Polk, James Knox (1795-1849), was president when the United States added the greatest amount of new territory to the country. During his presidency, the American flag was raised over most of the area now forming nine Western States, and Texas became a member of the Union. Polk successfully directed the Mexican War, which won much of this territory. He carried out every item of his political program. Of all other American presidents, only George Washington had such a clear record of success.
Polk’s era was the “Fabulous 40’s.” The country seethed with excitement, energy, and prosperity. Covered wagons were crowding the Oregon Trail, heading west across the prairies and mountains to the Pacific Coast. The telegraph, a new wonder, carried news of Polk’s nomination. The discovery of gold in California started one of the greatest movements of people in American history. On their way west, the “Forty-Niners” sang such songs as “Be Kind to the Loved Ones at Home” and Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna.” Such authors and poets as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Poe produced the “Golden Age of American letters.”
The national scene had its unpleasant side, too. Reformers called attention to the hardships of children working in factories and to the poverty of immigrants. Slavery rested uneasily in the thoughts of many Americans. A lack of concern by Polk for these social problems made reformers dislike him. They regarded him as a tool of the slaveowners. Their unfriendly writings outlived Polk’s reputation for success. This explains why, for a time, history held Polk in low regard.
Although Polk was a close friend and follower of the great statesman Andrew Jackson, he lacked Jackson’s personal attraction. Polk was a cold, silent, narrow, and ungenerous person. He did not seek a second term, and few people regretted it.
The nomination of Polk by the Democratic Party in 1844 surprised the nation. But Polk defeated the Whig candidate, the famous Henry Clay, because he understood the desire of Americans to see the United States become more powerful. Like most Americans of his day, Polk believed it was the “manifest destiny” of the United States to expand across North America. In this sense, he appears to deserve the tribute of George Bancroft, the great historian who served as his secretary of the Navy. Bancroft called Polk “prudent, farsighted … one of the very foremost of our public men, and one of the very best and most honest and most successful presidents the country ever had.”
Early life
Childhood.
James Knox Polk, the son of Samuel Polk and Jane Knox Polk, was born on Nov. 2, 1795, on a farm near Pineville, North Carolina. The Polks had emigrated from Ireland to America. The family name was originally Pollock or Pollok. In time it became Polk, after being repeatedly mispronounced Poll’k.
In 1806, Samuel Polk moved his large family to the fertile Duck River Valley in the central part of Tennessee. He combined farming and surveying with land speculation and became one of the wealthiest men of his region.
James, the oldest of 10 children, was a small and sickly boy. His parents spared him many of the chores done by most farm boys. But James learned to help his father survey and manage the large farms. He later worked briefly as a clerk in a general store.
Education.
Polk studied for a year in the Zion Church in Maury, then entered the Murfreesboro Academy. In 1815, he entered the sophomore class of the University of North Carolina. He graduated at the top of his class in 1818.
After graduation, Polk returned home and entered the law office of Felix Grundy, one of the foremost lawyers and politicians in Tennessee. Grundy introduced him to the great Andrew Jackson. After a year of study, Polk was admitted to the bar in 1820. He began to practice in Columbia and soon had all the cases he could handle.
Political and public activities
Lawyer and legislator.
Politics proved more attractive than law. Polk’s short height and his speeches on behalf of the Democratic Party won him the nickname of “Napoleon of the Stump.” In 1821, while still practicing law, he became chief clerk of the Tennessee Senate. He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1823. There he worked to improve the state school system and to reduce taxes. More important to his future, he decided to support Andrew Jackson’s presidential ambitions. “Old Hickory” took a keen interest in Polk’s political career. Jackson and Polk became so close that Polk received the nickname of “Young Hickory.”
Polk’s family.
