Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was born into the Virginia planter elite of colonial America. He graduated from the College of William and Mary and studied law in Williamsburg, where he was also a member of the House of Burgesses. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when he was just 33 years old, and for more than three decades served his country. Returning to the Virginia legislature, he drafted a bill for religious freedom and in 1779 was elected governor. In 1783 he returned to Congress, where he helped develop plans for incorporating new lands ceded by Britain in the Treaty of Paris, called the Northwest Territory. His time there was brief, since Congress, recognizing the importance of commercial treaties, sent him to Paris on a diplomatic mission. While there Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin and was appointed minister to France, where he witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution. 

In 1789 the newly inaugurated President George Washington called Jefferson home to make him the nation’s first secretary of state under the new Constitution, which had been ratified the previous year. Jefferson was shortly at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury whose economic policies aimed at consolidating national power and favored commercial interests over agriculture. When Britain and France went to war in 1793, Jefferson and Hamilton clashed again. While President Washington declared that the United States would remain neutral, Jefferson favored closer ties to France, which had supported the United States during the Revolution, while Hamilton favored Britain as the nation’s most important trading power. Tension within Washington’s cabinet prompted the emergence of early political parties, Jefferson’s allies as the Democratic-Republicans and Hamilton’s as the Federalists. In 1793, Jefferson resigned.

A candidate for president in 1796, Jefferson came in second and so—according to the constitutional arrangement of the time—served as President John Adams’s vice president. In 1800 Jefferson ran again and won. From 1801 to 1809, his two terms were marked by domestic accomplishments, notably the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, which secured navigation rights on the Mississippi River and doubled the size of the country. The three-year Lewis and Clark Expedition mapped the new lands and brought back specimens of plants and animals that Jefferson delighted in. In foreign affairs, Jefferson sent U.S. warships to the Barbary States on the coast of North Africa to protect American ships from seizure and hostage-taking. But the president had little success in sustaining neutrality in the ongoing war between Britain and France. Both sides seized American ships and even its citizens and the 1807 Embargo Act, which sought to apply economic pressure by prohibiting trade with either, was a failure. It crippled the U.S. economy and left the nation ill-prepared for the war against Great Britain that began in 1812.  

In 1809 Jefferson retired to Monticello, the mansion of his own design near Charlottesville, and spent most of his remaining years planning the University of Virginia. It was what he said he wanted to be remembered for, together with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was born into the Virginia planter elite of colonial America. He graduated from the College of William and Mary and studied law in Williamsburg, where he was also a member of the House of Burgesses. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when he was just 33 years old, and for more than three decades served his country. Returning to the Virginia legislature, he drafted a bill for religious freedom and in 1779 was elected governor. In 1783 he returned to Congress, where he helped develop plans for incorporating new lands ceded by Britain in the Treaty of Paris, called the Northwest Territory. His time there was brief, since Congress, recognizing the importance of commercial treaties, sent him to Paris on a diplomatic mission. While there Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin and was appointed minister to France, where he witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution. 

In 1789 the newly inaugurated President George Washington called Jefferson home to make him the nation’s first secretary of state under the new Constitution, which had been ratified the previous year. Jefferson was shortly at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury whose economic policies aimed at consolidating national power and favored commercial interests over agriculture. When Britain and France went to war in 1793, Jefferson and Hamilton clashed again. While President Washington declared that the United States would remain neutral, Jefferson favored closer ties to France, which had supported the United States during the Revolution, while Hamilton favored Britain as the nation’s most important trading power. Tension within Washington’s cabinet prompted the emergence of early political parties, Jefferson’s allies as the Democratic-Republicans and Hamilton’s as the Federalists. In 1793, Jefferson resigned.

A candidate for president in 1796, Jefferson came in second and so—according to the constitutional arrangement of the time—served as President John Adams’s vice president. In 1800 Jefferson ran again and won. From 1801 to 1809, his two terms were marked by domestic accomplishments, notably the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, which secured navigation rights on the Mississippi River and doubled the size of the country. The three-year Lewis and Clark Expedition mapped the new lands and brought back specimens of plants and animals that Jefferson delighted in. In foreign affairs, Jefferson sent U.S. warships to the Barbary States on the coast of North Africa to protect American ships from seizure and hostage-taking. But the president had little success in sustaining neutrality in the ongoing war between Britain and France. Both sides seized American ships and even its citizens and the 1807 Embargo Act, which sought to apply economic pressure by prohibiting trade with either, was a failure. It crippled the U.S. economy and left the nation ill-prepared for the war against Great Britain that began in 1812.  

