Editing James Monroe (section)

===Slavery===
Monroe owned dozens of [[Slavery|slaves]]. He took several slaves with him to Washington to serve at the White House from 1817 to 1825. This was typical of other slaveholding presidents.<ref>Kranish, Michael. [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/28/at_capitol_slaverys_story_turns_full_circle/?page=2 "At Capitol, slavery's story turns full circle"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102061510/http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/28/at_capitol_slaverys_story_turns_full_circle/?page=2 |date=November 2, 2012 }}, ''The Boston Globe'', Boston, December 28, 2008.</ref> Monroe sold his small Virginia plantation in 1783 to enter law and politics. Although he owned multiple properties over the course of his lifetime, his plantations were never profitable. Although he owned much more land and many more slaves, and speculated in property, he was rarely on site to oversee the operations. Overseers treated the slaves harshly to force production, but the plantations barely broke even. Monroe incurred debts by his lavish and expensive lifestyle and often sold property (including slaves) to pay them off.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gawalt |first=Gerard W. |year=1993 |title=James Monroe, Presidential Planter |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |volume=101 |issue=2 |pages=251–272}}</ref> The labor of Monroe's many slaves were also used to support his daughter and son-in-law, along with a ne'er-do-well brother, Andrew, and his son, James.<ref>Gawalt, pp. 259-260.</ref>

When Monroe was Governor of Virginia in 1800, hundreds of slaves from Virginia planned to kidnap him, take [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], and negotiate for their freedom. [[Gabriel's Rebellion|Gabriel's slave conspiracy]] was discovered.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rodriguez |first=Junius P. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4X44KbDBl9gC&pg=RA1-PA428 |title=Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-85109-544-5 |page=428}}</ref> Monroe called out the militia; the slave patrols soon captured some slaves accused of involvement. Sidbury says some trials had a few measures to prevent abuses, such as an appointed attorney, but they were "hardly 'fair'". [[Slave codes]] prevented slaves from being treated like whites, and they were given quick trials without a jury.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sidbury |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/ploughsharesinto0000sidb |title=Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730–1810 |publisher=Cambridge |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-521-59860-6 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ploughsharesinto0000sidb/page/127 127]–28 |url-access=registration}}</ref> Monroe influenced the Executive Council to pardon and sell some slaves instead of hanging them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morris |first1=Thomas D. |url=https://archive.org/details/southernslavery00thom |title=Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 |publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-8078-4817-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/southernslavery00thom/page/272 272] |url-access=registration}}</ref> Historians say the Virginia courts executed between 26 and 35 slaves. None of the executed slaves had killed any whites because the uprising had been foiled before it began.<ref name="aptheker">{{cite book |last=Aptheker |first=Herbert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PkCwK3Uv71IC |title=American Negro Slave Revolts |publisher=International Publishers |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-7178-0605-8 |edition=6th |location=New York |pages=219–25 |author-link=Herbert Aptheker |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160704161518/https://books.google.com/books?id=PkCwK3Uv71IC |archive-date=July 4, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> An additional 50 slaves charged for their role in the planned rebellion would be spared, as a result of pardons, acquittals, and commutations. One reason for this was influence of a letter Monroe received from [[Thomas Jefferson]] urging mercy, telling him "The other states & the world at large will for ever condemn us if we indulge a principle of revenge, or go one step beyond absolute necessity. They cannot lose sight of the rights of the two parties, & the object of the unsuccessful one." Only seven of the executions carried out against the rebels occurred after Monroe received Jefferson's letter.<ref>{{Cite SSRN |title=To See Oneself as a Target of a Justified Revolution: Thomas Jefferson and Gabriel's Uprising |last1=Merkel |first1=William G. |year=2003 |ssrn=959676}}</ref>

During Monroe's Ministry to the United Kingdom, [[William Wilberforce]], an ardent abolitionist and British MP, sent a letter to Monroe asking him to confirm or deny a rumor he had heard regarding Congress reviving the slave trade (to which Monroe's reply is now lost, but is understood to have denied any such thing happening).{{sfn|McGrath|2021|pp=248-269}} Following this, Monroe and Wilberforce maintained a "sporadic correspondence," with Wilberforce asking Monroe about the conditions of southern slaves and Monroe appreciating Wilberforce's writings on abolition.{{sfn|McGrath|2021|pp=248-269}} Monroe and Wilberforce's correspondence are evidence of Monroe's respect towards abolitionism and his personal distaste of slavery.  

During the course of his presidency, Monroe remained convinced that slavery was wrong and supported private manumission, but at the same time he insisted that any attempt to promote emancipation would cause more problems. Monroe believed that slavery had become a permanent part of southern life, and that it could only be removed on providential terms. Like so many other Upper South slaveholders, Monroe believed that a central purpose of government was to ensure "domestic tranquility" for all. Like so many other Upper South planters, he also believed that the central purpose of government was to empower planters like himself. He feared for public safety in the United States during the era of violent revolution on two fronts. First, from potential class warfare of the [[French Revolution]] in which those of the propertied classes were summarily purged in mob violence and then preemptive trials, and second, from possible racial warfare similar to that of the [[Haitian Revolution]] in which blacks, whites, then mixed-race inhabitants were indiscriminately slaughtered as events there unfolded.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}

As president of Virginia's constitutional convention in the fall of 1829, Monroe reiterated his belief that slavery was a blight which, even as a British colony, Virginia had attempted to eradicate. "What was the origin of our slave population?" he rhetorically asked. "The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown." To the dismay of states' rights proponents, he was willing to accept the federal government's financial assistance to emancipate and transport freed slaves to other countries. At the convention, Monroe made his final public statement on slavery, proposing that Virginia [[Abolitionism in the United States|emancipate]] and deport its bondsmen with "the aid of the Union".{{sfn|Ammon|1971|pp=563–566}}

Monroe was active in the [[American Colonization Society]], which supported the establishment of colonies outside of the United States for free African Americans. The society helped send several thousand freed slaves to the new colony of [[Liberia]] in Africa from 1820 to 1840. Slave owners like Monroe and Andrew Jackson wanted to prevent free blacks from encouraging slaves in the South to rebel. Liberia's capital, [[Monrovia]], was named after President Monroe.{{sfn|Ammon|1971|pp=522–523}}