HISTORY BOOK CLUB
Rockport Public Library
Rockport, Massachusetts
Visiting
the Founding Era of America
Program for Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Wednesday, February 27, 2019: Visiting the Founding Era of America. Looking at the events that led up to the
American Colonists’ rebellion against Great Britain, and the work of our
Founding Fathers to create a nation.
Read any book about those days when Minutemen at Concord and Lexington fired the first shots of the Revolution at
British Redcoats, then chased them back to Boston…. the days when the Founding
Fathers labored over the Declaration of Independence. Or, read about the
U.S. Constitution brought together, in one remarkable document, ideas from many
people and several existing documents, including the Articles of Confederation
and Declaration of Independence. Those who made significant intellectual
contributions to the Constitution are called the "Founding Fathers"
of our country. These include George Washington, James Madison, Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry. Rockport Public Library will schedule a special moderated discussion focused
upon The Declaration of Independence, featuring a noted historian and scholar,
on Sunday, February 24 or in case of snow, March 3. [Suggested by Christiann Guibeau]
Harlow Giles Unger, The
Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness Kindle
Edition, DeCapo Press, 2009. 352 pp.
The idea you may get of “The
Founding Fathers” is of a small group of really bright, dedicated men, mostly
quite well off. George Washington had a
large farm and quite a few slaves. He was a well-educated Virginia gentleman,
married to a fine lady. When he spoke,
people listened. He took over the job of
Commander of the Continental Army, and led it through some horrible times, but
finally won the American Revolution. When these men gathered in Philadelphia
that summer of 1787 to figure out what to do with the Articles of
Confederation,
Washington occupied a
chair at a table just a little elevated from everyone. It just seemed the natural thing for him to
become our first President.
James Monroe was born in 1758 in
Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father had little education, but his mother
came from a family with education and refinement. Monroe was no Virginia
planter, like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. However, he was a scrambler.
He learned quickly, and he had a knack for making good friends. His mother had
a brother who was wealthy, and at many stages in young James’ life, his uncle
bailed him out, with money here, a house there.
When he was 16, young James was able
to enter William & Mary College in Williamsburg, VA, the right place for a Virginian to get started. After two years he left, as the colony had
joined the other 12 to declare war against Great Britain, and James joined the
army, and while he was mighty young, he took the rank of Lieutenant in the
Third Virginia. He fought at Harlem Heights, was wounded at Trenton, got
promoted to Captain and fought at Brandywine; made Major, fought at Valley
Forge and Monmouth. Along the way he got to know General Washington and
established a reputation for intelligence and honesty. Then he left the army
while the war was still going on, and returned to William & Mary and
studied law and got to know the governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.
When Monroe was 28 and a Virginia
Congressman working in the Congress in New York, he met Elizabeth Kortright,
age 18, of New York. Her family was
well-off, and she was educated, cultured, socially connected and beautiful.
They loved each other and were soon married.
Soon the young couple moved to
Fredericksburg, where conveniently Monroe’s uncle had obtained a house for them
to occupy while Monroe began a law practice, so he could earn some money. Money
was hard to come by. Soldiers were paid in grants to land “out west”, meaning
beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, but these were only good if you decided to
pack up and head out there to stake your claim.
Many did that, and others, those few who had real pounds and shillings, bought up those
claims very cheaply, so that some people were able to acquire many thousands of
acres in Ohio and elsewhere.
Next, President Washington appointed
Monroe to be our ambassador to France. Elizabeth Monroe loved that idea, and
she and daughter Eliza accompanied Monroe on the month-long Atlantic crossing,
and then arrived at LeHavre, France. They landed just in time to experience the French Revolution with
carts rumbling through the streets, carrying many thousands off to prison and
to the guillotine. However, both adult Monroes, who spoke French, jumped in
with enthusiasm. Monroe was expected to humbly present his credentials to the
five members of the Directoire, but instead he asked to address the Citizens’
Assembly, and when he greeted the men of the New Republic from the American
Republic, he was wildly applauded.
Monroe had fought with the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of our Revolution. Now Lafayette was outside of France, but his wife had been in prison for months, and the Monroes
wanted to free her. Elizabeth had the ambassadorial coach, an elaborate vehicle
in a France that had suddenly become slovenly and trashy after the Revolution,
take her to the prison. She marched in,
and somehow arranged for the lady to come home with her. Later Monroe had an
American passport prepared and they got her out of the country.
Life in Paris wasn’t just dinners
and soirees. Washington directed that America remain neutral and not align with
Great Britain, our former enemy but now our best trading partner, nor with
France, our steady ally during our Revolutionary war. Antifederalist and
Federalist Senators and Cabinet members made life hard for Monroe, and finally
he was removed in a trumped-up “disgrace”. This was the work of Federalist John
Adams, the Vice President, with collusion by two Secretaries of State.
