being met. 4) The army has been both trimmed and improved. 5) Florida has been acquired and the nation's boundaries extended to the Pacific Ocean. 6) Various nations in South and Central America have been recognized, and Europe has been told to stay out of their internal affairs (“The Monroe Doctrine"). 7) Our coastal defenses have been strengthened. 8) The navy has made meaningful efforts to stop the slave trade. 9) American Indians have begun to learn farming and are becoming more educated. 10) Scientific methods are being applied to enable internal improvements throughout the country. While several of these issues were still far from being finally resolved, is it any wonder that Monroe's Presidency had been labeled, even at the time, an “era of good feelings"? Or, even more extraordinarily, that he would be, along with George Washington, the only President to be re-elected to that office without opposition? And all this “doing" was after such earlier instances of taking action as volunteering to fight in the Revolutionary army under George Washington and helping to negotiate the nation's largest land deal in history: the Louisiana Purchase. Carolyn Holmes had put it most aptly: President Monroe had been awfully “good at getting things done."
Both his home and even the ongoing stewardship of the estate perfectly reflect this dynamic quality of commitment to action.
If one has come from the more palatial Virginia plantation homes of the earliest Presidents, Ash Lawn-Highland (or “Highlands" as Monroe called it) seems almost painfully small. Currently the Monroe-era portion of the house (a two-story addition was added in the late 19th century) is comprised of only five rooms on the ground floor, though recent research has revealed that the home's original front hall and an office had been present on the site where the later two-story addition now stands. The original Monroe structure contains, then, a modest drawing room, a somewhat larger dining room, a study, and two bedrooms. The kitchen area was located downstairs on a walkout level. The only two rooms which betray even a hint of presidential splendor are the drawing room and dining area, and each deserves a more thorough description, for they both do attest to the Monroes' superb taste and refined sensibilities.
In the home's current layout, visitors first step into the drawing room from the side where the front hall was originally located. Though the room was not large (perhaps no more than about 18 feet square), it's a quite evocative interior. Floor to ceiling decorative wallpaper, reminiscent of the tapestries the Monroes had brought from France, depicts a romanticized pastoral topography surrounding the visitor on every side. And, most interesting to me were two prominently displayed busts, one of which I recognized immediately. “This bust is of Napoleon Bonaparte," our guide explained, “and was a gift to President Monroe from the French emperor himself." A member of our tour group quickly asked a follow-up question: “Why would Monroe want the portrait bust of a dictator in his home?"
“Don't forget," our guide countered, “Mr. Monroe got Louisiana from Napoleon." She paused a moment. “And then, of course, Eliza Monroe, the Monroes' first child, went to school with Napoleon's step-daughter Hortense, the child of Josephine, while the Monroes were living in Paris, so there was a personal connection, too." My subsequent research regarding Eliza and Hortense made this postulate feel somewhat suspect. Henry Ammon, a noted Monroe biographer, records that, as a result of Eliza's French education and school companions, she “… had tended to develop exaggerated notions of [her] own importance…" (139). Such a development would hardly explain the bust of the man whose stepdaughter had helped turn his eldest child into a snob.
We were just about to leave this room, when I noticed the second bust, the image of a man I had never seen. “Excuse me," I called out to our docent. “May I ask who this person is?" She smiled broadly. “Certainly," she answered. “That is Charles James Fox, an English politician who sided with the colonies during the Revolution. He was also a friend of Wilberforce."
Our tour group moved on to the dining area, but mentally I was still in the drawing room. “Napoleon and Fox, Napoleon and Fox," I kept repeating to myself. Certainly an odd pairing of portrait busts in this small drawing room. And then Carolyn Holmes's phrase struck me again. As different as both these men were—and as distinct as each had been from James Monroe—all three shared that same essential quality of being “good at getting things done." Fox had courageously challenged the British Parliament during the American Revolution, going so far as to wear the colors of the continental army to sessions of parliament. He had also been outspoken on the issues of religious tolerance and individual liberty, even sullying his good name when he had come out in support of the French Revolution. Later he had worked tirelessly with Wilberforce to wipe out the scourge of human trafficking in African slaves. Napoleon, too, of course, had been an endlessly enterprising “doer" who had come very close to creating a new European empire with Paris as its center. Monroe may have had his reservations about some of each of these men's personal failings, but it would have been impossible for him to deny that both men were thoroughly committed to action. Neither had been merely content to plan a future society—or world—for others to realize. As such they belonged here.
The dining room seemed almost out of place in such a humble dwelling—the decision to dedicate an entire room of the five to giving dinner parties appeared, on its surface at least, a questionable use of space. But then I recalled Carolyn's enjoyment of Monroe's phrase describing Highlands, “my cabin castle." This was the room that transformed the plantation into a “castle," suitable for entertaining the likes of Thomas Jefferson, who dined here often, James Madison, Lafayette, and other notables of the new revolutionary age. Though issuing from a much more unexceptional background than any of his Virginia political peers, Monroe was no less a representative of the aristocracy of merit about which his friend Thomas Jefferson had spoken so memorably. The elegance of the dining table, the refinement of the furnishings and dishware, all spoke of this new generation of republican worthies, of which James Monroe was an established member.
The last three rooms on our tour, two bedrooms and a rather cozy study, were serviceable and straightforwardly useful. There was no ostentatious display of wealth or possessions in any of them, but a small family could be most adequately housed in such a “cabin castle." The Monroes had loved this plantation site and had only put it on the market when their overall indebtedness had necessitated the sale.
Before we left the last room of our tour, the study, our docent pointed out several silhouettes of the Monroe family, framed and hanging as decorative touches on the walls of the room. Her chief interest in them was in the fact that, unlike most silhouettes, which are black paper cutouts mounted on white backgrounds, these silhouettes had been created by the cut out edgings of white paper. The black silhouette images we saw, then, were not cut out of black paper but were created by the white cut edgings, placed upon a plain black background. Her next observation, whether or not she had intended it as a continuation of her comments about these unique silhouettes, constituted a wonderful parallel to them. She noted that when James Madison had inquired of Thomas Jefferson about the character of James Monroe, Jefferson's answer had been immediate and unequivocal: “If you turn Monroe's soul inside out, you will find not a speck." Even Jefferson's portrait of James Monroe, then, was cut completely out of white paper.
The remainder of our tour of this beautiful farm/plantation took place outside, and I found it particularly interesting to note that Ash Lawn-Highland is committed to being a center of living history. The site's education department is dedicated to helping young people from nearby communities have a chance to experience life as it was lived in the early years of the 19th century. There is a sheep-shearing day where children can see where wool comes from and watch it being spun into material that will be used to create items for sale in the site's store. Hay mowing, egg gathering, and cooking classes that feature foods harvested from the Ash Lawn-Highland gardens give young students a window into the workings of a functioning plantation.
I couldn't help but think that James Monroe would have loved to see his plantation so full of activity. Of all the beautifully maintained and reverently presented presidential homes in Virginia, none was so dedicated, even more than 150 years after the passing of its President, to “getting things done."
Andrew
