The tourist who makes a pilgrimage to James Monroe's two Virginia 
        homes, Ash Lawn in Charlottesville and Oak Hill in Leesburg, carries 
        away a sense of serenity, dignity and decent accomplishment. In the 
        nation's folklore Monroe figures as one of the Virginia Dynasty, the 
        fourth of five Presidents to come from the Old Dominion. He is 
        associated with the Monroe Doctrine. His eight years in the White 
        House are recalled as the "era of good feelings"---a period almost 
        free from political strife. According to legend Monroe would have 
        received a unanimous electoral vote when he was re-elected in 1820, 
        except that a single elector who plumped for John Quincy Adams did so 
        merely in order to reserve the unique distinction of unanimity for 
        George Washington. 
             In actuality Monroe's career was much less comfortable. As a 
        diplomat in Europe he offended both President Washington and President 
        Jefferson. He irritated Madison by offering himself as a rival 
        candidate for the Presidency in 1808. Though he made a good enough 
        record in Madison's Administration as Secretary of State, later also 
        managing to carry out the duties of Secretary of War, he was not the 
        universal favorite among the Republicans for the presidential 
        nomination in 1816. Stiff in matter and old-fashioned in dress, he was 
        less attractive than the big, handsome William H. Crawford of Georgia. 
        Some politicos grumbled that it was time to look outside Virginia. Nor 
        was his wife, the daughter of an officer in the British Army, a match 
        for Dolley Madison in natural vivacity. 
             The monroes went to considerable expense to redecorate the White 
        House---badly needed after the British raid of 1814. They entertained 
        ambitiously. But Elizabeth Kortright Monroe suffered increasingly from 
        migraines and depression. There was plenty in the Washington scene to 
        give headaches to the White House. Gossip soon dismissed Monroe as a 
        dull, mediocre person, nowhere near as politically successful as 
        Jefferson and less intellectually gifted than Madison. With an eye to 
        his own presidential chances, his Secretary of State (J. Q. Adams) and 
        his Secretary of the Treasury (Crawford) began to provoke one another. 
        Monroe could assert himself neither with his cabinet nor with 
        Congress. The Administration, Adams sourly noted in his journal, "is 
        at war with itself, both in the Executive, and between the Executive 
        and the Legislature". Much of the initiative for the Monroe Doctrine 
        (a section of the President's annual message to Congress in 1823) came 
        from Adams. Monroe was almost a cipher in his second term. In the 
        words of the powerful Congressman Henry Clay, "there was nothing 
        further to be expected by him or from him". 
             Worse still for Monroe, his re-election coincided with an 
        economic depression. There was little he could do to remedy matters. 
        But this apparent indifference to business failures and out-of-work 
        operatives made him seem still more impotent, unlikeable and 
        irrelevant. His own salary of 25,000 dollars (s sum fixed in 1789, and 
        to remain fixed until it was doubled in 1873) looked opulent in 
        comparison with the Vice-President's 5,000 dollars or the niggardly 
        3,500 dollars paid to heads of executive departments. His expenses 
        however were heavy, and nineteenth century Presidents did not receive 
        a pension. When he retired from office in 1825, with six years still 
        to live, Monroe's finances were in disastrous shape. Like Jefferson 
        and Madison before him, he was on the brink of ruin when he died. 
        Indeed, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier and Ash Lawn are all in 
        better condition today, thanks to careful restoration, than when their 
        owners were laid to rest. 

Source: Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of America.