Josh Reviews: The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and A Nation’s Call to Greatness By Harlow Giles Unger

As a son of The History Guy and a lover of history I have read many historical books. Several years ago I began a journey to read a biography of every American president, as of March, 2023 I am up to Woodrow Wilson. Since I began, I have worked out a list of what I want really want from a presidential biography, and this book checked a lot of my boxes: It’s fairly scholarly (i.e. not “pop history”); It’s single volume (not a requirement but much preferred) and it is generally well reviewed. This was, however, the first book I read that I didn’t like that much.

Harlow Giles Unger is an author, journalist, historian, and broadcaster who has written books on a variety of subjects, including the history of the early American republic. He has degrees from Yale and California State University. His historical works have focused primarily on the founding fathers, and he has written biographies of John Hancock, Lafayette, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and more.

Authors who dedicate time to writing a biography do, I think necessarily, turn their subjects into protagonists. They aren’t writing a novel, but devoting so much time and research to a single person must make it difficult to maintain objectivity. I don’t think we can expect perfect objectivity from a biographer, and it is doubtlessly true that if a person is worth writing about they evoke strong feelings of one kind or another. This book, however, blows past championing James Monroe, instead trying to crown him the single most important figure of the period.

Unger does not mince his words, either, or bury the lede – in the introduction, he writes this:

“Washington’s three successors—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—were mere caretaker presidents who left the nation bankrupt, its people deeply divided, its borders under attack, its capital city in ashes. Monroe took office determined to lead the nation to greatness by making the United States impregnable to foreign attack and ensuring the safety of Americans across the face of the continent.”

I think most people would be surprised to hear that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were “mere caretakers”. There are a lot of ways to criticize that statement. For one, Monroe was the Secretary of War when Washington burned, so it seems like maybe he deserves some of the blame for that. Whether Monroe made the US impregnable to foreign attack is another bold claim, but Unger is not totally wrong about the position of the United States in 1817 when James Monroe was inaugurated President. And some of that blame certainly lies with the previous presidents – Jefferson had left the country without a navy, even after building one to battle Mediterranean pirates,  or a standing army, and Madison had declared a war that the US was woefully unprepared to fight.  But that’s beside the point of this review…

This book fails on more levels than that, however.  As a biography of Monroe, it simply fails to give the character justice. Unlike some other biographies I have read, such as Joseph Ellis‘ biography of John Adams, this book totally fails to bring the myth of a founding father back to Earth. Personally I think it is important to assess our founding fathers on a human scale – they accomplished important things that have had an enormous impact on history. But they were also just people, complete with their own foibles and mistakes.  This biography is meticulously researched, which helps somewhat to put Monroe into his historical context, but it does little to nothing in the way of valuable scholarship.

The biography is an excellent overview of Monroe’s life and times. Monroe was inarguably an important figure – younger than many of the other founding fathers but heavily involved in the revolution. He volunteered to fight early, and was with Washington when he crossed the Delaware in December, 1776 – he was badly wounded at the battle of Trenton, and promoted to Captain for his bravery during the fight. He was a close friend of James Madison and a protégé of Thomas Jefferson. He served in the Continental Congress and as a Senator from 1790-1794.

He was a minister to France, Governor of Virginia, and would help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. Despite some controversy during the 1808 election, he served as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War under Madison, during the second war the nascent American nation would fight against Great Britain. His presidency was largely successful as well – he espoused the famous Monroe Doctrine and his administration completed the Adams-Onis treaty, which officially made the United States a trans-continental nation. It was also while he was president that the Missouri Compromise legislation was passed.

It is inarguable that James Monroe presided over an important time in American history, when the country was rapidly expanding and dealing with issues that would continue to haunt it for the rest of the century. The Monroe Doctrine became a famous and oft-cited political concept, even though it was not always particularly convincing to European nations, which would continue to involve themselves in the politics of the western hemisphere. His presidency also serves as a transitional one, the last of the Founder-Presidents and one who saw the center of American population and politics shift significantly west. The presidents that followed led a much different nation than the one that won Independence in the previous century.

All of that said, Unger comes off as someone offended at the perception of Monroe’s place in history who is on a crusade to reclaim and redefine the role ‘people’ so often relegate him to. But while Unger certainly waxes poetic on Monroe’s strengths and successes, he flat out fails to give us a three dimensional human to look at at the end. Instead of a person, Monroe is portrayed in this book as a man of few faults surrounded by incompetents, an almost ‘deus ex machina’ historical presence who is constantly underestimated and treated unfairly. If only his contemporaries would have realized his genius, then whole catastrophes of the early republic could have been avoided.

If Unger is to be believed, Monroe is simply the most important president of the early republic. However, in order to achieve this claim Unger forgives faults of Monroe while simply blaming everything on the weak characters of other men. Who won the War of 1812? Monroe. In fact, Madison wasn’t even really president after about 1814. Everything positive that came out of it was thanks to Monroe. Unger also grants the successes of Jefferson’s administration to Monroe, but none of its failures. Unger forgives any and all possible faults of Monroe and buries any actual criticisms in platitudes and the fact that Monroe was ‘just a really nice guy.’

All of the criticisms aside, the book is impressively readable, even liberally doused with quotations as it is. Unger manages to avoid being either pedantic or dull, and tells the story of Monroe competently in its structure if it is only sort of draped with anything extra. Take this biography with a grain of salt, and for a better understanding of say, the chasm that grew between Madison and Monroe, pick up a more competent, deeper biography, of which there are many.