James Monroe, an Extraordinary American (Part I)

Fifth U.S. President James Monroe (1817-1825) wore many hats in his lifetime: farmer, lawyer, soldier, statesman, ambassador, governor, husband, father, and grandfather. He was active in politics since he was 24 years old and began studying law when he was 16. By the time of his death at the age of 73, he held every public office available at the time, thus participating in some of the most important moments in American history.

Fredericksburg, Virginia, built a small museum commemorating his remarkable life on the property where his law office used to stand. Furniture and memorabilia are original, but the books are editions of similar books that he and his family had owned. A dress, a couple of his outfits, his daughter’s rusted out ice skates and his wife’s gold and precious jewels decorated with large amethysts, aquamarines, and citrine stones, are also part of the exhibit.

Museum grounds

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2023

Museum Archives - parents farm

James Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia on April 28, 1758, to Spence and Elizabeth Monroe. Spence was a farmer and cabinet maker. James had four siblings, a sister and three brothers, and the family lived in Monroe Hall on the banks of Monroe Creek, a tributary to the Potomac. At the age of 16, after his father died, James inherited the family’s land which he owned until 1780 when he sold it.

Museum interior entrance

Photo: Ileana Johnson February 2023

In the summer of 1774, the revolutionary fever hit Williamsburg and law student James Monroe was entirely preoccupied by his disdain for the British monarchy, his studies taking second place.

On June 24, 1775, the 18-year-old James Monroe and 23 of his fellow students, under the command of Theodorick Bland Jr., raided the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg. They seized 200 muskets and 300 swords and turned them over to the Williamsburg militia. There was no bloodshed as the palace had been abandoned and all the vestiges of British rule were gone with Lord Dunmore. A Committee of Safety took control of the city and Monroe and his uncle Joseph Jones who were part of this committee, became the city’s ad hoc government.

James and his friend John Mercer decided to enlist in the spring of 1776 in the third Virginia Infantry, commanded by Colonel Hugh Mercer, a friend and neighbor of Uncle Joseph Jones. According to archives, “James Monroe made the long trip from Williamsburg to his uncle’s home in Fredericksburg in order to enlist.”

Furlough signed by Major James Monroe

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2023

One of the original documents in the museum is a Valley Forge furlough signed by nineteen-year-old Major James Monroe, aide-de-camp to Major General William Alexander (Lord Stirling), on February 23, 1778, to Second Lieutenant John Wallace of the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment. This infantry unit was encamped at Valley Forge.

During the Battle of Trenton in 1776, James Monroe was wounded in the shoulder and carried the bullet in his body for the rest of his life. There is a famous painting, Capture of the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton, by John Trumbull, which depicts James Monroe lying on the ground wounded in the left center of the painting.

In 1782 James Monroe was selected to represent King George County in the Virginia Assembly.  In 1783 he was appointed to the delegation which represented Virginia at the Confederation Congress in Annapolis. In 1784 he was present during the ratification of the Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolution and recognized the United States as a nation.

He left Congress in 1786 and set up his law practice in Fredericksburg. He met the 16-year-old Elizabeth Kortright in New York in 1785 and married her in 1786 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan. She was the daughter of a rich New York merchant, a strong but interesting marriage if you consider his humble upbringing, a farmer’s son.

They settled in Fredericksburg, in a house rented from his uncle, Joseph Jones. Monroe started his law practice in a small building on Charles Street, on the lot which today houses the museum. The home where the Monroes lived is on Caroline Street and still stands today, privately owned.

Mrs. Monroe's private jewelry collection

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2023

Mrs. Monroe, at the age of 18, gave birth to the couple’s first child in Fredericksburg, a daughter named Elizabeth.  The second child, James Spence, was born in May 1799, but the boy died the following September. In April 1802, the Monroes’ last child was born, Maria Hester.

Museum archives photo

The Monroes’ first born, Eliza Monroe Hay (1787-1840), was educated at a boarding school in Paris where she met Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine's daughter and Napoleon’s stepdaughter, and eventually Queen of Holland. They became life-long friends and Eliza named her daughter Hortensia, in her honor. Eliza had married George Hay, a successful lawyer and James Monroe’s confidant.

Eliza’s formal education was superior to most women in Washington society. She provided the supporting role of hostess at the President’s House when her mother was not well. Eliza and George lived in the executive house during Monroe’s two terms as president. Eliza planned her younger sister’s wedding in 1820 and was criticized for not making it into a lavish public event. When Eliza lost her husband and mother in 1830 and then her father in 1831, she traveled a lot to Europe. She settled in France at a convent and died there in 1840. She is buried in Pere La Chaise cemetery in Paris.

