Filled with new insights and fresh interpretations, this is the
richest study yet published on the presidency of James Monroe, the
last Revolutionary War hero to ascend to that august office.
Noble Cunningham's history of the fifth presidency (1817-25)
shows a young nation beset by growing pains and led by a cautious
politician who had neither the learning nor the intellect of
Jefferson or Madison, but whose actions strengthened both the
United States and the presidency itself.
Cunningham makes clear that the mislabelled "era of good
feelings" had more than its share of crises, including those
resulting from revolutions in Latin America, Spanish possession of
Florida, the depression of 1819, and the controversy over slavery
in Missouri.
Monroe, he shows, successfully defused these potentially
explosive situations, most notably by negotiating the 1820 Missouri
Compromise and announcing in 1823 what came to be known as the
Monroe Doctrine, a document that still guides American policy in
the western hemisphere.
Cunningham effectively places these actions within the context
of Monroe's life and times and sheds new light on the inner
workings of his cabinet and his relations with Congress. In
addition, he features the prominent roles of two future presidents:
John Quincy Adams as secretary of state and Andrew Jackson as the
controversial general whose actions in the Seminole War created a
headache for the administration.
Though substantially informed by previous scholarship,
Cunningham writes largely from the abundant primary source
materials of the era to provide an illuminating new look at a
president and a nation on the brink of greatness.
General
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