In 1809 Jefferson retired to Monticello, the mansion of his own design near Charlottesville, and spent most of his remaining years planning the University of Virginia. It was what he said he wanted to be remembered for, together with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Edmund Jennings Randolph (1753–1813) was born into a leading Virginia family. Like Jefferson, he graduated from the College of William and Mary, studied law, and began practicing law in Williamsburg. When the Revolutionary War began, he broke with his loyalist father and immersed himself in revolutionary politics. He rose in prominence to become governor of Virginia and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. President George Washington appointed Randolph the nation’s first attorney general in 1789 and then, in 1794, secretary of state. 

During the ongoing war between France and Great Britain, Randolph attempted to continue Thomas Jefferson’s preference for close relations with France and to minimize Alexander Hamilton’s influence over President Washington. He objected to Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain (ratified in 1795) on the grounds that its commercial provisions would disrupt trade with neutral countries, particularly France. Hoping to neutralize Randolph’s opposition, the British government gave his opponents intercepted French documents that falsely implied Randolph was open to a bribe. Though he was innocent, he lost Washington’s confidence and resigned. 

Shortly thereafter, however, Randolph’s work on negotiating a treaty with Spain resulted in success. The 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo secured the opening of the Mississippi River to U.S. navigation and fixed boundaries between Spanish possessions and the United States. Randolph returned to Virginia to practice law.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Timothy Pickering (1745–1829) graduated from Harvard College and practiced law before joining the Continental Army during the Revolution. He impressed General George Washington as a confident and skilled negotiator. Early in his administration, President Washington sent Pickering on special diplomatic missions to negotiate a peace agreement with the northeastern Indian tribes. Washington then appointed him, in succession, postmaster general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. 

The war between Great Britain and France continued to dominate American foreign policy. Pickering followed a pro-British agenda, and the 1795 Jay Treaty achieved many of his aims since it gave preferential treatment to Britain in matters of trade. But these terms angered the French, who regarded them as a violation of the 1778 treaties of alliance and commerce and began seizing U.S. merchant ships. President John Adams sent peace commissioners to renegotiate trade treaties, but they were not received by the French ministry. Instead, lower-level French diplomats demanded bribes before negotiations could begin in a scandal that became known as the XYZ Affair. Relations deteriorated further, and for the next two years U.S. and French ships attacked each other in an undeclared war, the so-called Quasi War. Pickering’s protests of Adams’s decision to send another commission to France led to his dismissal.

The Convention of 1800 ended the Quasi-War as well as the French alliance from 1778. In 1803 Pickering was elected senator from Massachusetts, and he later also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. A Federalist firebrand, he led the movement for New England secession during the War of 1812. 

John Marshall (1755–1835) was raised on the Virginia frontier. He fought in the Revolutionary War, serving as a captain in the Continental Army, and studied law at the College of William and Mary before beginning a lifetime of public service. 

Marshall began his diplomatic career in 1797. He was one of three envoys sent to Paris by President John Adams and negotiated trade treaties with the French. His mission was made all the more important by French attacks on neutral U.S. shipping. The mission failed, however, when lower-level French diplomats demanded bribes before negotiations could begin. The XYZ Affair, as it was called, increased tensions between the two countries. Each side attacked the other’s ships in what contemporaries described as a Quasi-War. But for Marshall, who had reported about the scandal, the XYZ Affair turned a diplomatic failure into a personal triumph, as his reputation soared at home. Two years later, Adams appointed him secretary of state. In this position for only a year, he was able to help negotiate a settlement with the French—the Convention of 1800 that ended the undeclared war and established terms for trade.

Just before he left office, President Adams appointed Marshall as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the role for which he is best known. In the next 35 years Marshall led decisions that vastly increased the authority of the judiciary, making it a truly co-equal branch of government with Congress and the presidency. Most notably, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), he established the right of judicial review, that is, the power to declare a law passed by Congress unconstitutional.

James Madison (1751–1836) was born near Port Conway, Virginia, into the planter class. He received an excellent education from private tutors and then studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He served in the Continental Congress and the Virginia House of Delegates, where, with Thomas Jefferson, he drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He represented Virginia at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and his Virginia Plan, with three branches of government and a system of checks and balances, was largely adopted. For his role he is recognized as “The Father of the Constitution.” Madison then, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, penned the Federalist Papers, a series of influential essays that helped build support for the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution. When the new government went into operation in 1789, Madison was immediately elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he sponsored the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Opposed to Hamilton’s economic program and efforts to strengthen the power of the central government, Madison aligned with Thomas Jefferson to form the Democratic-Republican Party. After Jefferson won the 1800 presidential election, he appointed Madison secretary of state. 

