MONROE, 5th, 1817-25

James Monroe, a lanky, blue-eyed, commonplace man of no great brilliance, was the last president to wear knee breeches. He stood tall, angular, erect, his features large and chiseled, and from a short distance he bore an unmistakable resemblance to George Washington.

So serene and successful was his eight-year administration that it was known as the "Era of Good Feeling."

Less is known about Monroe's thoughts on religion than those of any other president. In his first inaugural address, he praised religious freedom, boasting that Americans may worship "the Divine Author" in any manner they choose. Thomas Paine wrote The Age of Reason in Monroe's home in Paris. Monroe was a Freemason.

In private, Monroe and his wife, Elizabeth, spoke only in French.

Despite earning $25,000 a year as president, Monroe left the White House $75,000 in debt. In "The Memoir of James Monroe, Exqr., relating to his Unsettled Claims upon the People and the Government of the United States," he meticulously listed the things he had done in service to the nation, detailing what they had cost over his salary. "Mr. Monroe has received more pecuniary reward from the public than any other man since the existence of the nation," John Quincy Adams wrote in 1831, "and is now dying, at the age of seventy-two, in wretchedness and beggary."

He was the third president to die on the Fourth of July.

Alive, the man who had framed the famous doctrine about North and South America had been all but ignored by his countrymen. Dead, he was treated with pomp and ceremony. His New York City funeral was the biggest the city had ever seen.

d. July 4, 1831 (New York, New York), at 73, of a chronic lung illness.