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Outline of the Paper
Under James Knox Polk, the United States grew by more than a million square
miles, across Texas and New Mexico to California and even Oregon. More than
any other president, Polk exercised Manifest Destiny, an expression coined
by a magazine to express the confidence that the United States was entitled
to rule as much of the continent as it could acquire. He fruitfully waged
war against Mexico, and thus obtained for the U.S. most of its present
boundaries as a nation. When the Democrats arranged to select their
presidential nominee for the election of 1844, no one predictable Polk to
come out at the top of the ticket. The convention deadlocked, and Van Buren
threw his delegates after the nation's first pessimist candidate, James Knox
Polk. Opposition Whigs soon asked the question: "Who is James K. Polk?" No
one in the country at first knew, so Polk developed an open stage to answer
the question. With Pennsylvania's George Dallas as his running mate, Polk
announced his support for both the incarcerate of Texas and the
"reoccupation" of Oregon from the British all of the Pacific Northwest amid
the latitudes of 54' north and 40' south. The election was vicious, with
slavery and slur at its center. Both Polk and his Whig foe, Henry Clay,
owned slaves, though Clay opposed the occupation of Texas. Polk soon found
himself in a crisis. Domestically, Polk found himself challenged by the
Wilmot Proviso, a bill that banned slavery in all territories acquired from
Mexico. Polk kept his word not to run for a second term and was succeeded in
office by the hero of the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor, candidate of the
opposition Whig Party. He left most of his estate to his wife, with the ask
for that she free their slaves upon her death. Polk left behind a country
that was both larger and weaker long-drawn-out by more than a million square
miles but lethally torn over the issue he had refused to address: slavery.
Thesis Statement
President James K. Polk remains one of those six Presidents crowded into the
period between 1840 and 1860 which tend to become a hazy blur, rather than
attaining the place of greater importance he actually deserves. In fact, a
leading historian called Polk "the one bright spot in the dull void between
Jackson and Lincoln”. Despite this, Polk, who "came out of nowhere" to
become President in 1844 and talented all he set out to do during his
administration, managed to return to dimness and remain there. Yet all this
might not have been, had President James Knox Polk not tracked his
principles with such vitality. Therefore, it's strange indeed that there is
so little national commemoration of this man and the critical role his
presidency played.
Life History
James K. Polk was born into a prominent and prosperous Scotch-Irish family
in western North Carolina in 1795, Polk was raised in an atmosphere of
strict Presbyterianism, from which he derived a rigid discipline that would
govern his actions to the end of his life. As a youth he moved with his
family to middle Tennessee, where his father and grandfather had by now
acquired vast tracts of land, but returned to the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill for his education. There he majored in mathematics
and the classics, subjects he felt would best discipline his mind.
Although trained in the law following his graduation in 1818, Polk preferred
the enthusiasm of a political career. The mid-1820s was a time of political
change and change, and a new party system was forming around the imposing
figure of Andrew Jackson, a long-time friend of the Polk family. Polk
entered national politics in 1825, when he was elected to his first term in
the lower house of congress. A devoted follower of Old Hickory, he played a
significant role in the organization of the new Democratic party and
remained a cherished friend of Jackson for two decades. Re-elected six
times, Polk served in the House of Representatives for fourteen years, seven
terms, from 1825 to 1839. (Bergeron, Paul H., 1987.)
Like his mentor, Polk championed states rights and a strict interpretation
of the Constitution. He believed in a simple, plain, and economical
government, and enthusiastically opposed the hard work of such men as John
Quincy Adams and Henry Clay to combine power on the national level. The
greatest threat to republican government, Polk was persuaded, was the
growing power of money and of a "moneyed aristocracy”, symbolized in the
Second United States Bank.
During his last two terms in the House
of Representatives, Polk held the office of Speaker, at a time when the
slavery issue was heating up and the first sparks of American territorial
expansion were being struck. The abolition movement, following a new
militant strategy, flooded the house with petitions demanding the abolition
of slavery, at the same time that Texas threw off Mexican rule and raised
the possibility that the number of slave states would soon be increased. For
Speaker Polk, it was an induction of fire, as he encountered for the first
time the intensity and depth of feeling linked with the slavery question.
Although a slaveholder and owner of two plantations, Polk had never been an
insistent defender of the institution. He always insisted that the
abolitionists, those who attacked the institution' were motivated primarily
by political and anti-southern considerations and would stop at nothing to
achieve their goals, even the destruction of the republic.
Polk unwillingly left his seat in congress in 1839 to serve a single two-
year term as governor of Tennessee, a move he agreed to make in order to
redeem his state from Whig rule and to reinforce the Democratic Party. After
two unsuccessful bids for re-election, he decided to save his political
career by becoming a candidate for the vice presidential nomination in 1844.