Maria Hester Monroe Governeur (1802-1850) was sixteen years younger than her sister Eliza. When Monroe became president, she was 14 years old. She decided to attend boarding school in Philadelphia until 1819 rather than live in the President’s House with her family.

Maria married her first cousin, Samuel Governeur, in 1820 and they had four children, two daughters and two sons. The first child, a daughter, died in infancy. The second child, a son, was born deaf. Most of the Monroe memorabilia in the museum in Fredericksburg came from Maria and Samuel’s children.

There were strained relations between Maria and Eliza, and Samuel and George did not get along either. During an extended visit with his daughter’s family in New York, following his wife’s death, James Monroe fell ill and died soon after.  Maria passed away at Oak Hill’s family estate in 1850.

In 1787 James Monroe was elected to the House of Delegates for Spotsylvania County and in 1788 he was nominated to the Virginia Convention to ratify the new Constitution. Monroe and “antifederalists” were able to win two concessions – a Bill of Rights and 20 amendments to be included in the Constitution.

The Monroes left Fredericksburg in 1789. James bought 800 acres of land near Charlottesville, near Albemarle County, and a townhouse one block away from the courthouse in the city. The plantation house, eventually known as Monroe Hall, began receiving guests by the summer of 1793. Monroe sold these 800 acres eventually and the land became the site of the University of Virginia.

Monroe became a U.S. Senator (1790-1794) at the age of 32, backed by Thomas Jefferson and George Mason.

James Monroe was appointed ambassador to France in 1794 by George Washington. The family lived in Paris for three years in a very opulent villa called Folie de la Bouexiere on the fashionable Rue de Clichy. This French home was lavishly decorated in order to keep up appearances at the French court. The furniture purchased was brought back to the U.S. in 1797 and was used in the White House. Unfortunately, the house in Paris no longer stands today.

The ambassadorship was demanding - he had to walk a difficult path during the strained Franco-American relations. He reassured France of American support but kept the U.S. neutrality and out of any involvement with France’s war with England. During the French bloody revolution, many Americans and French aristocrats were imprisoned in harsh conditions. Monroe was able to secure the release of Thomas Paine. Ill from his imprisonment, Monroe brought Paine to his home where he recovered for more than a year. Thomas Paine had radical revolutionary views and a lot of disdain for the administration in Washington.

While in France, James Monroe’s diplomatic endeavors managed to free Madame de Lafayette, the Marquis de Lafayette’s wife, from prison. The Marquis was imprisoned in Austria while his wife was in Paris, awaiting beheading. Monroe sent his wife in the brightly colored carriage that everyone in Paris recognized as belonging to the American ambassador, to the jail where Madame de Lafayette was held. Crowds gathered to see his gracious and beautiful wife Elizabeth who spent time with the prisoner and assured her that she would be released. The French government was embarrassed that the much admired “La Belle Americaine,” Mrs. Monroe, had to visit such an awful place to see an old friend whose husband was a hero of the American Revolution. The eventual public clamor resulted in negotiations with Ambassador Monroe. The French government released Madame de Lafayette in short order and she and their children joined the Marquis in Austria.

TO BE CONTINUED

Note: Did you know that Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is named after James Monroe? He supported the American Colonization Society's work to create a home for freed African slaves in Liberia.

Last Day of Chemo for My Hubby

On hubby's first day of chemo six months ago, our cubicle was next to an elderly colonel who talked on the phone the entire six hours we were there. We were scared in this environment of desperately sick people who wanted the miracle toxic cure cursing through their veins but also privacy to make peace with their diagnosis of cancer. There was no room for politics or the mundane affairs of a loud mouth who behaved as if he owned the place.

This old colonel broke everybody's serenity and peace with his rudeness. Yet nobody said anything to him. Each time, for the next six months, his boorish behavior continued. I suppose, he was accustomed to be the loudest in the room and all his minions bent to his every whim and order. What was the point of telling him now that the world did not revolve around him, that there were billion others who deserved respect and silence?

On the last chemo treatment we were unlucky again to be placed next to this man and his equally loud and obnoxious wife. We were in our favorite chemo bay by the window. As soon as this couple arrived, they started to loudly bash President Trump to the staff and his illegitimacy to the presidency. And how a female criminal would have been so much better!

We were separated by a thin curtain, it was so close as if they were talking in my ear. The wife was telling the nursing staff how stupid Trump was because he went outside during the solar eclipse and stared at the sun. I went outside too and took pictures, but both the President, his wife, and I wore protective glasses.  She then concluded that Trump was mentally deranged. Her husband, a retired colonel, agreed wholeheartedly.

