Monroe was not permitted to practice law long. As United States Senator, diplomat, Governor, Cabinet officer, and President, his time was so fully occupied that no one but a man of his fine physique and endurance could have stood the strain. Once, during the War of 1812, according to his friend, Judge E. R. Watson, when the burden of three of the departments of the government rested on him--State, Treasury, and War--he did not undress himself for ten days and nights, and was in the saddle the greater part of the time. After some years he bought an estate in Loudoun County, Virginia, to which he retired for a brief rest whenever this was possible. For a time the old dormer-windowed house on the property satisfied him, but during his presidential term he built Oak Hill, the house for which Jefferson had prepared the plans. It is said that the nails used in its construction were manufactured on the Jefferson estate. The house--which was named Oak Hill because of the oaks on the lawn, planted by the owner himself, one for each State of the Union--has been described by Major R. W. N. Noland as follows: "The building was superintended by Mr. William Benton, an Englishman, who occupied the mixed relation to Mr. Monroe of steward, counsellor and friend. The house is built of brick in a most substantial manner, and handsomely finished; it is, perhaps, about 90 x 50 feet, three stories (including basement), and has a wide portico, fronting south, with massive Doric columns thirty feet high, and is surrounded by a grove of magnificent oaks covering several acres. While the location is not as commanding as many others in that section, being in lower Loudoun where the rolling character of the Piedmont region begins to lose itself in the flat lands of tide water, the house in two directions commands an attractive and somewhat extensive view, but on the other side it is hemmed in by mountains, for the local names of which, 'Bull Run' and 'Nigger Mountain,' it is to be hoped the late President is in no wise responsible.... The little stream that washes the confines of the Oak Hill estate once bore the Indian name Gohongarestaw (the River of Swans), and is now called Goose Creek." After the expiration of his second term as President Monroe made Oak Hill his permanent home, though sometimes he was with his daughter, Mrs. Gouverneur, in New York. One who was a member of the household during a part of the six years of the life in Virginia said that he "looked perhaps older than he was, his face being strongly marked with the lines of anxiety and care."