(Sellars, Charles. 1957-66.)
Little Further
The popularity of the expansionist platform adopted by the Democratic Party,
Clay's incapability to make up his mind on the issue of Texas annexation,
his denial of northern abolitionist support, and the confusion in the Whig
ranks provoked by Clay's bitter feud with President John Tyler, were all
factors that influenced the outcome of the election. Contrary to all
potential, Polk eked out a narrow victory on Election Day to become at age
49 the youngest president in American history to that time. No one was more
astonished at the result than Polk himself.
The Whigs were surprised, and some never got over their defeat. One such was
Abraham Lincoln, who nurtured his antipathy for four years? Until 1848, when
he finally exploded in fury over Polk's effort to justify the war with
Mexico. Polk, he declared, was a liar. Addressing the House of
Representatives in inconsiderate and strident language that belied his
reputation for composed and reasoned argument, Lincoln accused Polk with
abusing the power of his office, contemptuously disregarding the
Constitution, usurping the role of congress, and assuming the part of
dictator. He compared the president's weak explanations to the "half-insane
mumbling of a fever dream”, and called down upon Polk's head the wrath of
God. (McCoy, Charles A., 1960.)
With two such leaders, the one virtually canonized for leading the nation
through the fiery trial of civil war, the other the rescuer of the union on
the field of battle, both invoking the Deity against the miserable
executive, who could doubt that our eleventh president deserved the
opprobrium of an outraged people. Historians script the history of the Civil
War during the last decades of the nineteenth century certainly had no
doubts. Polk, they noted, was a southerner and a slaveholder, whose policies
as president fostered the expansion of slavery, perpetuate the grip of the
south on the national government, and placed the nation on the road to civil
war. In their histories, he became "Polk the Mendacious”, a scheming
intriguer, bowing in servile subservience to the immoral designs of the
slave power.
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Heart of the Paper
Attitudes, however, began to change in the years following the twist of
the century. The generation that fought the Civil War was gradually
disappearing from the scene, replaced by younger writers, many of them
academics, whose judgments were based less on emotion and first-hand
experience and more on an unruffled examination of the records. Of
singular importance was Polk's diary, available in four volumes in 1910
and reprinted and abridged in later editions. It has been more
responsible than any other source for encouraging a reassessment of
Polk's presidency. Recognized today as one of the most precious
documents for the study of the American presidency, the diary provides a
rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of decision-making in the White House,
and offers a strange insight into the day-by-day administration of the
government during one of the most critical and stimulating periods in
American history. Presidents who wish to be remembered as great, some
have said, should keep diaries.
One of the surprises has been the constantly high ranking in all the polls
of James K. Polk. Listed as "Near Great" among the top ten presidents in all
the early rankings, Polk was classified as "Above Average”, twelfth of the
thirty-six presidents listed, in the most recent poll. A very unscientific
ranking by Harry Truman, himself one of the polls' best presidents appeared
in 1988, when he presented his selection of the eight best presidents. Named
by Truman in no particular order were Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson,
Jackson, Cleveland, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and James K. Polk. Of
Polk, Truman wrote, "This choice may surprise some people." And so it did.
Political Career
Polk's election as president may appear the entire stranger to us today, for
in character and personality he hardly conformed to the image we seem to
prefer in our chief executives. He lacked charisma, had no declamatory
power, and no personal magnetism. He was patient, modest, and even dull. One
Washington editor found him to be the "most unpretending man, for his
talents, this, or perhaps any country, has ever seen”. Polk's
political enemies often made the most of Polk's simple matter-of-fact
manner. John Quincy Adams, who elevated personal slander to an art form,
found Polk to be hardly qualified "for an eminent County Court lawyer”.
When he conventional the Democratic nomination for president, Polk promised
that, if elected, he would not be a candidate for re-election, that a single
term as president was that entire he wanted and he kept his assure. His
friends felt that he had made a mistake, and his political opponents refused
to consider that he would oppose the temptation of a second term, but Polk
remained steadfast. Widely known as Young Hickory, Polk was determined to
reinstate the program and policies of Old Hickory that had suffered erosion
under the Whigs following the 1840 election. He held the Jacksonian idea of
the presidency that the president was the only officer of government elected
by all the people that he would be president of all the people that it was
his responsibility to heed the voice of the people and to carry out the
popular will. Like Jackson, Polk made complete use of the power of the
presidency, with the exercise of the veto power, to achieve his goals. (Eisenhhower,
John S. D, 1989.) Though a southerner at a time when the south's role in the
nation was being questioned, he refused to be familiar with sectional, as
opposed to national, interests, and remained distant from the factional
differences within his own party. Reserved and quiet by nature, he hardly
ever took others into his self-assurance and rarely sought the advice of
even his closest friends.
