James Monroe July 4, 1831, Monroe died from heart failure and tuberculosis, thus becoming the third president to have died on Independence Day. His death came 55 years after the United States Declaration of Independence was proclaimed and 5 years after the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Monroe was originally buried in New York at the Gouverneur family's vault in the New York City Marble Cemetery. Twenty-seven years later, in 1858, his body was re-interred at the President's Circle in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. The James Monroe Tomb is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. "When it comes to Monroe's
Bonus Bill of 1817 that while the Constitution did not empower Congress to establish any system of internal improvements, he stated, "To the appropriation of the public money to improvements... I do not see any well-founded constitutional objection..." With that statement, Monroe now held that congress had the power to appropriate the public moneys at its discretion; and that though it was in duty bound to select objects of general importance, it was not the province of the president to sit in judgment upon its selections. Additional internal improvements legislation would soon follow. Bonus Bill of 1817 The Bonus Bill of 1817 was legislation