Presidency of James Monroe knowledge of the northwest region of the Louisiana Purchase. The expedition suffered several setbacks, but the efforts of scientists such as Edwin James advanced U.S. knowledge of the flora and fauna of the region. The federal government had taken control of the Yazoo lands from Georgia in the Compact of 1802; as part of that agreement, President Jefferson promised to remove Native Americans from the region. Georgians pressed Monroe to remove the remaining Native Americans to regions west of the Mississippi River, but the Native Americans rejected the Monroe administration's offers to purchase their land. As Monroe was unwilling 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