September 22, 1817 - John Quincy Adams becomes Secretary of State.

December 10, 1817 - Mississippi was admitted as the 20th state.

April 4, 1818 - Congress decided the U.S. flag would consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state.

April 20, 1818 - Congress heeded President James Monroe's call to uphold the fiscal integrity of domestic industry and gave the green light to sharply protectionist tariff legislation; hiked duties on iron imports, put the breaks on an anticipated decrease in the levy charged on textiles; , from the time of its birth as a nation, the United States routinely adopted legislation designed to steel its producers' power in the international marketplace; 1820s - duties climbed to unprecedented levels.

October 20, 1818 - Great Britain and the United States signed a diplomatic convention, which established a boundary between the United States and British Canada along the forty-ninth parallel.

November 20, 1818 - Simón Bolívar, declared Venezuela independent of Spain.

December 3, 1818 - Illinois entered the United States as the 21st state.

February 22, 1819 - Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty; Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States; officially put Florida into U.S. hands at no cost beyond the U.S. assumption of some $5 million of claims by U.S. citizens against Spain; 1821 - formal U.S. occupation began with General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, appointed military governor; 1822 - Florida organized as a U.S. territory; 1845 - admitted into the Union as a slave state.

March 2, 1819 - U.S. passed its first immigration law.

March 6, 1819 - Supreme Court's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland centered around the question of whether or not Maryland held the power to tax all the local branches of the Bank of the United States, most notably the one located in Baltimore. Invoking the controversial principle of "federal sovereignty," the Court ruled that states could not levy taxes against U.S. government institutions. The decision held implications that wandered into sticky political territory; the Court effectively denied state legislators' attempts to exercise control over the Federal government. Moreover, while articulating the ruling, Chief Justice John Marshall affirmed Congress' right to establish a corporation such as the Bank of the United States. Though the Constitution made no specific mention of Congress creating a bank, Marshall, citing the "Hamiltonian doctrines" of "loose construction" and "implied powers," nonetheless ceded the House this power.

February 17, 1820 - Senate passes the Missouri Compromise, an attempt to deal with the dangerously divisive issue of extending slavery into the western territories; 1818 - Territory of Missouri applied to Congress for admission as a slave state; early 1819 - Representative James Tallmadge of New York introduced an amendment to the proposed Missouri constitution that would ban importation of new slaves and require gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Southern congressmen reacted with outrage, inspiring a nationwide debate on the future of slavery in the nation. In exchange for admitting Missouri without restrictions on slavery, the Compromise called for bringing in Maine as a free state; dictated that slavery would be prohibited in all future western states carved out of the Louisiana Territory that were higher in latitude than the northern border of Arkansas Territory; eased the inherent tensions between western expansion and slavery, the divisive issue was far from resolved; March 3, 1820 - Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, kept Union together for more than 30 years.

March 6, 1820 - President James Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise, also known as the Compromise Bill of 1820, into law. The bill attempted to equalize the number of slave-holding states and free states in the country, allowed Missouri into the Union as a slave state while Maine joined as a free state. Additionally, portions of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36-degrees-30-minutes latitude line were prohibited from engaging in slavery by the bill.

March 15, 1820 - Maine became the twenty-third state. Administered as a province of Massachusetts since 1647, the entrance of Maine as a free state was agreed to by Southern senators in exchange for the entrance of Missouri as a slave state.

November 7, 1820 - James Monroe re-elected U.S. president.

December 26, 1820 - Moses Austin meets with Spanish authorities in San Antonio to ask permission for 300 Anglo-American families to settle in Texas. Austin obtained permission in 1798 from the Spanish to mine land in an area that lies in what is now the state of Missouri. Austin quickly built a lead mine, smelter, and town on his property, and his mine turned a steady profit for more than a decade. Unfortunately, the economic collapse following the War of 1812 destroyed the lead market and left him bankrupt. Determined to rebuild his fortune, Austin decided to draw on his experience with the Spanish and try to establish an American colony in Texas. In 1820, he traveled to San Antonio to request a land grant from the Spanish governor, who initially turned him down. Austin persisted and was finally granted permission to settle 300 Anglo families on 200,000 acres of Texas land. Stephen Fuller Austin, son, completed arrangements for Austin's Texas colony; selected the lower reaches of Colorado River and Brazos River as the site for the colony; December 1821 - first colonists arrived; Over the next decade, Stephen Austin and other colonizers brought nearly 25,000 people into Texas, most of them Anglo-Americans. 1836 - Always more loyal to the United States than to Mexico, the settlers eventually broke from Mexico, formed the independent Republic of Texas. 1845 - they led the successful movement to make Texas an American state.

February 24, 1821 - Mexico declared its independence from Spain.

March 5, 1821 - Monroe is first President inaugurated on March 5th, because 4th was Sunday.

July 17, 1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

July 28, 1821 - Peru declared its independence from Spain.

August 10, 1821 - Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state--and the first located entirely west of the Mississippi River. Named for one of the Native American groups that once lived in the territory, Missouri became a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1817, Missouri Territory applied for statehood, but the question of whether it would be slave or free delayed approval by Congress. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was reached, admitting Missouri as a slave state but excluding slavery from the other Louisiana Purchase lands north of Missouri's southern border. Missouri's August 1821 entrance into the Union as a slave state was met with disapproval by many of its citizens.