I really wanted to ask them when they examined and evaluated the mental sanity of the president and when did they get their M.D. degrees. But then I recognized the MSM talking points echoed in their loud pronouncements.

Perhaps I should have asked them how our President had built an empire from a $700,000 inheritance instead of stealing it from taxpayers, political action packs, or bribes. But I didn't. Some people are not worth having a logical conversation with because they are illogical in their hate.

No time or place to say something today. Some people have no compass or manners. As a former soldier the man violated his oath of office to respect the office of the president regardless of his feelings for the current president. But, I did no expect much from his culture. A chemo clinic should be a calm and healing place, not filled by racist hate.

I bit my lips and kept quiet.

Free Market Economic Recovery with Trump or Global Collectivism with Hillary

Two weeks before the most outrageous presidential election in history, the stakes for the economic future of our country are high. There is no question that the U.S. economy is in terrible shape and that the policy decisions made in the last ten years have negatively affected everyone who trades, invests, and use the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. Are voters going to choose free market economic recovery with Trump or global collectivism with Clinton?

The government statistics claim that there are officially 8 million unemployed but the actual unemployment numbers are closer to 16 million people. The reported labor force of almost 156 million in 2000 has shrunk to 152 million today. The reported number of Americans “not in the labor force” is an astonishing 94 million. These are discouraged workers who are no longer counted as unemployed. This explains why this administration’s unemployment numbers are so rosy and low. For up to date numbers, visit the national debt clock here. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Our national debt is astronomical, approaching $20 trillion while GDP is below $19 trillion. We already owe more than we make in a year in final goods and services. Gross debt to GDP ratio is 106.38 percent. The U.S. total debt is $67 trillion. However, if we add all the unfunded liabilities such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare, the figure jumps much higher.

The federal budget deficit (the difference between taxation and spending) is almost $6 trillion for this year. The more indebted we are to the rest of the world and to each other, the less money will be available for future generations to improve their standard of living and to defend themselves.

There are approximately 119 million U.S. taxpayers and approximately 124 million full-time workers. The biggest part of the revenue from taxation is spent on entitlements. Somehow, Social Security, a fund established with automatic paycheck contributions, has been lumped in with entitlements as if the Social Security fund did not belong to the tax payers but to the government.

Our Congress loves to spend money on entitlements because the recipients vote them back into office. Revenue to GDP ratio is a positive 35.6 percent but spending to GDP ratio is a red 36.04 percent.

During the third presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that she would make sure public college education will be free, that parents will not receive a bill for their children’s college degree, and she will do it by not adding one penny to the national debt.

After fact checking the statement, it turns out to be not true. One source claims that $500 billion will be added to the national debt in the next 10 years while the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that “$200 billion will be spent on infrastructure, financial aid for college students, and early childhood education.”

The current student loan debt is $1.4 trillion and growing. There are 50,182,018 public school students who will eventually take advantage of this “free” college offer Hillary Clinton has made. Who is going to pay? Taxpayers, of course, will be saddled with the cost.

Additionally, how is she going to create jobs to employ college graduates if her plan includes raising taxes? Employers create jobs when their taxes are decreased.  NAFTA, which was President Bill Clinton’s achievement, has exported many manufacturing jobs overseas. Hillary Clinton supports the highly secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would finish off the manufacturing sector in this country, leaving the United States as a service economy.

We now have 12,500,256 manufacturing jobs left in this country. In 2000 we had 19,462,745 manufacturing jobs. There are about 120 million private sector jobs but large companies are pushing for more H-1B visas to import cheap technical labor from India and other foreign nations, leaving seasoned employees out of a job and having to train their replacements. More college graduates living in their parents’ basement will have to work as baristas in coffee shops.

Trump is in favor of school choice and wants to end Common Core. He favors the reintroduction of Vocational and Technical education, as well as making two and four-year college education affordable.

Donald Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA and to withdraw from TPP. He wants to end foreign trade abuses and currency manipulation by China. He wants to repatriate our own companies by reducing corporate taxation significantly and by establishing tariffs to prevent companies from leaving in the first place. He wants to offer middle class tax relief that would help create 25 million jobs. He wants to simplify the tax code.

Trump wants to create jobs by lifting regulatory restrictions on fossil fuel exploration and all mining. He wants to “lift road blocks that prevent the Keystone pipeline from moving forward.”

Trump wants to cancel payments to the United Nations Climate Fund and use the money to fix our water and environmental infrastructure.

