These resources are amply sufficient to bring the war to an honorable issue.  Our nation is in number more than half that of the British Isles.  It is composed of a brave, a free, a virtuous, and an intelligent people.  Our country abounds in the necessaries, the arts, and the comforts of life.  A general prosperity is visible in the public countenance.  The means employed by the British cabinet to undermine it have recoiled on themselves; have given to our national faculties a more rapid development, and, draining or diverting the precious metals from British circulation and British vaults, have poured them into those of the United States.  It is a propitious consideration that an unavoidable war should have found this seasonable facility for the contributions required to support it.  When the public voice called for war, all knew, and still know, that without them it could not be carried on through the period which it might last, and the patriotism, the good sense, and the manly spirit of our fellow-citizens are pledges for the cheerfulness with which they will bear each his share of the common burden.  To render the war short and its success sure, animated and systematic exertions alone are necessary, and the success of our arms now may long preserve our country from the necessity of another resort to them.  Already have the gallant exploits of our naval heroes proved to the world our inherent capacity to maintain our rights on one element.  If the reputation of our arms has been thrown under clouds on the other, presaging flashes of heroic enterprise assure us that nothing is wanting to correspondent triumphs there also but the discipline and habits which are in daily progress.

***

James Monroe
First Inaugural Address
Tuesday, March 4, 1817

I should be destitute of feeling if I was not deeply affected by the strong proof which my fellow-citizens have given me of their confidence in calling me to the high office whose functions I am about to assume.  As the expression of their good opinion of my conduct in the public service, I derive from it a gratification which those who are conscious of having done all that they could to merit it can alone feel.  My sensibility is increased by a just estimate of the importance of the trust and of the nature and extent of its duties, with the proper discharge of which the highest interests of a great and free people are intimately connected.  Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on these duties without great anxiety for the result.  From a just responsibility I will never shrink, calculating with confidence that in my best efforts to promote the public welfare my motives will always be duly appreciated and my conduct be viewed with that candor and indulgence which I have experienced in other stations.

In commencing the duties of the chief executive office it has been the practice of the distinguished men who have gone before me to explain the principles which would govern them in their respective Administrations.  In following their venerated example my attention is naturally drawn to the great causes which have contributed in a principal degree to produce the present happy condition of the United States.  They will best explain the nature of our duties and shed much light on the policy which ought to be pursued in future.