James Monroe is one of the most underestimated leaders of the early
American republic. For forth years, he was a major political player
within the Republican party. He was an experienced and able diplomat.
His presidential administration was marked by major foreign policy achievements
-- the Adams-Onis Treaty, the recognition of Latin America, and the Monroe
Doctrine. This paper will develop a little-known facet of Monroe's
career. His role in formulating Antebellum American military policy
and strategy.
Although many individuals contributed to the ideas and programs shaping United States defense before the Civil War, Monroe was the single most influential thinker, both as a strategist and as a congressional lobbyist for the policies he believed would ensure America's security. Partly, his achievement was fortuitous. He was secretary of state, secretary of war, and the president during the critical period, 1812-21, when the United States was in conflict and confrontation with Great Britain and Spain and the principal elements of American strategy were thus laid down. But his prominent role was also the result of clear, consistent, longstanding and efficacious leadership in military affairs when many Republicans remained wedded to ineffectual Jeffersonian notions of gunboats, dry-docked ships, and armed militias.
This paper will reveal Monroe's advocacy of naval power and his formulation of the strategies the American navy would adopt in the Antebellum period; his development -- in conjunction with J.J. Abert -- of the post-War of 1812 expansible army plan, inaccurately credited to John C. Calhoun; his conception of a renewed coastal fortifications program embodied in the Board of Engineers report of February, 1821; and his ideas on postwar frontier defense, also falsely attributed to Calhoun. Two generations of Republicans relied upon Monroe's ideas and political acumen to implement more effectual measures for American national defense.