James Monroe's Highland (8/5/2021)

Thursday, August 5, 2021 (continued)

Lunch was at Michie Tavern (c 1784)
for a taste of 18C southern fare in a rustic setting

Southern-fried chicken (or marinated baked chicken),
hickory-smoked pork barbecue, buttermilk biscuits or cornbread,
stewed tomatoes (very sweet!!), black-eyed peas, coleslaw,
pickled beets, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and
Andalucia gazpacho soup; beverages and dessert cost extra

Driveway to Highlands, the former property
of President James Monroe

James Monroe was a neighbor of Thomas Jefferson, since they shared a property line, but the houses are a couple miles apart.

Vegetable garden

One big tomato! (KSS)

Quercus alba/White Oak is at least 300 years old

Reproduction overseer's house (left) and
enslaved people's quarters (right)

Corn crib

Well in the herb garden, with the
smokehouse back on the right

Initially this building was thought to be the Monroe house,
but later research showed it was their guest house (1818)

Massey House (1870) was built by later owners

In 2016, archaeological findings uncovered the foundation
and fireplace of what was the Monroe house, in the
front yard of the Massey House, with a kitchen wing
extending under the Massey House

Statue (c 1890s, by Attilio Piccirilli) of
James Monroe was commissioned by
Venezuela in tribute to the Monroe Doctrine,
but after decades in the artist's studio,
it was placed at Highland in 1932

Bust (1958, by Cathe Wallendahl)
of James Monroe (KSS)

James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, is known for the Monroe Doctrine (1823), a policy that "opposed European colonialism in the Americas. It argued that any intervention in the politics of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States."

Earlier Monroe was involved in the Louisiana Purchase, serving as assistant to Ambassador Robert Livingston in negotiations with the French government.

As to the question of slavery, James Monroe owned slaves but wrote that the practice was evil. He believed abolition should be gradual and advocated that the newly freed should be resettled in Africa or the Caribbean. However, his plantation grew tobacco, and later grain crops, that were not as lucrative as cotton, which did not grow in the Virginia Piedmont. Often in debt, Monroe ended up selling enslaved people to the south. A large group were sold to Casa Bianca, a cotton plantation in Florida, in 1828. Through records, the descendants of these families that were kept together could be found to give their stories of life in Highland.

Next: James Madison's Montpelier.