"Having served my country from very early life, in all its highest trusts and most difficult emergencies, from the most important of which trusts 1 have lately retired, I cannot otherwise than feel with great sensibility, this proof of the high confidence of this very enlightened and respectable. Assembly.

I regret my appointment from another consideration: a fear, that I shall not be able to discharge the duties of the trust, with advantage to my country.  Being placed, however, here, 1 [would] exert my best faculties, physical and mental, such as they are, at every hazard, to discharge its duties to the satisfaction of this Assembly, and of my country."

James Monroe accepting the Chair at VA Constitutional Convention, 1829