Presidency of James Monroe Presidency of James Monroe The presidency of James Monroe began on March 4, 1817, when James Monroe was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1825. Monroe, the fifth United States president, took office after winning the 1816 presidential election by an overwhelming margin over Federalist Rufus King. This election was the last in which the Federalists fielded a presidential candidate, and Monroe was unopposed in the 1820 presidential election. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was succeeded by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Monroe sought to eliminate political parties, and the Federalist
José Joaquim Almeida January 1817, Ambassador Onis began filing the Spanish claims against James Monroe, then in charge of the Secretary of State, focusing specifically on Almeida. Onis presented testimony from several captures in the first months of the year, including two sailors who testified that on March 15 near Havana, he shot and boarded a British brig. Monroe became president, and when in March 1817 he arrived in Baltimore, Almeida was immediately processed by the Maryland state prosecutor Elias Glenn, imposed neutrality laws, in spite the protests of Ambassador Onis to Richard Rush, at that time the Secretary of State, to judge