Polk concentrated his full energy on carrying out the duties of his office.
No preceding president, it was said, had ever applied himself so diligently
to the government's business. Twelve hour work days were not uncommon. He
seldom allotted responsibilities or shared the burdens of his office with
others. While he maintained a close watch over his cabinet departments and
demanded firm cooperation from his cabinet members, he also learned to do
without them. (Hietala, Thomas R., 1985.)
During his four years as president, Polk hardly ever left Washington. He
regarded time as wasted if it was spent in mere contentment. He insisted
that presidents who took their duties gravely could never take vacations. "
Polk's initial address was a message of hope and self-assurance to a nation
that was not many years older than he. He paid compliment to America's
republican system, the "most estimable and wisest system of well-regulated
self-government ever planned by human minds”, and to the nation's
providential role as the world's "model republic”. He repeated his
Jacksonian faith in a strict adherence to the constitution and a
conscientious regard for the rights of the states, and he warned against
those forces that were endangering the Union. Like Jackson, he believed that
it was the sacred duty of every American to protect and protect the Union.
Lastly, he dedicated himself to the new spirit of continental expansion,
what soon would be termed 'manifest destiny."
Like Old Hickory, Polk was devoted to
his party as the principal instrument for carrying out the popular will. To
him, it was in every respect the party of democracy. In charting the course
of his administration, he was predisposed first and foremost by the
Democratic Party platform on which he had stood in the presidential
election. Texas, which he regarded as having once been a part of the
country, must be restored to the United States, and the Oregon country, to
which America held a clear and indisputable title and which at that very
moment was being settled by thousands of Americans, must be brought under
the authority of American republicanism, in spite of the greedy hands of
British imperial power. To these goals were added the reduction of the levy
to a revenue level, with the removal of the protective principle so dear to
the hearts of Whigs, and the concern of the independent treasury system, the
democratic alternative to the Whig preference for an omnipotent central
bank. Finally, Polk added the acquisition of California, an aim that sprang
from economic and obvious destiny considerations as well as from signs of
British infringement on the Pacific coast. Having listed his objectives,
Polk pursued them relentlessly until he had accomplished them all. Four
months after Polk took office, the capture of Texas was completed, and by
December 1845 when Texas was admitted to the Union as a state, the boundary
of the United States was extended to the Rio Grande.
The first president to use the principles of the Monroe Doctrine following
its first declaration in 1823, Polk seized the initiative in the
negotiations with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary in what proved to
be a risky but winning game of brinksmanship. Within fifteen months of his
investiture, Polk had presided over the addition of two huge regions to the
United States, Texas, and Oregon. The addition of Texas to the Union,
though, involved the United States in a war with its southern neighbor.
Almost certainly the most remembered and most studied of the events during
Polk's presidency was the war with Mexico. The causes of the war are complex
and contentious. Suffice it to say that a background of deteriorating
relations between the two countries came to peak when Mexico challenged the
addition of Texas to the American Union, that people in both countries
sought and welcomed war, that Mexico took the first steps toward severing
relations with the United States and made the first war declaration, and
that Polk made a grave attempt to settle the accusations by peaceful
negotiation only to have the effort spurned by Mexico's military leadership.
(McMormac, Eugene I., 1922.)
Closure
To Polk, the war with Mexico, fought mainly by volunteers drawn from
civilian life, tested the power of American democracy. A nation based on
democratic principles had vanquished a military dictatorship, proving that
republics were not as weak and unproductive as Europe's monarchies said they
were. When Polk left office in March 1849, he was bodily exhausted and
suffering ill health. His condition worsened as he made a triumphal tour
from side to side the south on his way to his home in Tennessee. On the day
he left the White House, he had expressed his respite that he was now free
from all public cares. Three months after he left Washington, he died. Polk
left behind him an inheritance of leadership that Americans will surely come
to be grateful for. Who is James K. Polk? Perhaps Harry Truman, a person of
no little presidential experience himself, put it best: Polk exercised the
powers of the Presidency as they should be exercised; he knew exactly what
he wanted to do in a particular period of time and did it, and when he got
from side to side with it he went home.
References
Bergeron, Paul H. The Presidency of James K. Polk. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1987.
Eisenhhower, John S. D. So Far From God: The U.S. War with Mexico,
1846-1848. New York, 1989
Hietala, Thomas R. Manifest Destiny: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late
Jacksonian America. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1985.
McMormac, Eugene I. James K. Polk: A Political Biography. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1922.
McCoy, Charles A. Polk, and the Presidency. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1960.
Sellars, Charles. James K. Polk. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1957-66.
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