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James Monroe is designated by Harlow Giles Unger as "America's Last Founding Father." I gather it is because he was the last sitting President who served in the Revolution and the last of a political generation that understood firsthand the struggles and debates that went into building the United States government. As a young man, he served and suffered injury in the Revolution. He was mentored in law and politics by Thomas Jefferson. While always meaning to commit himself to a lucrative law career, he devoted nearly his entire life to public service locally, nationally, and internationally. He sometimes struggled through scandal and hardship in his political posts, especially a post as a foreign minister in London and in the final years of his presidency when divisive party politics swelled. But he also helped orchestrate the Louisiana Purchase, de facto led the country through the War of 1812, and ruled over the Era of Good Feelings having unified the country politically and brought prosperity and peace (though sometimes tenuous until his Monroe Doctrine declaration).
Young James Monroe, while an up-and-coming political bigwig, was awkward around the gentler sex, unable to attract young ladies because of his keen intellect and too-serious nature. That is until he met Elizabeth Kortright, who would go on to become his deeply devoted wife and First Lady. Elizabeth Kortright Monroe was different than previous First Ladies most notably because she was formally educated and thus attracted to Monroe's intellectual conversation and serious demeanor. She came from wealth and the city and married into the modest farm life of a sometimes lawyer, mostly financially struggling public servant. She also suffered from an often debilitating case of rheumatism, which forced her to severely limit the frequency and size of her entertaining and hostess duties in the President's Mansion. After a First Lady like Dolley Madison, who relished the role of hostess, it must have been an adjustment for the American public and social circles of Washington to have a less gregarious and socially welcoming First Lady. Most agreed that Elizabeth Monroe was a beautiful woman and an elegant and proper hostess, but some accused her of being too courtly and standoffish.
Unger dismisses these attacks as the inaccurate descriptions of a jealous few who envied the First Lady's
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refined and expensive taste, her beauty, and her refined manners and blames these attacks as contributing to Elizabeth Monroe's relative erasure from history. But I wonder if his praise of Elizabeth Monroe as "America's most beautiful and most courageous First Lady" (4) is somewhat overstated. Yes, she was beautiful but so have been many First ladies before and since. Martha Washington and Dolley Madison were both recognized and praised as true beauties and the lovely clothes with which they adorned themselves were purchased from personal fortunes. Elizabeth Monroe's penchant for exquisitely expensive French gowns and furniture, on the other hand, did nothing to alleviate the precarious financial situation of both her husband and the government he served, which could often not afford to pay him his due salary. Yes, Elizabeth Monroe was brave: she risked her life to save General Lafayette's wife from an unknown fate in a Parisian prison and she fulfilled her duties as a politician's wife and First Lady while suffering a chronic illness. But was she more courageous than First Ladies who came before? Martha Washington resided in Revolutionary War camps to be with her husband, and Dolley Madison risked ostracization by marrying outside her faith.
Unger attributes Elizabeth Monroe's superlative courage to her willingness to swap a cosmopolitan life in New York for modest farm life and to brave the Atlantic crossing twice to live with her husband while he served abroad. But is it braver to leave wealth and urban life for a modest farm life (while also intermittently living lavishly in Paris, London, and the nation's capital) or to bravely step up from modest means into a more sophisticated world than one previously knew, as Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams did? Abigail Adams also accompanied her husband abroad and perhaps acted equally courageously in suffering long separations from her love when she chose not to accompany him. Furthermore, future First Lady Louisa Adams would accompany her young husband abroad in his ministry to Russia–a much more isolated an unfamiliar location than Paris or London. I sometimes wonder if the Monroes' relationship was more co-dependent than courageous. Why return to suffer the fog of London if you know it aggravates your health? Does burning your wife's correspondence in a fit of intense grief after her death suggest a deeper and more intense love than choosing to treasure and save those memories for the future? All it really does is contribute to your wife's erasure from history and means that we are unlikely to ever fully understand the true character of America's fifth First Lady.
Side Note: I found Unger's book to be overly laudatory of both James and Elizabeth Monroe. It didn't help that he quite frequently committed the scholarly sin of attributing thoughts and feelings to a historical person without proper documentation to back up his claims. One excerpt as an example: "Elizabeth had learned to love the beautiful rolling country around Charlottesville, but she was lonely for her family and friends in New York. . .. Her eyes sparkled at the prospects of attending balls, receptions, dinners, and theater in America's grandest city [Philadelphia]." Nary a document or primary source quoted or cited in the entire paragraph. I understand wanting to add color and narrative flow to one's prose, but it is a pet peeve of mine for such ideas to be presented with little evidence presented to back them.
