The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger

Monroe was a young soldier during the Revolution who fought bravely throughout some of the most challenging moments of the fight for independence. James Monroe was not simply another Virginian who took part in the Revolutionary War and eventually held the Presidency. Unger blends both ceaselessly and ties together giants of American History throughout his story, relying on their words to enhance his rich descriptions of that fascinating period. Too often, books focusing on the Founders will rely heavily on the letters of those great men and it’s difficult to transition back-and-forth between their deliberative language and the author’s own writing.

What stands out most about Unger’s book is the clarity and ease of the author’s writing. After reading The Last Founding Father, I realized that I’ve short-changed James Monroe and his value to the creation of the United States in its infancy, as well as it’s stewardship throughout the early years of this nation’s life. I’ve often felt that I gave Monroe the credit he deserved for his Presidency, but I was wrong. That has changed with Harlow Giles Unger’s The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness ( Da Capo Press, Paperback, 2010). James Monroe is the forgotten Founding Father, overshadowed by his predecessors in the Presidency – George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison – denigrated as a simple man whose accomplishments were credited to others, and relegated to the background of history because he hasn’t had the same justice done to his legacy by historians and biographers of the past 200 years. “ He was entitled to say, like Augustus Caesar of his imperial city, that he had found her built of brick and left her constructed of marble.” – John Quincy Adams, eulogizing James Monroe in the House of Representatives, 1831 The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness REVIEW: The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger