeches, silk hose, and buckle-top shoes, while his audience wore ankle-length trousers, he seemed out of place–out of the distant past, come to ensure his own legacy. Members of Congress stood to applaud- and cheer- some of them trembling with awe as they watched him make his way down the aisle- The Last of the Founding Fathers.”

Pretty moving little moment right? Except for the fact that it never happened! With every source I could find on the topic of the State of the Union, from blog posts by seemingly random people and official government pages, Monroe never gave the State of the Union himself. All of the sources state that the State of The Union (which wasn't even called this until about the 1940's) was given by a clerk to read to Congress. Washington and Adams read them to congress, but it was discontinued by Jefferson, who stated that it seemed too monarchical (but more than likely was done because he did not have a good public speaking voice). It was usually written by the President, or a speech writer, and given to a clerk to read out to congress. It was done this way until Wilson began reading them in person in 1913. So this whole scene, with the clapping, and the trembling was completely made up! (If anyone can find a source that says something different, please let me know.)

It is this fact that makes me give this book a 1 star rating. I don't mind if you seem to really idolize your subject, but making things up because they fit in with your fantasy of what history was like is inexcusable. I am reading these books to ultimately teach to my students, and it is ‘facts' like those above that throw everything I have learned into a negative light. How can I trust anything I have read from this novel? This makes me extremely disappointed in this author. The interesting thing is, I own Unger's book on John Quincy Adams, the next President after Monroe. Considering my feelings on the Monroe biography, will I actually read it? Perhaps, if only to see what he says about Adams and the Monroe Doctrine. In this book, he states that Adams had nothing to do with it, and Monroe did the work, telling off historians who assert the opposite claim in the process. Regardless, when I decide to get to John Quincy, I am going to take a good long look at Unger before I read another word of his. In the meantime, stay away from this book. It is insulting to the work of history as a whole.