Ranking the Presidents #8

JAMES MONROE (DR) - 1817-1825

So good at his job was Monroe that no one ran against him in his re-election campaign. He presided over the Era of Good Feelings, where bipartisanship was the norm. He also implemented the Monroe Doctrine, which was a "hands-off" announcement to Europe that there would be no more colonizations in the Americas, foreign policy which would shape a hemisphere for the next 150 years.

The 5th President is the last Founding Father president. He was a Revolutionary war veteran and sided with the Jeffersonians in the Jefferson/Hamilton debates. He was Jefferson's diplomat who worked out the Louisiana Purchase with France, and he was Secretary of State and War during the War of 1812.

When he became President his biggest domestic challenge wound up being Missouri. The North was more anti-slavery and the South was more pro-slavery. He worked out the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which wouldn't allow slavery above the 36/30' N. He also purchased Florida from Spain. Otherwise he stuck to a "limited government" philopsophy on foreign affairs.

The Era of Good Feelings was short-lived, as the election of 1824 between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson wound up being the most rancorous, and if the feud between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists disappeared, the Democrats/Whigs rivalry would soon be born.