The Book VIRGINIA'S MONROE HISTORIC SITES DIDN'T WANT YOU TO READ...INCLUDES INDEX for both volumes; March 4, 2017 will be the two-hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of one of our most misunderstood presidents, James Monroe. He had a checkered career. Best known today for his Monroe Doctrine, alas the average American does not know the real James Monroe and mistakes him for the other James-Madison. Yet once, everyone either admired or hated him; there was no middle ground. Today he is mostly forgotten except by two camps of historians: Virginians (who view him as Jefferson's dimwitted protege) and Tennesseans (who loathe him as Jackson's wily evil boss). How can two camps have such discordant views of the same man? Despite President Monroe's early administrative success, he was determined to thwart the ambitions of a new rival on the scene--Andrew Jackson. Despite successes in uniting the two existing political parties, establishing the Compromise of 1820, proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine, and annexing Florida--Monroe attempted to blame General Jackson for his illegal invasion of that Spanish colony which he had secretly authorized and spent the rest of his life denying his duplicity while being attacked by Jackson and his henchman, Van Buren, and while begging Congress for financial assistance in his retirement.