Daniel Tompkins

• Vice President to:       James Monroe - Democratic-Republican, from Virginia.
  
  
  James Monroe served 1817 - 1825. He died in 1831, at the age of 73.
  
  
• Dates Served: Tompkins served as Vice President from 1817 - 1825.
  
• Political Party: Tompkins was a Democratic-Republican, from Massachusetts.
  
• Born: 1774.
  
• Died: 1825, at the age of 51.
  
• The presidential opponents during the 1816 and 1820 campaigns were:
  
  
  • 1816 - Rufus King - Federalist - New York Senator
    (King was the last Federalist candidate ever)
    
    
  • 1820 - Nobody - No one bothered to run against President Monroe this year
    
    
• Campaign issues:
  
  
  • During the 1816 campaign:
    
    
    • Monroe's election was a shoo-in this year, due mainly to the Federalist's opposition to the recent war, which had ended with Andrew Jackson's glorious victory in New Orleans. The Democratic-Republicans didn't even bother to do any real campaigning, since all they had to do was sit back and watch Monroe win by a landslide.
      
      
  • During the 1820 campaign:
    
    
    • The only issue this year was that everyone knew Monroe would win. The Federalists didn't even nominate a candidate, since they knew they were political small fries by this point. Monroe won all but a single Electoral vote.
      
      
  
  
• Notable Facts about Daniel Tompkins:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation: Tompkins was a Presbyterian. He was also a Freemason, but apparently this was not a conflict for him.
    
    
  • A lawyer, he was appointed to the Massachusetts State Supreme Court in 1804.
    
    
  • He served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1807 - 1817.
    
    
  • During the War of 1812 he borrowed money, using his own personal property as collateral, in order to fund the state's defense during the war. After the war neither the state nor the feds would pay him back. He went through years of litigation to get it back, until about 10 years later in 1824 when Congress finally agreed to reimburse him. Perhaps as a result of the stress, he became an alcoholic during this time, and occasionally presided over the Senate while drunk, which is perhaps the most effective way to preside over this branch of the government.
    
    
  • Tompkins died a few months after leaving office.
    

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• Monroe's two terms was collectively known as "The Era of Good Feelings", due partly to the fact that he was a very popular president and also because there was essentially only one party in the US, the Democratic-Republicans, by this time known simply as Republicans (not the same as today's Republican party). The opposition Federalist party had pretty much disintegrated by this time, and wouldn't re-emerge until the terms of Andrew Jackson, when many of its followers would reform as the Whig party.
  
  During Monroe's campaign for re-election the Federalists didn't even nominate a candidate. However Monroe wasn't given a unanimous Electoral victory. One of the Electors ended up casting a vote for John Quincy Adams, who wasn't even running, supposedly just to ensure that Monroe didn't receive the same unanimous vote that Washington had received. (This is questionable though, since Electoral voters are cast without any of the Electors knowing how the others are voting).
  
  
• Monroe was the last Revolutionary officer to serve as President.
  
  
• First Seminole War, from 1817 - 1818. Seminole Indians and fugitive slaves, working together out of Spanish Florida, had been crossing the border and raiding Georgia settlements, killing many Americans. Spain knew about it but didn't do anything. So General Andrew Jackson was sent to deal with it, although he over-extended his authority. He chased the Seminoles deep into Spanish territory and destroyed their villages, overthrew the Spanish Governor, and even executed two British citizens there who were accused of supplying the Seminoles in their raids.
  
  The executions were done without permission by the War Dept, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted Jackson reprimanded. But it never happened, due largely to the immense popularity of Jackson, and to the widespread approval of his retaliation against the Seminoles.
  
  
• After the Seminole War, Spain decided that their days in the Florida territory were numbered, since the US now possessed the power to seize the territory if they wanted to. So they made plans to sell it to them, which they did within one year.
  
  
• The Rush-Bagot Agreement, in 1818, with the British that demilitarized the Great Lakes.
  
  
• The Convention of 1818 with Canada, which drew the border between Canada and the US from Minnesota to the Rockies.
  
  
• "Frankenstein" is written by Mary Shelley, age 19, on a strange night in June of 1816 in Lord Byron's villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. She publishes it 2 years later in 1818. A new literary genre is born.
  
  
• The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 with Spain, in which Spain sold Florida to the US for $15 million (interestingly, the exact same price the US had payed France for the entire Louisiana Territory). It also defined the border between the US and the Spanish territory of Texas at the Sabine river. Spain also relinquished its remaining claims to the Oregon territory.
  
  
• The Panic of 1819, which touched off the first US depression, lasting 2 years. Caused by a combination of loose banking practices and wild land speculation in the West.
  
  
• The Missouri Compromise, in 1820, which admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state and admitted Main as a free state. The Compromise defined a border running through the Louisiana Purchase, at lattitude 36¡30', which mandated that any new states north of the line would be admitted as free states and any new states south of the line would be admitted as slave states. President Monroe had intended to veto the Compromise, and even wrote up a response to accompany the veto, but changed his mind at the last minute. It lasted for only 34 years, and was revoked by the infamous Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
  
  
• The Monroe Doctrine, dictated in 1823. Worried that Spain might try to recapture some of its former colonies in South America, and that Russia might be considering expanding its Alaska territory down south to Oregon, President Monroe read a speech to Congress in which he warned Europe against any more messing around in the Western Hemisphere. He said, "The American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers". This principle has been a basic part of US foreign policy ever since.
  
  
• Mississippi was admitted into the Union in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, and both Missouri and Maine in 1820.