James Monroe: Hire well and heed your hire

Leadership lessons of the presidents

James Monroe is remembered for one thing only. And it wasn't even his idea.

In the wake of a series of nationalist rebellions that had largely freed Central and South America from Spanish control, the government of Britain proposed a joint statement with the government of the United States warning Spain and other European powers against attempting a restoration of colonial rule in the Americas. The British proposal was motivated by self-interested opportunism. Under Spanish control, Central and South America had been effectively beyond the reach of British merchants. Under their own flags, the new American republics might become markets for British goods. Britain was belatedly embracing the free-trade philosophy of its own Adam Smith. Its merchants were active and sharp and expected to win any fair competition for the Latin American market. Restoration of Spanish control or the extension of European imperialism to any part of the region would spoil the prospect.

The British proposal flattered the United States. London was treating its former colonies as an international equal. In the process, the British hoped to sweep the United States into the free-trade empire it envisioned.

The Federalist party, an early home to American anglophiles, had fallen into ruin after flirting with secession during the War of 1812. Republican James Monroe was a beneficiary, winning the presidency unopposed in 1816 and 1820. But there remained in America a strain of diplomatic thinking that contended that America’s true interest lay in rebuilding ties between the United States and Britain.

John Quincy Adams was not of this frame of mind. Adams was Monroe's secretary of state, appointed for his long apprenticeship in diplomacy but also as a way for Monroe's Republicans, rooted in the South, to forestall a revival of Federalism in New England. Adams was from Massachusetts.

Adams received the British proposal of a joint statement and pondered America's response. He asked himself what would happen in the event the United States accepted the British proposal, and what would happen if it declined. His thought experiment produced the same result in either case. The British would resist the restoration or expansion of European power in the Americas. They would resist diplomatically but also by means of the British navy, the most powerful in the world.

Adam's asked himself if this British policy would be in the interest of the United States. He concluded that it would. The revolutions in Latin America had transformed the United States into the leading power between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. British Canada still loomed north of the United States, but Spain’s American empire had exploded into several weak and unthreatening republics. The British proposed to preserve this new status quo. And they would do so, Adams reasoned, whether the United States officially collaborated with them or not.

A lesser strategist than Adams might have settled for quietly declining the British proposal. Instead he urged Monroe to jump ahead of the British and claim credit for what they were about to do.

Monroe agreed, and the president's annual message to Congress in 1823 included a statement warning European powers from meddling in the affairs of the Americas. Congratulating the Latin American republics on achieving independence, Monroe told the powers of Europe to leave the Americas alone. “We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

It was a brilliant maneuver. Monroe left unsaid what America’s recourse would be in case this warning were ignored. He said nothing because America had no recourse. Monroe was counting on Britain to enforce America's newly declared policy — not out of solicitude for the United States but rather in Britain’s own self-interest.

Not for decades would Monroe's statement be christened the Monroe Doctrine. By the time it was, it had the advantage of long unchallenged acceptance by the European powers, who declined to take on the British navy. And by then, in the 1890s, the United States had its own fleet to defend Monroe's doctrine.

Some historians suggested that the doctrine might better be called the Adams doctrine, since it was Adams's idea. James Monroe was not an inordinately proud man. His ghost might have accepted the relabeling.

But Monroe's ghost might rightly have pointed out that an essential aspect of leadership is hiring good people and heeding their suggestions. This was Monroe's contribution to the doctrine that bore his name, and it was no small thing.