James Monroe
president of the United States from 1817 to 1825 (1758–1831)

James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was a Founding Father and the fifth president of the United States, serving from 1817 to 1825. He was the last Founding Father to serve as president, as well as the last president of the Virginia dynasty. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe's presidency coincided with the Era of Good Feelings, in which the First Party System era of American politics concluded. He issued the Monroe Doctrine, a policy aimed at limiting European colonialism in the Americas.
During the American Revolutionary War, he served in the Continental Army. From 1780 to 1783, Monroe studied law under Thomas Jefferson and subsequently served as a delegate to both the Continental Congress and the Virginia Ratifying Convention. He opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution. In 1790, Monroe won election to the Senate where he became a leader of the Democratic-Republican Party. He left the Senate in 1794 to serve as President George Washington's ambassador to France but was recalled by Washington in 1796. Monroe won the election as Governor of Virginia in 1799 and strongly supported Jefferson's candidacy in the 1800 presidential election.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Monroe” is president of the United States from 1817 to 1825 (1758–1831). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Monroe and president, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11815. VIAF identifies the subject as 20476583. The Library of Congress control number is n50078822. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1758, 1831, 1817 and 1825.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Monroe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.