[1817] - Monroe becomes fifth President of US

James Monroe was a founding father of the United States. Born in Virginia in 1758, he fought in the American Revolutionary War, before studying law under Thomas Jefferson. In 1790 he was elected to the Senate where he became the Governor for Virginia. Subsequently Secretary of State and Secretary of War in James Madison’s government, he was elected as the fifth US president in 1816, serving in office from 1817 to 1825. He is most famous for his proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, a landmark US foreign policy that asserted that European efforts to colonize land or interfere in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression that necessitated military intervention. He retired from office in 1825 and died in New York on 4 July 1831.

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