Like many of the Revolutionary generation, James Monroe
was born to humble beginnings in the underdeveloped colonies of
the New World. The Monroe family had arrived in America in 1650; his
ancestor, Andrew Monroe, was a captain in the army of Charles I
of England and many sources agree that he fled the British Isles soon
after the king was beheaded. However, a few sources differ, stating
that he was captured by the revolutionary forces and exiled to
the new colonies. In any event, historians agree that the Monroe ancestral
family settled near a creek in Virginia. By the time James Monroe
was born in Westmoreland County, VA, on April 28, 1758, much of
the land surrounding his family farm belonged to other relatives.
The farm was located on the fertile right bank of the Potomac River,
near the Rappahannock River, on what was quite possibly the best
land in Virginia for farming.
James's father, Spence Monroe, and his mother, Eliza Jones,
had been born and raised in Virginia–in an area now famous for
the children it gave the country. George Washington's birthplace
was not far away; Richard Henry Lee and the Lee family lived nearby; James
Madison's birthplace, although not in the same county, was on the
same peninsula. Later, Westmoreland County would come to be known
as the "Athens of Virginia," for the wise scholars and notable families
who lived nearby.
Growing up, Monroe enjoyed many of the luxuries of the
planter lifestyle: good food and entertainment and the best education
that money could buy. When he was eleven, he entered one of Virginia's most
prestigious schools, the Campbelton Academy, where he studied for
five years. He worked hard and excelled at reading and writing;
his favorites subjects, though, were math and Latin. He also met a
life-long friend at Campbelton, John Marshall, and the two boys consistently
battled for the top spots in the class. Marshall would later become
perhaps the most famous Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
after being appointed by John Adams in
the "midnight judges" scandal.
Despite his high academic achievement, Monroe found his
education and his own youth overtaken by outside events. When he was
five years old, the English government–which had for decades neglected
the colonies–signed a peace treaty ending the French and Indian
War. However, after the long and costly battle, the financially-strapped
British Parliament decided that the American colonies should begin
to bear some of the burden of defending themselves. A series of
Parliamentary Acts, beginning with the Sugar
Act (which raised duties on formerly duty-free wines), caused
increasing outrage throughout the colonies. This patriotic fervor
was concentrated mostly in Boston and Virginia, where "rabble-rousers"
like Samuel
Adams and Richard Henry Lee respectively, pushed the
Americans to fight back against the "unjust" taxes. In the wake
of the even- more controversial Stamp Act, the Virginia House of
Burgesses passed the Virginia Resolves, which denied that Parliament
had a right to tax the colonies. The Resolves, coupled with similar
measures in other legislatures and the development of committees
of correspondence to coordinate actions between colonies, put the
American colonies on the road to revolution. Monroe found himself
greatly influenced by the civil libertarians around him.
Monroe lost both of his parents within a span of only
a few months in 1774. Following the colonial traditions, Monroe–barely sixteen–inherited
the family farm and became responsible for his older sister and
three younger brothers. His uncle, the executor of his father's
will, removed him from Campbelton Academy and placed him at William
and Mary College, the nation's second oldest college, in Williamsburg.
Again, outside events quickly overtook Monroe's education, and
in the spring of 1775, British troops opened fire on colonial minutemen
at Lexington
and Concord, firing "the shots heard round the world."
Monroe and some college classmates, caught up in the anti-British
spirit, looted the arsenal at the Virginia Crown Governor's palace;
the two hundred muskets and three hundred swords they captured
were donated to the Virginia militia. With the Second Continental
Congress meeting in Philadelphia, and with Washington's troops
bloody fight at Bunker Hill in Boston, it was clear that war–a
long, hard war–was underway.