Hillary Clinton wants to expand illegal immigration and open borders while Trump wants to cancel federal funding of sanctuary cities that harbor criminal illegal aliens. He will “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.”

He will establish punishments for visa overstays, for repeat criminal offenders, and multiple illegal border crossings. Adamant that he will build the wall with Mexico, Trump promises to remove criminal aliens from the U.S. and to cancel visas to countries that won’t take them back.

Restoring the rule of law, dismantling criminal gangs, establishing a task force on violent crime to help police, cleaning up corruption, and admitting immigrants who have been thoroughly vetted, who want to be a contributing part of our country, should go a long way to begin the process of healing our nation.

Hillary wants to continue President Obama’s policies, including the admittance of many more “refugees” from countries that are inimical to us.

While Hillary wants to develop Obamacare into a one payer system, Trump wants to “repeal and replace” the very costly and unaffordable Affordable Care Act  which has made healthcare premiums unaffordable for so many Americans who were forced to drop their insurance and just pay the tax penalty.

Trump favors health savings accounts, letting states manage Medicaid funds, and allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Cutting the red tape at the FDA is also on his radar. He promises to fix VA hospitals and to allow veterans to be treated by their chosen doctor in any private or public hospital.

Will Trump have the opportunity to replace Justice Scalia or will Hillary alter the composition of the Supreme Court, turning it into a bastion of progressivism for generations to come?

Trump promises to expand and strengthen our military, to guard our First and Second Amendments, and to protect our Constitution.

It is time that American hard-earned dollars take care of Americans first instead of providing for the rest of the world to the detriment of poor Americans, redistributing our wealth through schemes that the globalists behind Hillary Clinton have devised. Americans want to have secure borders, sovereignty, one language, self-determination, and economic prosperity through free markets not through collectivism.

 

 

 

 

Romanian President Klaus W. Johannis Attends the Nuclear Summit

President Klaus W. Johannis and wife Photo: Ileana Johnson

Yesterday a select group of American and Romanian citizens were invited by the Romanian Ambassador, George Cristian Maior, to meet the President of Romania, Klaus Werner Johannis, and his wife, Carmen, who were in town for the two day nuclear summit in Washington, D.C.

It was an honor to meet the Romanian President – my Dad, who died in 1989 as the result of the communist tyrannical state, seven months before Ceausescu’s regime was toppled, would have been proud of what I am doing, writing, speaking, and promoting liberty, the beautiful and fascinating country of my birth, its rich history, its people, and its rich cultural traditions and heritage.

A leader of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (2002-2013) and of the National Liberal Party (2014), Johannis was a high school teacher and school inspector before entering politics as the mayor of the city of Sibiu in 2000. He was re-elected in a landslide in 2004, 2008, and 2012. He turned the city of Sibiu into Romania’s number one tourist destination, voted the European Capital of Culture in 2007. Johannis, fifth President of Romania, assumed office on December 21, 2014.

President Johannis is a Transylvanian Saxon, a German minority who settled in this part of Romania in the 12^th century. He is the fourth president of German origin from Eastern Europe in the post-communist era, after Slovakia’s Rudolf Schuster, and Hungary’s Ferenc Mádl and Pál Schmitt.

Johannis’ parents, sister, and niece have moved to Würzburg in 2014 but he chose to stay in Romania where his ancestors had moved to 850 years ago. A graduate of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca in Physics (1983), Johannis taught high school Physics in Sibiu at the famous Samuel von Brukenthal Gymnasium, the oldest German-speaking school in Romania. Johannis and his English teacher wife, the former Carmen Lăzurcă, have no children, and are members of the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession in Romania, a German-speaking Lutheran church in Transylvania.

After the Romanian National Anthem, "Deșteaptă-te, române!," the Ambassador George Maior welcomed the president and introduced to him the very politically involved Romanian intellectual community from Washington and the surrounding states.

President Klaus Werner Johannis’ brief address to the crowd of 150 specially invited guests and the Romanian press traveling with him centered on the scope of his visit. He thanked the Romanians gathered to meet him and explained that it was his idea to meet the Romanians living in the U.S.  “I thank you that you came,” he said.

“The conference addressed the nuclear security which preoccupies us, especially if we take into account the nuclear terrorism that threatens all of us.”

He talked about the many meetings he attended, “We were seen at the White House last night, met with President Barack Obama, Vice President Biden, and other dignitaries.”

“We have a strong strategic partnership with the United States, politically, militarily, and economically.” He explained that there are over 100 military exercises planned with Romanian and American soldiers and that there is strong collaboration on security issues.

