In his final weeks as President Monroe made an appeal to provide compensation
for the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Congress voted to provide Lafayette with
24,000 acres in northern Florida and $200,000 in bonds.
Monroe himself was in debt, and he wrote to Jefferson and Madison
to assist him in getting some compensation for his expenses
going back as far as his time in France and England.
Monroe asked his Secretary of War John C. Calhoun,
who had just been elected Vice President, to compile a report
on the number of Native American tribes, their treaties, and the land they held,
and Monroe sent that report to the United States Senate on 27 January 1825.
On February 2 he sent the Congress a peace treaty signed 24 February 1824
with the Bashaw Bey of Tunis along with other treaties
made with the Sock, Fox, and Iowa tribes.
On February 21 he transmitted to the U.S. Senate a convention of general peace
between the Republic of Colombia at Bogota and
the United States signed on 3 October 1824.
The Congress approved $150,000 for a road from Wheeling to Zanesville,
and Monroe signed it on 4 March 1825 his last day in office.
He also approved the bill authorizing $300,000 for the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company.
He believed that the government owed him money and asked for an investigation.
After that he asked for $53,836 including principle and interest,
but in 1826 the Congress granted him only $29,513.
John Quincy Adams in his inaugural address on 5 March 1825
said this about the outgoing administration:
Passing from this general review of the purposes and
injunctions of the Federal Constitution and their results
as indicating the first traces of the path of duty in the
discharge of my public trust, I turn to the Administration
of my immediate predecessor as the second.
It has passed away in a period of profound peace,
how much to the satisfaction of our country and to
the honor of our country's name is known to you all.
The great features of its policy in general concurrence
with the will of the Legislature, have been to cherish
peace while preparing for defensive war; to yield exact
justice to other nations and maintain the rights of our own;
to cherish the principles of freedom and of equal rights
wherever they were proclaimed; to discharge with all
possible promptitude the national debt; to reduce within
the narrowest limits of efficiency the military force;
to improve the organization and discipline of the Army;
to provide and sustain a school of military science;
to extend equal protection to all the great interests of
the nation; to promote the civilization of the Indian tribes,
and to proceed in the great system of internal improvements
within the limits of the constitutional power of the Union.
Under the pledge of these promises, made by that eminent
citizen at the time of his first induction to this office; in his
career of eight years the internal taxes have been repealed;
sixty millions of the public debt have been discharged;
provision has been made for the comfort and relief of the
aged and indigent among the surviving warriors of the
Revolution; the regular armed force has been reduced
and its constitution revised and perfected; the accountability
for the expenditure of public moneys has been made more
effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired,
and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean;
the independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere
has been recognized and recommended by example and
by counsel to the potentates of Europe; progress has been
made in the defense of the country by fortifications and the
increase of the Navy, toward the effectual suppression of
the African traffic in slaves; in alluring the aboriginal
hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and of
the mind in exploring the interior regions of the Union,
and in preparing by scientific researches and surveys
for the further application of our national resources
to the internal improvement of our country.1
James Monroe had a shorter period of retirement after his presidency
with the exception of George Washington who died in 1799.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on 4 July 1826
at the ages of 90 and 83 respectively.
James Madison, who was seven years older than Monroe,
lived on until six days before July 4 in 1836.
James Monroe died on July 4 in 1831.
During his retirement Monroe wrote at least four short letters to Jefferson in 1826.
He wrote more letters to James Madison with at least one in 1826, seven in 1827,
8 in 1828, 4 in 1829, and only one in 1830 and one in 1831.
From December 1827 to February 1831 Monroe wrote
at least 9 letters to John C. Calhoun.
John Quincy Adams was President during the first four years of Monroe’s retirement,
and this letter to him by Monroe on 17 December 1828
after Adams lost the election to Andrew Jackson is quite interesting:
I have received a copy of your late message to Congress,
which you were so kind as to send me,
& have perused it with great attention & interest.
I consider it a candid & able exposition of our affairs,
foreign & domestic, & have no doubt that
it will be so considered by the nation.
It was very gratifying to me to see you enter so fully
into the subjects on which you were called on to act
during your Administration from a belief that the
illustration which you have given in each instance
will be useful to the country & leave an impression of
your conduct in those affairs very favorable to yourself.
The calm & deliberate manner in which you have given
this illustration without making any allusion to yourself
will likewise have a good effect.
In your friendship I have the most perfect confidence,
having seen in your conduct while I was in the
Administration, and since my retirement
the most uniform & satisfactory proofs of it.
My indisposition, proceeding from the accident
with which you are acquainted, has ceased.
I am still weak but daily recover my strength.
I shall always be happy to see you here, & wherever
we may chance to meet, as I shall through life take a
sincere & great interest in your welfare & happiness.2
Monroe would write three more letters to John Quincy Adams in 1831.
Notes
1. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908
ed. James D. Richardson, Volume 2, p. 297-298.
2. The Writings of Monroe, Volume 7 1824-1831, ed. Stanislaus Murray Hamilton,
p. 186-187.