The first of the important St. Louis fur companies, the Missouri Fur Company opened the trade of the upper Missouri River, but throughout its precarious existence, it struggled against hostile Indians and against formidable rival fur companies.
Inspired by the explorations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-06), Manuel Lisa and his partners—William Morrison and Pierre Menard—founded the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company in 1807. They were all veterans of the fur trade. In that same year, the three partners financed a fur-trading expedition by keelboats into the upper Missouri River. The boats and their crews penetrated to the Yellowstone River, where Lisa supervised the construction of a trading post at the mouth of the Bighorn River. From this base of operations, the company sent out several trapping expeditions into the northern Rocky Mountains. In 1809, Lisa and his partners enlarged the company. The fur-trapping and trading ventures made contact with local Indian peoples, but several nations were hostile, and the distances of the trading posts from St. Louis made reinforcement and resupply difficult and expensive. The most important result of the first years of the enterprise was the vastly expanded geographic knowledge of the region. Exploration in these remote areas was always difficult, and the enterprise confronted almost constant hostility from some Indian nations, especially the Blackfeet.
The outbreak of the War of 1812 made the conduct of the fur trade especially dangerous, since it involved Native Americans allied with the Americans and the British. The company reorganized with three partners— Lisa, Clark, and Sylvestre Labbadie—in 1812, changing its name to the Missouri Fur Company. In 1814, the American government appointed Lisa as Indian subagent, requiring him to use his influence to hold the loyalties of the western tribes. Although Lisa proved useful in this regard, the company was out of business by 1814.
With the close of the war, the rivalries of the fur trade resumed, intensified by the growing reach of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the north and the American Fur Company on the Pacific coast. In 1819, the Missouri Fur Company reorganized again, in search of new partners and fresh capital. When he died in 1820, Lisa left a legacy of exploration and entrepreneurial activity that had captured the attention of the first generation of American fur traders.
Under the leadership of Joshua Pilcher, the Missouri Fur Company embarked on a new set of expeditions along the upper Missouri. The company initially did well, but a series of attacks by the Blackfeet in 1823 killed several veteran trappers and severely damaged the company’s strength. The business threats posed by William Henry Ashley and John Jacob Astor made the Missouri Fur Company increasingly unprofitable. The company employed some of the foremost veteran trappers of the fur trade, but these men were inexperienced in business at a time when the trade was increasingly competitive and business experience had become as important as skill in the field. Ashley’s use of the rendezvous was an innovative step in the trade’s evolution to which the Missouri Fur Company had no answer. Astor’s scale of operations further dwarfed the small, almost intimate nature practices of the Missouri Fur Company traders. In 1825, the company failed and went out of business. Pilcher formed another company, but it was never successful, and in 1833 he joined the American Fur Company. In a sense, the failure of the Missouri Fur Company signaled the decline of the fur trade.
Further reading: Abraham P. Nasatir, Mangel Lisa (New York: Argosy-Antiquarian, 1964); Richard E. Oglesby, Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963).
Monroe, James (1758-1831) fifth U. S. president a Democratic-Republican and lifelong public servant, James Monroe served two terms as president of the United States from 1817 to 1825 during the Era of Good Feelings. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on April 28, 1758, he was the oldest of four children. His parents, Spence and Elizabeth Jones Monroe, raised their children on a farm in Orange County in the Piedmont region, and Monroe began attending Campbelltown Academy at age 11. He entered the College of William and Mary in June 1774, following the death of his father and his subsequent inheritance of all family property. At 16, he also found himself responsible for his mother and the care of his siblings until they reached maturity.
Caught up in the volatile political climate of Williamsburg, the capital of colonial Virginia, Monroe often allowed his studies to take a back seat to the excitement fostered by the coming of the Revolutionary War (1775-83). With the war in full swing by spring 1776, he enlisted in the Third Virginia Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Hugh Mercer to fight for independence from Great Britain. Monroe was trained by General Andrew Lewis, quickly commissioned a lieutenant, and saw his first action at the Battle of Harlem Heights (September 16, 1776) in New York. He later fought in the Battle of Trenton (December 26, 1776), where he was shot in the shoulder while fighting Hessian soldiers after crossing the icy Delaware River; it took three months for him to recover from his wounds. Afterward he was promoted to captain and participated in the Battles of Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and Germantown (October 4, 1777) in Pennsylvania. He then received a promotion to major and served as an aide-de-camp to William Alexander, also known as Lord Stirling.
After suffering through the infamously difficult winter at Valley Forge with George Washington and the rest of the Continental Army in 1777-78, Monroe’s final military engagement took place at the Battle of Monmouth Court House (June 28, 1778). Increasingly frustrated in subsequent months because he never received his own command, he left Stirling’s staff and the army for good in December. Monroe returned to his academic pursuits in Virginia and studied law under Thomas Jefferson, who became his lifelong mentor. He took a brief hiatus from his legal studies in 1780 when he was appointed a special military agent for Virginia, and in that capacity he helped establish a communications system to monitor British movement.
The future president began his political career when he was elected to the Virginia legislature in 1782. Between 1783 and 1786, he served in the congress formed under the Articles of Confederation. As a member of the Confederation Congress, he chaired a com-
President James Monroe (Library of Congress)
Mittee in 1785 that eventually called for the framing of a new constitution, but Monroe did not participate in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Suspicious of concentrated power, he believed the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. He did, however, serve as a senator from 1790 to 1794 and remained a vocal opponent of the Federalist Party and many policies of the Washington administration. Despite his political disagreements with President Washington, he served as ambassador to France from 1794 to 1796, until his opposition to the Jay Treaty (1794) led Washington to revoke his appointment. Monroe returned to Virginia and was elected governor, serving from 1799 to 1802. He was politically aligned with his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, who was elected president in 1800. During the Jefferson administration, Monroe helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase (1803). He also served as minister to France, Spain, and England. His record continued to grow as he was elected for a second time as governor of Virginia in 1811. He resigned the same year when President James Madison appointed him secretary of state, a post he held until 1817. Praised for his foresight when he predicted that the British would assault Washington, D. C., during the War of 1812 (1812-15), Monroe also served as secretary of war between 1814 and 1815.
Monroe’s long and distinguished public career culminated in his election as the fifth president of the United States in 1816. As president, he enjoyed great popularity, and he came just one vote short of being unanimously elected to his second term in office in 1820. His two-term presidency is often described as the “Era of Good Feelings” because of the general climate of domestic tranquility and political harmony in the United States. Optimism had swept the nation after the War of 1812, and it marked Monroe’s presidency, which lacked serious political opposition due to the demise of the Federalist Party.
A strong nationalist, Monroe supported an economic nationalism that led to the creation of the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. He signed the legislation for the Missouri Compromise, although he never quite felt comfortable with the idea of the federal government having the power to limit the expansion of slavery. Other notable accomplishments of his administration include the acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1819 and the issuance of the famous Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which warned European powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and pledged that the United States would not interfere in European internal affairs.
After leaving office, Monroe served as a regent of the University of Virginia from 1826 to 1830. He passed away at the age of 73 on July 4, 1831. His death marked the end of an era, for he was the last revolutionary war hero to be elected president.
Further reading: Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971); Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Presidency of James Monroe (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996).
—Sarah Eppler Janda
World History