He admitted that on the economic front there is room for more American and Romanian investors. “You are investing here but we wish that you were in the country, but you can play a role of ambassadors for Romania. You came here for different reasons, jobs, family, career, etc. Because you came here tonight, it is evidence that your heart is in great measure at home. Take Romania’s message to the last village in U.S. that we want to go further together.”

A reception followed during which President Johannis and his wife graciously met everyone briefly and took pictures with those in attendance.

I am an American by choice but there is always Romanian blood in my veins and love for Romania in my heart and I hope the two countries will remain friends for a long time.

 

Women, Use the Hard-Earned Right to Vote, Wisely

The Night of Terror took place on November 15, 1917 in a prison called the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Thirty-three defenseless women dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House asking for their right to vote. The warden ordered his forty prison guards armed with clubs to teach the suffragists a lesson they would never forget.

According to the press of that era, Lucy Burns was chained to the cell bars with her hands above her head all night, bleeding. Dora Lewis was shoved so hard into her cell that she hit her head on the iron bed rails and passed out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, suffered a heart attack because she thought Dora was dead.

The 33 innocent women were convicted of “obstructing sidewalk” traffic. For weeks, they were subjected to the cruelty of their guards, bent on teaching them the harsh lesson ordered by the President – chocking, beating, grabbing, slamming, and kicking them into submission. Their food was infested with worms. Alice Paul refused to eat and, after being tied to a chair, liquid was poured down her throat through a tube until she vomited. Pauline Adams served a 60 day sentence.

President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, attempted to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul, one of the leaders, insane. She would then be sent to a state institution for life. The psychiatrist refused by saying, “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.”

Women finally got the right to vote on August 18, 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Amendment XIX prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the amendment that was first introduced in 1878. Tennessee’s ratification was the final vote needed to add the amendment to the Constitution. Challenged in 1922 in Leser v. Garnett, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that the amendment was unconstitutionally adopted.

Young women voting in the 21^st century helped put an unknown charismatic man in the White House in 2008, our first black President, with the platform of “hope and change” and a handy teleprompter, Greek columns, women fainting, and special God-like voice sound effects.

Nobody bothered to challenge or ask what kind of hope and what kind of change our country was going to be subjected to, who asked for this change, and who gave him the mandate to systematically destroy our economy: oil industry, coal industry, energy, health industry, automobile, banking, school loans, education, and NASA.

Once in office, President Obama began a constant barrage of attacks on our Constitution, passing executive order after executive order, the largest number in modern time, making Congress irrelevant, and disregarding the law.

Four years later unemployment is 14.6 percent, not the falsely reported 7.9 percent, everybody lost 40 percent of their wealth and their pension funds, housing is in shambles, business confidence is so low, it is negligible, 47 million Americans are on food stamps, the highest ever in the history of the United States, and the national debt, the biggest threat to our national security, grew in four years from $10 trillion to over $16 trillion and climbing, not counting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security who are supposedly secure in a non-existent lockbox that Congress has raided long time ago to pay Peter with Paul’s funds.

In two days, young and old women alike will have the chance to vote again for Obama’s non-existent economic platform with the motto “Forward.” You must elect him first before he is actually going to tell you what he is going to do to our country. I am not sure what “Forward” means to the Democrats, I only hope it does not mean going over the cliff like a herd of sheep following the leader on the same disastrous path the U.S. has pursued since 2008. We certainly are not better off than we were $6 trillion ago.

For those who need a refresher in history, “Forward” was the Marxist-Leninist motto in communist Russia and all the other assorted communist Soviet satellite countries. “Vorwärts” ("Forward") was also the central mouthpiece of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 and 1948 to present time.

I only hope that women will not take lightly the responsibility to vote in an informed manner. We must remember that women have gained the right to cast a ballot equal with men only 92 years ago. In many third world countries that liberals adore and admire as superior to our own, women are still not allowed to vote or their testimony in court is worth half the testimony of a man.

When you are unemployed with a worthless college degree in your pocket, have no health insurance, are angry that the government is taxing you too much to pay for 47 percent of the population who pays no taxes but receive welfare, the border is not being watched, the government is out of control with its spending, the military is cut down to size and you are afraid for our future as a nation, the quality of education is going down while the cost is escalating, remember how you voted or what you did when you chose to stay home on election day.

November 6, 2012 is perhaps the most important vote of your lifetime – the choice is yours and it is quite simple – do you want to salvage what is left of our Constitutional Republic and free market capitalism, or do you want to live as a serf indebted to an omnipotent government who will tell you what to do from cradle to grave?