James Monroe
by Gary Hart
Gary Hart (former presidential candidate himself) frames his biography of Monroe with the idea that Monroe was the first 'national security' president. While that's a political term we're very familiar with today, the loosely aligned former colonies along the Atlantic Ocean in 1816 were still figuring out what it meant to be a nation, let alone what it looked like to secure such a place.
The Revolution, of course, and the War of 1812 had certainly drawn together resources and interests to a degree, though it seems from my reading that local and regional cultural identity still meant much more to citizens than any national identity. James Monroe is most famous for the Monroe Doctrine, and there's an interesting line in Hart's book from a Latin American political observer of our time, Salvador de Madariaga, who says:
"I only know two things about the Monroe Doctrine. One is that no American I have met knows what it is; the other is that no American I have met will consent to its being tampered with.... I conclude that the Monroe Doctrine is not a doctrine but a dogma, ... not one dogma but two, to wit: the dogma of the infallibility of the American President and the dogma of the immaculate conception of American foreign policy." (p 128)
That's the understanding I've had, more or less, of the principles Monroe outlined in his annual address to Congress in 1823. He essentially said, "Europe, don't mess with the Western Hemisphere, and we won't mess with you." From my vantage point, here in the 21st century, that seems like a plain statement of imperial plans, and I don't think that would be a tough argument to make about the last 180 years of our history.
But Hart quotes Monroe biographer Harry Ammon's defense that "to Monroe (and his contemporaries) the declaration had only a moral character; it was not an assertion of imperial mission." (p 124) The idea being that the point of the statement was as much to assure Europe that the US would not interfere in its internal political and military interchanges, as it was to defend the actions of the people of former Spanish colonies in Latin America who had revolted against their colonial masters, just as the US had shortly before. This concept is complicated, for me, though, by the fact that for Monroe and his contemporaries, there was an emergent "manifest destiny" that (at least) the North American continent was wide open and vacant for the United States to expand as it saw fit.
Even Hart, a 20th century Democrat, lauds Monroe for the hard work of his administration in forming a fledgling "Indian resettlement policy" and keeping the "toxic issue of slavery... caged as the Union added new states" (149) with no apparent irony. Hart spends a good 3 pages defending the notion that Monroe had no plans for empire or conquest - but somehow misses the systematic genocide that had already begun to be practiced on the former inhabitants of the North American continent. Hart does what many contemporary historians seem to do, which is to fully absolve leaders of the past for not acting on behalf of the abused or oppressed, leaning on an ingrained notion we all seem to have that in the past "everybody thought that was OK" so we can't really hold any one of them personally responsible.
This thinking, of course, is self-confirming, and ultimately demands no accountability of anyone, in any time period. It also feeds the common notion that our present moment is perpetually the moment of the most clarity, the most moral integrity in the history of humanity. We've never been better, or more 'developed' than we are now, and we can only get better. It's the sort of thinking that allows us to think that the injustice and legacy of slavery was wiped away in the year 1865; that the larger issue of racism was neatly wrapped up in 1965. That gender equality was forever established in the 1970s, and that capitalism was confirmed by God as His preferred economic system in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. In short, all of history has happened in order to result in this crowning achievement: me, just as I am.
But I digress. I don't intend to hold James Monroe responsible for American hypernationalism in the 21st century. (Hart makes an interesting point, actually, about the twisted assertion of Monroe's principles by George W. Bush in his lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) But I find myself less than 50 years into American political history and already well into the mythic sense we seem to have of our own value to the world.
I'm perfectly happy to value America! But I'm frustrated by what seems to be an endless supply of writing and perspectives that presuppose a moral superiority in early America.
The stories we tell about ourselves should not be simply inspiring, provoking hope and commitment to continuing our highest common purposes - they should also be true.
