Opinion of James Monroe

[Rooney]

Monroe flip flopped on the waste known as internal improvements. He opposed the National and Cumberland Road Act before he approved of them. Then he signed a bill that extended the Cumberland Road from Wheeling to Zanesville, Ohio. Additionally, he overreacted to the Panic of 1819 by supporting the policy proposed by Secretary of Treasury William Crawford which relaxed payment terms on mortgages for lands purchased from the federal government. This move only encouraged federal land speculation which would lead to the Panic of 1837.

J.Q. Adams and Monroe's much heralded doctrine has never protected a single Latin American nation from European meddling but has allowed the United States a blank check to intervene in the affairs of Venezuela, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Nicaragua to only name a few. The Monroe Doctrine was a power grab, more or less, by the United States. I guess we can applaud Adams and Monroe for having the foresight to see that the U.S. would eventually be strong enough to behave however it wanted towards it's southern neighbors. However, one can hardly call that a positive thing.   

All in all he is not a favorite president of mine.