As secretary, Madison cooperated closely with President Jefferson. He helped organize negotiations with France that led to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, doubling the size of the United States. Madison also supported Jefferson’s decision to launch a naval war against the Barbary States of North Africa to protect American shipping from state-sponsored piracy. The most critical foreign policy issue of Madison’s term, however, was the continuing war between Great Britain and France. Although as early as 1793 the United States, under President George Washington, had proclaimed neutrality and an intention to trade freely with both warring counties, each side continued to attack U.S. commercial ships. When diplomatic talks broke down, Madison and Jefferson adopted the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited trade with all countries, and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which prohibited trade with just Britain and France. But the prohibitions backfired, harming the U.S. economy, especially after European powers reciprocated with their own trade limitations.

Madison became president in 1809, and his two terms were dominated by the continuing war between Great Britain and France. In 1812 he led the United States into war against Great Britain, not only because of continuing trade violations and attacks but especially because of the British practice of impressment—seizing American sailors off American vessels and forcing them to serve in the British Navy. In 1814 the British invaded the Chesapeake Bay, marched on Washington, and burned government buildings in the city. But already a peace commission was meeting in Ghent, Belgium, and a peace treaty was signed at the very end of the year. 

Madison was determined to rebuild the capital in the City of Washington, and the White House, which had nearly been destroyed by fire, was almost completed when his term ended. He retired to his Virginia mansion, Montpelier.

Robert Smith (1757–1842) was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After serving briefly in the Continental Army during the Revolution, he graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), studied law, and began practicing in Baltimore. He also served in the Maryland legislature. Recognizing Smith’s knowledge of maritime law, President Thomas Jefferson appointed him secretary of the navy in 1801, a position he held until he became secretary of state in 1809.

Smith had actually been President James Madison’s second choice for secretary of state, and Madison did not trust him. Having been secretary of state himself, Madison redrafted many of Smith’s diplomatic notes. It was a tense time, as the United States attempted to maintain neutrality in the continuing war between Great Britain and France, hoping to trade freely with both countries. But neither Britain nor France recognized U.S. neutrality, and both countries seized American ships suspected of trading with the other country. 

Advised by Madison, Smith entered into negotiations with the British minister in Washington, hoping to secure neutral trading rights. They formed a tentative agreement that would end hostilities between the United States and Britain. But, their success turned to disappointment, when their agreement was rejected by the British prime minister in London because it did not commit the United States not to trade with France. Madison sought to dismiss Smith, offering him the post of minister to Russia, but Smith resigned and did not return to government service. Frustration over the agreement’s failure helped propel Britain and the United States into the War of 1812.

James Monroe (1758–1831) was born to a plantation family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He studied at the College of William and Mary. In 1775 he enlisted in the Third Virginia Infantry and fought under General George Washington’s command during the Revolutionary War. Following the war, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, then the U.S. Senate, and then as governor of Virginia.

Monroe served on several diplomatic missions that addressed the most critical threats facing his generation. President George Washington appointed him minister to France in 1794, but tensions over the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain strained diplomatic relations and he was recalled in 1796. Monroe returned to France in 1803, to assist with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations, which doubled the size of the United States. He then went on to London, where he served as minister to Britain from 1803 until 1807, a period complicated by disputes over U.S. neutrality rights during the long war between Britain and France. Not only was each warring nation attacking U.S. shipping, but the British were seizing sailors off U.S. ships and forcing them to serve in the British Navy, a practice called impressment. Monroe tried to negotiate a halt to the practice, but failed. During this time he also traveled to Spain, hoping to gain recognition of West Florida as a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but was unsuccessful.

Appointed secretary of state by President James Madison, Monroe became convinced that war against Great Britain was necessary. Congress passed a declaration of war on June 17, 1812. Although the United States did win some naval battles, the war—known as the War of 1812—went badly, and when the secretary of war resigned, President Madison asked Monroe to also take on the post as acting secretary. In August 1814 British troops marched into Washington and burned government buildings in the city. Meanwhile peace talks were under way in Ghent, Belgium, and a treaty that restored the status quo was signed in December of that year. The news had not yet arrived, however, when in January 1815 General Andrew Jackson defeated the British in New Orleans. The great victory launched a period of national pride.

In 1816, Monroe was elected president, ushering in what was known as the Era of Good Feelings. Federalist opposition to the war proved such an embarrassment that the party faded away, and when Monroe ran for president again in 1820 he ran unopposed. His administration was notable for foreign policy successes, including the acquisition of Florida in 1819 and the issuance of the Monroe Doctrine, crafted by his influential secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. In his annual address to Congress in December 1823, Monroe warned the imperial powers of Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, where former colonies of Spain had just won independence. In turn, Monroe stated that the United States would not interfere in wars between the nations of Europe. This Monroe Doctrine guided U.S. foreign policy for a century.

