James Monroe (New York politician) several children. His paternal 2x-great grandfather, Patrick Andrew Monroe, emigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century. In 1650, he patented a large tract of land in Washington Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia. Among James Monroe's ancestors were French Huguenot immigrants, who came to Virginia in 1700. Monroe graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1815, and was commissioned in the Artillery Corps. Shortly after graduating, he was sent to fight in the war with Algiers, and was wounded while serving as a gunnery officer on board the USS "Guerriere". From 1817 to 1822, he served as aide-de-camp to
James Monroe Unlike Jefferson, Monroe was rarely attacked as an atheist or infidel. In 1832 James Renwick Willson, a Reformed Presbyterian minister in Albany, New York, criticized Monroe for having "lived and died like a second-rate Athenian philosopher." Monroe owned dozens of slaves. According to William Seale, he took several slaves with him to Washington to serve at the White House from 1817 to 1825. This was typical of other slaveholders, as Congress did not provide for domestic staff of the presidents at that time. As president of Virginia's constitutional convention in the fall of 1829, Monroe reiterated his belief that slavery