August 23, 1821 - After 11 years of Mexican War of Independence, Spain granted Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy; August 24, 1821 - Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, made Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy.

September 1, 1821 - William Becknell took a group of traders from Independence, Missouri, toward Santa Fe, blazing the Santa Fe Trail.

September 15, 1821 - Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador became independent from Spain.

November 16, 1821 - Trader William Becknell, from Franklin, MO, reached Santa Fe, New Mexico, via a shorter and easier cutoff across the Cimarron Desert (vs. old route that passed over a dangerous high pass); earned him the title of "Father of the Santa Fe Trail." It became one of the most important and lucrative of the Old West trading routes; merchants and other travelers continued to follow the trail blazed by Becknell until the arrival of trains in the late 1870s.

September 7, 1822 - Brazil declared its independence from Portugal; October 12, 1822 - Brazil gained independence from Portugal.

September 10, 1823 - Simon Bolivar named president of Peru.

December 2, 1823 - During his annual address to Congress, President James Monroe proclaims a new isolationist U.S. foreign policy initiative that becomes known as the "Monroe Doctrine"; cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in the 19th century. Primarily the work of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the Monroe Doctrine forbade European interference in the American hemisphere but also asserted U.S. neutrality in regard to future European conflicts. United States invoked the Monroe Doctrine to defend its increasingly imperialistic role in the Americas in the mid-19th century,; not until the Spanish-American War in 1898 that the United States declared war against a European power over its interference in the American hemisphere; took two world wars of the 20th century to draw a hesitant America into its new role as a major global power.

March 2, 1824 - Interstate commerce comes under federal control as decided in a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Gibbons v. Ogdens; stemmed from the New York state government's sanctioned monopoly on steamboat navigation in state territory awarded to Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston in the late 1780's; Thomas Gibbons held that his Federal trade license granted him rights to operate in New York's waters, took his case to the Supreme Court which ruled in his favor.

March 11, 1824 - The US War Department creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

March 30, 1824 - Congressional stalwart Henry Clay took to the House floor to extol the virtues of the proposed Tariff of 1824. Argued that the Tariff's blend of protectionist measures and domestic trade initiatives, including proposed improvements to America's transit routes, would wean the nation from its heavy diet of foreign goods. April - Daniel Webster aggressively disagreed, trumpeted the cause of free trade.

May 22, 1824 - House passed the Tariff of 1824; lawyer-turned-legislator Henry Clay vigorously stumped for the passage of a protectionist tariff, positioned the tariff as a potent tool for bolstering America's fiscal and social well-being. With its blend of protectionist measures and domestic trade initiatives, the tariff was designed to break the nation's putatively heavy reliance on foreign goods; Daniel Webster passionately argued against the legislation, dismissing it as an affront to free trade.

December 1, 1824 - No presidential candidate received a majority of the total electoral votes in the Electoral College in the election of 1824 (131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president; votes were counted for the first time in this election but had no effect on the outcome); 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dictates that Congress turn over the presidential election to the House of Representatives (House only considers the three candidates who receive the most popular votes). Election results: Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams--the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States--received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; Representative Henry Clay of Virginia won 37 electoral votes; Clay threw support to Adams.

February 9, 1825 - The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election (counted for the first time in this election); 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president; results: Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House; Henry Clay of Virginia won 37 electoral votes threw support to Adams; Adams then appointed Clay to the top Cabinet post of secretary of state.

Harry Ammon (1990). James Monroe; The Quest for National Identity. (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 706 p. [orig. pub. 1971]). Monroe, James, 1758-1831; Presidents--United States--Biography; United States--Politics and government--1817-1825.

--- (1991). James Monroe: A Bibliography. (Westport, CT: Meckler, 125 p.). Monroe, James, 1758-1831 --Bibliography.

Gary Hart (2005). James Monroe. (New York, NY: Times Books, 170 p.). Former . S. Senator (D-CO). Monroe, James, 1758-1831; Presidents--United States--Biography; United States--Politics and government--1817-1825. Remembered primarily for two things: last of the "Virginia Dynasty" (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison), Monroe Doctrine (1823 statement of principles that the western hemisphere was to be considered closed to European intervention). Embarked on an ambitious series of treaties, annexations, and military confrontations that would secure America’s homeland against foreign attack for nearly two hundred years. 

Ernest R. May (1975). The Making of the Monroe Doctrine. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 306 p.). Presidents--United States--Election--1824; Monroe Doctrine; United States--Politics and government--1817-1825; United States--Foreign relations--1817-1825.

Dexter Perkins (1963). A History of the Monroe Doctrine. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 462 p. [rev. ed.]). Monroe doctrine.

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LINKS

James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library  http://www.umw.edu/jamesmonroemuseum                                                             Site for this museum and library dedicated to President James Monroe and his wife, Elizabeth. The site features a chronology of the life and times of James Monroe, images of selected personal objects, information about the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and related material and links. The museum is owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia and administered by the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Note: Some sections are under construction.