James Monroe

March 4, 2017 will be the 200th anniversary of the innaugural of one of our most misunderstood presidents, James Monroe. Despite the negative volume number, this actually is the fourth in written sequence and the first in ancestral sequence telling the story of our fifth president. Beyond examining his Scottish ancestry, this volume attempts to establish not only his personality, but also the mental basis for that personality. Though Monroe is not always the central figure in this volume, it is part of his biography, just as much as volumes 1 and 2. Jefferson, Madison, and Washington all noted his erratic emotional extremes. Washington though he had an "inflamed mind." Could it be that James Monroe inherited a degree of mental illness from some of his more violent ancestors? Read on and you'll find out. The author, Allen Brockman, is an independent scholar living in Rural Virginia.