In nearby Murfreesboro, Polk met and courted Sarah Childress (Sept. 4, 1803-Aug. 14, 1891). She was the daughter of a well-to-do country merchant. She had been brought up in a strict religious environment and attended the Salem Female Academy, founded by the Moravian Church. She and Polk were married in a large country wedding on New Year’s Day in 1824. Mrs. Polk encouraged her husband’s political career, and she proved to be his closest political adviser throughout his career. Mrs. Polk was devoted to Jackson, whom she called “Uncle Andrew.” In turn, Jackson called her “Sally.” The Polks had no children.
Congressman.
In 1825, Polk was elected to the first of seven consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives. He was one of its youngest members and quickly established himself as a loyal Democratic Party man. He attracted attention by his bitter opposition to the policies of President John Quincy Adams, who had defeated Jackson in 1824.
In 1835, during Jackson’s presidency, Polk became speaker of the House. He worked hard, and in 14 years as a congressman was absent only once. During his three years as speaker, Polk claimed that he had “to decide more questions of parliamentary law and order” than all his predecessors combined.
Governor.
In 1839, Jackson persuaded Polk to run for governor of Tennessee. Jackson felt that only Polk could unite the state Democratic Party, which had been torn by internal strife and by Whig victories of the previous four years. Polk won the election. In his inaugural address, he announced that he supported states’ rights and slavery and opposed the centralization of powers in Washington.
Polk shunned the social life of the state capital. He complained that he “could not lose half a day just to go and dine.” He lost his bid for reelection in the Whig landslide of 1841. He ran again in 1843, but lost.
Meanwhile, Polk’s interests had shifted back to the national scene. He felt he had Jackson’s support for the vice presidency. He probably toyed with the idea of the presidency, but neither he nor anyone else took his chances for that office seriously in 1843.
Election of 1844.
A combination of circumstances now played into Polk’s hand. Former President Martin Van Buren was again the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. The annexation of Texas was the chief political issue of the day. Van Buren opposed immediate annexation because it might lead to war with Mexico. This position cost Van Buren the support of the West and of the South, which sought to expand slave territory. Polk cleverly argued that Texas and Oregon had always belonged to the United States by right. He called for “the immediate reannexation of Texas” and for the “reoccupation” of the disputed Oregon Territory.
At the Democratic presidential convention of 1844, Van Buren failed to win the two-thirds vote then required for nomination. The delegates could not agree on Van Buren or his chief rival, Lewis Cass of Michigan, a former U.S. minister to France. On the eighth ballot, the historian George Bancroft, a delegate from Massachusetts, proposed Polk as a compromise candidate. On the next roll call, the convention unanimously accepted Polk, who became the first “dark horse,” or little-known, presidential candidate. The delegates selected Senator Silas Wright of New York for vice president. But Wright, an admirer of Van Buren, rejected the nomination. This was the first time a man actually nominated for vice president refused to run. The Democrats then nominated George M. Dallas, a Pennsylvania lawyer.
Polk was not well known nationally, and many people asked, “Who is James K. Polk?” This question became a Whig campaign slogan. The Democrats countered with their slogan of “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!” They meant that the United States should have the entire Oregon Territory, north to the latitude of 54 degrees 40 minutes, even if the country had to go to war with the United Kingdom for it.
The Whigs nominated former Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky for president and chose Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey for vice president. Polk, a relative unknown, was opposing a man who twice had run for the presidency and lost. Clay tried to keep the Texas issue out of the campaign because he feared he would lose the Northern antislavery vote if he supported annexation. Polk took a forthright position for annexation. He won the election by about 40,000 votes.
Polk’s administration (1845-1849)
A cold, steady rain swept the unpaved streets of Washington during Polk’s inauguration. The new president confided to Bancroft, whom he had appointed secretary of the Navy, that “there are four great measures which are to be measures of my Administration.” Polk’s four goals were to: (1) reduce the tariff, (2) reestablish an independent treasury, (3) settle the Oregon boundary dispute with the United Kingdom, and (4) acquire California. He was to achieve all these objectives.
Life in the White House
changed greatly during Polk’s administration. The Polks held informal evening receptions twice a month in the Executive Mansion, where gaslights for the first time replaced oil lamps and candles.
