On March 6, 1820, President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise (also called the Compromise Bill of 1820) into law. The bill sought to make even the number of slave-holding states and free states in the nascent nation. It allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state while Maine joined as a free state. What's more, the bill prohibited portions of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36-degrees-30-minutes latitude line from engaging in slavery. Monroe, who was born into the Virginia slave-holding planter class, strongly supported states’ rights, but let Congress bicker over the issue of slavery in the new territories. He then closely examined any proposed legislation for its constitutionality. Although he realized that slavery ran contrary to the values written into the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, he, like fellow Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, feared abolition would rip apart the country they had fought so hard to crea...

I just finished reading "The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness." I remember spotting the book at a local Barnes & Noble bookstore a few months ago and wondering why Monroe never seems to get as much attention as other Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Interested in learning more about the last of the quartet of presidents who made up the so-called Virginia dynasty (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe), I purchased the book. I learned a great deal about Monroe. For example, did you know he's the only person ever to have held the positions of Secretary of State and Secretary of War at the same time? Or that Monrovia, the first permanent Black American settlement in Africa, is named after said president? Or that Monroe nearly dueled with Alexander Hamilton had it not been for Aaron Burr, who himself would go on to kill Hamilton in a duel. Monroe fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War and ...