A few years later, after serving as
Governor of Virginia, President Thomas Jefferson sent Monroe back to France to
handle a tangled diplomatic problem that would result in the 1803 Louisiana
Purchase. The Mississippi River was becoming tremendously attractive to all the
settlers who had started farms in what were the western states and territories,
and sought to send agricultural products, lumber, cattle, and furs to New
Orleans for loading aboard ships for overseas markets.
As Monroe, Elizabeth and two
daughters got ready to sail to Europe, once again James turned to his uncle for
money to educate and care for errant brothers and nephews and fill in for very
slow payments for Monroe’s government service.
The author describes Monroe’s first
conversation with the new French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the amazing
vagueness of just what it was we were trying to buy. Monroe had orders from
President Jefferson to offer no more than $9 million, at first for New Orleans
alone, but then it became millions of acres but he didn’t know if that included
the western part of Spanish Florida, and the western boundary of Louisiana territory
was sketchy.
When Monroe returned from France, he
settled in a farm he had built near Monticello, the home of his friend, mentor
and sponsor, Jefferson. Once again, he would do some legal work to bring in
some income for the family, then serve again as Governor of Virginia, then, as
America went to war with Great Britain again in what northerners called “Mr.
Madison’s War” the President named him Secretary of State. Off he went to
Washington City, in 1812. Soon he was
named to serve also as Secretary of War.
When the British marched into Washington and began to burn the still-under-construction Capitol and the President's Mansion, Madison was overwhelmed and impotent. As the Redcoats approached the city from the north, a scraggly group of defenders turned and ran. Madison's acting Secretary of War and hero of the Revolution, Monroe, took charge and gathered volunteers to push back the Redcoats.
In 1816 Monroe was elected to the
job for which had been groomed all his life, President. No president had served
more years as soldier, colony and state assemblyman, Congressman, Senator,
Governor, Ambassador, Secretary of State and War. In 1820 he was re-elected
without opposition. In the seventh year of his presidency he gave the speech
which became The Monroe Doctrine, warning European nations that any future
attempts to capture colonies in the Americas would be met with American
opposition.
Monroe died on July 4, 1831 at the age of 72.
-end-
HISTORY
BOOK CLUB FUTURE TOPICS
2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019: Medical Discoveries in History. Germs, Anesthesia, Inoculations
against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio; Birth Control; Mental Illness, X-Ray
Insulin, Pasteurization, Penicillin.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019: From Fur Trappers to Fishermen to
Settlers: How Montréal began; Plymouth; Salem; Gloucester; New Amsterdam; The early
colonization of America.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019: Progressive America in the first two
decades of the Twentieth Century: Teddy Roosevelt and the Robber Barons;
Woodrow Wilson and World War I.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019: Westward Ho: the westward
expansion of America; Manifest Destiny; The Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and
Clark; James K. Polk; The Union Pacific.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019: The Crusades—what
caused them? The
Seljuk Turks; Pisa, Genoa, Venice and Amalfi; Byzantium and Jerusalem; The
Children’s Crusade; Attacking the Jews in Germany; The Popes and Kings; Saladin
and Richard I of the Lion Heart; how the Christians massacred Moslems and Jews
and made Moslems intolerant.
Wednesday,
August 28, 2019: Intelligence Gathering
and Spying in History: Julius Caesar’s Spy Network; Sun-Tzu, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, Espionage Act of 1917, the KGB, MI-5, the OSS, CIA,
Pinkerton’s Union Spies, Confederate Spies.
Wednesday,
September 25, 2019: El Norte, the story of Spain’s exploration and colonization
of North America. Often Americans
study the growth of America from the standpoint of English colonization and the
push westward. There’s another, very complex story, of the exploration of the
Caribbean, Mexico, Florida and onward to California by the Spanish. It’s the
story of Conquistadors, Priests and Indigenous peoples who created the Republic
of Mexico, the nations of the Caribbean and Central America, and made the first
cities in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and more. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, October 30, 2019: Charismatic leaders in History.
What were the keys to Hitler’s,
Churchill's, Mussolini's, FDR's successes? Keen perception of public moods? Oratory
abilities? Character, firm ideology? Connecting to the people? How did they
deploy their charisma? How could Napoleon manipulate the masses without TV ads?
Why were people so perceptive to a madman in Germany? Recurring
questions. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]
Wednesday,
November 13, 2019 [Two weeks earlier because of Thanksgiving and another
conflict] History of Farming in America.
Examine
the American Indians and their farming techniques, the early colonists and the
skills they brought from their home countries;
the food discoveries in the New World; Tobacco and Cotton and slavery;
Farming and the Dust Bowl; Government and Agriculture; Modern Agribusiness. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
NO MEETING IN DECEMBER