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the son of John and Abigail Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. His diplomatic career began at age 10, when he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, and then to Holland and London. At age 14, conversant in French, he traveled to Russia as private secretary to the U.S. minister, Francis Dana. Young Adams also served as secretary to his father during the peace negotiations for the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. In 1787 Adams graduated from Harvard College and began practicing law in Boston.

Soon Adams became a diplomat in his own right. President George Washington appointed him U.S. minister to the Netherlands in 1794. Three years later, he became U.S. minister to Prussia, appointed this time by his father, President John Adams. The younger Adams returned to the United States to serve as senator from Massachusetts from 1803 to 1808. In 1809 President James Madison appointed John Quincy Adams U.S. minister to Russia, where he served until 1814, when Madison sent him to Belgium, to the neutral city of Ghent, to lead the peace commission negotiating an end to the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. Adams next served as minister to Great Britain, starting the negotiations to disarm the Great Lakes that culminated in the Rush-Bagot Pact of 1817. He also guided the progress of the Convention of 1818, which set the boundary between the United States and British North America (later Canada) from the Lake of the Woods to the crest of Rocky Mountains and stipulated the joint occupation of the Oregon Country. In 1817 President James Monroe called Adams home to be secretary of state.

As secretary, Adams’s brilliant diplomacy led to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, by which the United States acquired Florida from Spain, which also gave up its claim to the Oregon Country. But Adams is most famous for the Monroe Doctrine, which reflected his views, and was first  announced publicly by President Monroe during his annual address in 1823. Monroe warned the imperial powers of Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, where former colonies of Spain had just won independence. In turn, Monroe stated that the United States would not interfere in wars between the nations of Europe. The United States went on to recognize the new Latin American republics and thereafter assumed a protective role over them.

In 1825 Adams became president following a disputed election. Supporters of his opponent, Andrew Jackson, did not make his time in office easy. Defeated in 1828, Adams returned to Massachusetts, which soon sent him back to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington. There he served until his death in 1848, an opponent of the expansion of slavery. In 1839 he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Africans who had mutinied aboard the Amistad were free and should not be returned to Spain.

Henry Clay (1777–1852) was born in Hanover County, Virginia. He read law and moved to Kentucky in 1797. An eloquent speaker, he represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate for most of the rest of his life. Clay’s appointment as secretary of state was controversial.

Clay had run for the presidency in 1824, but there were multiple candidates and he came in fourth. As there was no clear majority in the electoral college, the top three candidates were to be voted on in the House of Representatives, where Clay held influence as Speaker. Clay lent his support to John Quincy Adams, bypassing Andrew Jackson, who had come in first, and when Adams won the presidency, he immediately named Clay his secretary of state, a position that had often, in the past, led to the presidency. Jackson’s supporters called the arrangement a “corrupt bargain.” 

Clay did have diplomatic experience. A decade earlier he had been one of the commissioners in Ghent who negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the War of 1812 with Britain. As secretary, he oversaw the settlement of twelve commercial treaties and developed economic ties with the newly independent Latin American republics. Although he encountered setbacks in disputes with Mexico over Texas—the remote Mexican province where Americans were settling—and with Britain over Oregon, his emphasis on U.S. economic expansion was a forerunner of modern U.S. diplomacy. 

After his tenure, Clay returned to the U.S. Senate from 1831 to 1842 and from 1849 to 1852. His fame as “The Great Compromiser” came from his political success in working out settlements in the Missouri Compromise of 1820–21, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, and the Compromise of 1850 that attempted to settle the issue of slavery in the territories.

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) was born in Kinderhook, New York. He attended village schools, studied law, and entered politics. He was New York attorney general, U.S. senator, and governor, a position he resigned to join Andrew Jackson’s cabinet as secretary of state. Over time, he became one of Jackson’s closest advisers.

As secretary, Van Buren opened U.S. trade in the British West Indies and in regions around the Black Sea, and he secured promises from the French that they would pay for U.S. property seized during their wars against Great Britain earlier in the century. But he failed to establish a commercial treaty with Russia, to persuade Mexico to sell Texas, and to settle a boundary dispute in Maine with Great Britain. 

In a shake-up of Jackson’s cabinet, Van Buren resigned and was appointed U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1831, but the U.S. Senate rejected his nomination. He returned to the United States and joined Jackson’s reelection campaign as vice president. In 1836 Van Buren was elected president. Shortly after he entered office the U.S. economy took a severe downturn, and his term was marred by hardship. Tensions with Mexico over Texas and with Great Britain over the Maine boundary remained, and he lost his bid for reelection. Van Buren sought the Democratic nomination in 1844 but lost to James K. Polk. In 1848 he ran for president again as the nominee of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of slavery in the western territories. The party made a strong showing for a third party, winning 10 percent of the vote, but after 1848 Van Buren retired from active politics.