The historian Brook Poston gives readers an interesting take on James Monroe’s political career. The fifth president of the United States was the first not to have been central to the Revolution and the consequent establishment of republican governments for the new American states and federal union, but his presidency seemed to many at the time to be a kind of culmination of the country’s republican Founding. Readers of The Founders’ Curse: James Monroe’s Struggle Against Political Parties will see how a protégé of Thomas Jefferson both could have participated in strongly partisan endeavors in the 1790s and worked energetically to prevent a recrudescence of party activity in the 1820s.

The text of this book is only 167 pages long, and over one-third of it goes by without Monroe’s engaging in “struggle against political parties.” In the first chapter, one sees Monroe serving a kind of apprenticeship under Jefferson, the figurehead of 1790s Republicanism, who tutored him in law and supported the younger man in his political endeavors. “Of all his many political connections,” readers are told, “Monroe’s friendship with Jefferson was the most important.” Poston calls Jefferson Monroe’s “mentor” in both law and politics, saying that “it is difficult to overstate the role Jefferson played in shaping Monroe’s political career” and that “the teacher-student nature of their relationship lasted until Jefferson’s death in 1826.” Monroe always conceded this point. Poston describes Monroe as “perhaps the most ardent” of the Republicans, which is a hard case to make. (How is one to weigh his ardor against that of, for example, John Randolph of Roanoke, Spencer Roane, John Taylor of Caroline, or Jefferson himself? All of those men were entirely unabashed too.) This is a point at which, since the book is from an academic press, historiographical references appear in the main text, not in the endnotes. Lay readers will likely find this format to be distracting through the rest of the book, and since Poston relies on classic works by Lance Banning, Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., and the like, along with Harry Ammon’s leading and Tim McGrath’s recent Monroe biographies and the new edition of Monroe’s papers, experts may find the sources to be obvious. Saving this material for the endnotes would have been preferable.