" This is, after all, a man who was president of a nation he never wished to come into being. Monroe had opposed the Constitution. And he helped Jefferson oppose damned near everything else. The debt, the bank, the Jay Treaty, and a standing army that would’ve prevented the nation’s capital from being burned to the ground. In short, James Monroe set himself against nearly every good "
― Stephanie Dray , My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton