up his books, and, with other students, joined the third Virginia regiment; was elected to a lieutenancy and marched off to headquarters, two or three hundred miles away. His election to the important office of lieutenant of the regiment indicates the estimate his associates put upon him.

After reaching the army he soon found himself in active service. He was in the skirmish at Harlem, which followed right on September 16; the battle at White Plains, October 28, and then the long retreat through New Jersey, fighting all the way, ending with the battle of Trenton, in which he received a severe wound in the shoulder. Captain William Washington and Lieutenant Monroe led the left wing of the American forces in that battle, and did good service in making complete the British rout, and reviving the American cause.

After recovering from his wound, he served as a volunteer aide, with the rank of Major, on the staff of the Earl of Stirling, and took part in the battles of Brandywine, September 11; of Germantown, October 4, and of Monmouth, June 28, 1778. This temporary promotion lost him his regular place in the continental army, so he was detailed to return to Virginia and raise a new regiment, with letters from Stirling and General Washington. But the exhausted state of the country prevented this, and the effect of his failure to raise a new regiment, and his loss of place in the line, for a time almost completely disheartened him. He was modest and self-deprecating, and the closing up of the military way before him, threw him into such a state of self-distrust that he thought to hide from society and become a recluse.

But Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, was his friend, and invited him into his office to study law and assist him in such ways as he could. His uncle, Judge Jones, favored his acceptance of the invitation, and so he joined his fortune with Jefferson's thus early, and the two became life-long friends. This decision was perhaps the key that unlocked to him the gate to that fortunate way that he pursued through the whole of his life. The closing of the military way before him he thought had ruined his prospects, and defeated his young life, and yet, more

than likely it was the "blessing in disguise" which turned his feet into the way of greater, usefulness and honor.

A LEGISLATOR.

In 1782, when twenty-three years of age, Mr. Monroe was elected to the Assembly of Virginia. The next year, when twenty-four, he was elected to Congress and served three years. During this time Washington resigned his commission and Mr. Monroe was present. In Congress he was an active and working member, young as he was. He was in Congress three years. The next year he was elected to the Virginia Legislature. He was a member of the Virginia Convention which accepted the United States Constitution. He was opposed to it. He was afraid it was too monarchical; that it conferred too much power on the executive; that he might make himself a king; that the friends of the constitution secretly cherished purposes of making it still more monarchical. He made speeches against it, and it was adopted against his influence. The strong democrats of the time found great fault with the constitution. It was really a federal document; it embodied federal doctrines; was an epitome of modern federalism. Twenty-eight years afterward, in a letter to Andrew Jackson, he explained some of his reasons for opposing it. They grew chiefly out of his distrust of some of the federal leaders. Like Jefferson, who at first opposed it, he became a strong friend of it.

December 6, 1790, he took his seat in the United States Senate, under the constitution which he opposed, and took his oath to sustain it.

He was not conspicuous as a debater; nor noted as a great constitutional statesman; nor as a leader in the philosophy and principles of government; but as a practical, considerate, business legislator, faithful, hard-working, pains-taking. His distrust of the federal leaders, and especially of Hamilton, made him generally unfriendly to Washington's administration, though he was always on terms of personal friendship with Washington. The political feud of the times was a strong one, and he shared much of its one-sidedness and bitterness.

Virginia, an aristocratic, lave-holding state, produced many radical democrats, who sympathized intensely with the French cry of "Liberty and equality." Mr. Monroe was among them.

A MINISTER ABROAD.

May 28, 1794, when thirty-six of age, Mr. Monroe was commissioned minister to France. His opposition to Washington's administration and to the federalists who had a strong influence with Washington, would have unfitted him for such an appointment, according to modern party politics. But Washington had confidence in Monroe, and his strong interest in the French cause of liberty would make him acceptable to the party in power in France. Mr. Monroe reached Paris just as Robespierre's career had closed. He was introduced into the French convention of citizens, as it was called, as "Citizen James Monroe, minister plenipotentiary from the United States near the French republic," August 15, 1794, and made a written address which was read in French by the secretary. It abounded in expressions of sympathy for the cause of liberty in France. This gave offense to many of the administration officials at home, and he was lectured for his over-warm sympathy with the popular party in the French republic. He went to France to prevent a war with France. Mr. Jay had been sent to England to prevent an embroilment with England. Monroe found it difficult to get a hearing in France. The new government was not receiving ambassadors, and had only coldness for him. He went outside of all routine and got a hearing in the popular convention. It seemed to those who had sent him, a partisan, over-hasty and ill-advised movement, liable to make trouble in England. His warmth for France made enemies at home who were very severe on his course. Mr. Jay made a treaty with England which displeased Monroe and the French. He called it hard names, and was called hard names in return for doing so. The French became warlike again. Mr. Monroe quieted them by sympathy with them and urging them to moc'eration, and to wait the end of Washington's administration. Just at this time he was recalled; he came home cut to the quick, and passed by Wash

ington without giving him a call. He published a volume of five hundred pages in self-defense. The party critics against him, devoured it in piecemeal. His party friends defended him. A great newspaper war raged for a time. About as much fault was found with Jay and his treaty with England and with Washington for recommending its acceptance. But it turned out that there was no war with France or England and good treaties of amity and commerce were made with both nations, indicating that both men understood the situation in hand better than their critics at home. The war of words against them was carried on more with party gall than with common sense or patriotism. This country was a caldron of hot misunderstandings at this time.

In 1801, Spain ceded Louisiana to France. At once there sprang up a fever of anxiety in the United States as to what France was proposing to do with it. "We must have it," was the common saying among the people. Some one in Congress proposed to purchase it? Congress appropriated two millions. of dollars for that purpose; and Mr. Jefferson, then president, appointed Mr. Monroe a special minister to France on this mission. Mr. Robert R. Livingston was already our minister in France, and was moving as he could in the same matter. In a few weeks after Mr. Monroe's arrival in France, they succeeded in making the purchase, which was ratified by Napoleon Bonaparte in May, 1803. The price paid was fifteen million dollars, the grandest bargain ever made by any nation. It was a peaceful purchase of an empire, as one farmer would buy a farm of another.

Four nations were interested in this transaction -- Spain England, France and the United States. Six individuals were chiefly instrumental in it-Jefferson, Livingston and Monroe for the United States, and Bonaparte, Talleyrand and Marbois, for France. When it was accomplished, the plenipotentiaries rose and shook hands; and Livingston said: "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives."

Mr. Monroe proceeded at once to England as minister to St. James, leaving France this time in a more satisfactory frame of

mind than he left it before. He soon returned to France as envoy to Spain, and in this mission he was to treat with the Spanish minister in Paris, concerning the purchase of Florida. But after several months' effort he returned to England, without accomplishing his object.

While in England, Mr. Monroe, in connection with Mr. Pinkney, conducted a long series of interviews with special English ministers, Lords Auckland and Holland, concerning English impressment of seamen, and other unwarrantable transactions on the high seas. They succeeded at last in forming a treaty, but it was so unsatisfactory to President Jefferson that he refused to offer it to the Senate for consideration, and so the long efforts at diplomacy failed, and things went on from bad to worse between the two nations, till the war of 1812 brought its bloody arbitrament.

Lord Holland, in his history of the whig party, speaking of this treaty, which he helped to form, says: "Mr. Jefferson refused to ratify a treaty which would have secured his countrymen from all further vexations, and prevented a war between two nations whose habits, language and interests should unite them in perpetual alliance and good fellowship."

President Jefferson did in haste, and doubtless in no good temper, take upon himself to decide what belonged to the Senate to decide, and the failure to ratify the treaty, left the ill temper between the two nations to rise to war heat, and the second war with England was the result. It looks now as though Mr. Jefferson's responsibility in that war was great, if his act was not the fatal failure to avert it.

Late in 1807, Mr. Monroe returned to America, having accomplished but little with Spain and England; and at once published an elaborate defense of his well-meant endeavors.

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA.

The Virginia of the olden time was usually prompt to recognize the talent and worth of her sons.

When Mr. Monroe returned from France the first time under the cloud of a peremptory recall from the secretary of state, and