As first lady, Mrs. Polk continued to take an active interest in political affairs. A keen editor, she looked over and approved her husband’s writings. She read newspapers and clipped items for her husband to see.
Because of Mrs. Polk’s strict religious beliefs, she and the president refused to attend the theater or the horse races. Mrs. Polk banned dancing, card-playing, and alcoholic drinks from the White House. She also refused to permit visitors in the White House on the Sabbath. Polk even declined to accept the credentials of the Austrian minister who called on him at the White House on a Sunday. The Polks attended the First Presbyterian Church regularly, although Polk himself joined no church until shortly before he died.
Tariff reduction.
Polk had long favored a tariff for revenue only, with “protection being incident and not the object.” Robert J. Walker, Polk’s secretary of the treasury, drafted a tariff law, and Congress passed it in 1846. The Walker Tariff included some protective features. But it admitted tea and coffee duty-free and also generally lowered rates. This law was the first tariff to be drafted by the executive branch of the government and the first to be based on the value, rather than on the quantity, of imports.
An independent treasury.
Less than a week after passing the tariff bill, Congress set up an independent treasury to hold and disburse federal funds. Subtreasuries were established in several major cities. President Van Buren had persuaded Congress to create such federal depositories, independent of private business and state banks. But the Whigs had repealed the law in 1841. The Independent Treasury Act of 1846 formed the basis of the nation’s fiscal system until Congress passed a law that established the Federal Reserve System in 1913 (see Federal Reserve System ).
“Oregon fever”
swept the country in the early 1840’s. Beginning in 1843, thousands of pioneers journeyed along the Oregon Trail and settled along the banks of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the Oregon Territory. The British, who were strongly established north of the Columbia, claimed the entire territory. The dispute between the United States and the United Kingdom had been “settled” in 1818 by an agreement for joint occupation. Now many members of Congress demanded an end to that agreement. They clamored for American possession of the territory, all the way north to the latitude of 54° 40′.
During the 1844 presidential campaign, Polk maintained that title to the Oregon Territory was “clear and unquestionable” because of American settlements there. As president, he modified his position. He did not want to fight the United Kingdom over the disputed territory, particularly because war with Mexico appeared near. But he confided in his diary that “the only way to treat John Bull is to look him straight in the eye.” First, Polk renewed an earlier offer to compromise on the 49th parallel. The United Kingdom rejected the offer, but later made the same proposal, which became the basis of the Oregon Treaty of 1846. See Oregon Territory .
The Mexican War
achieved the fourth of Polk’s goals, the acquisition of California. Earlier he had offered to buy California from Mexico. But Mexico had no intention of selling, particularly because it was then engaged in a dispute with the United States over Texas, a former Mexican possession.
The United States had annexed Texas, but Mexico refused to give up its claims or agree to a boundary for the new state. Polk then ordered American troops to occupy disputed territory south of the Nueces River. American General Zachary Taylor advanced to the bank of the Rio Grande. On April 25, 1846, Mexican troops crossed the river near Matamoros and battled American cavalry. Many historians believe that Mexico had a valid claim to the land where the battle took place. But on May 11, Polk asked Congress to declare war, saying that “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil.”
The Mexican War ended in an American victory. Under the peace treaty signed in 1848, Mexico gave up all claims to Texas and also ceded land forming all or part of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The United States paid Mexico $15 million for the land and also took responsibility for paying $3 million in damage claims made by American citizens against Mexico.
“The Polk Doctrine.”
A few months after the Mexican War, Polk reaffirmed and extended the Monroe Doctrine in a special message to Congress (see Monroe Doctrine ). The president said that the doctrine was “our settled policy, that no further European colony or dominion shall, with our consent, be planted or established on any part of the North American Continent.” Polk extended the doctrine to cover European interference in the relations among American countries.
Retirement.
When Polk had accepted the nomination for president in 1844, he declared he would “enter upon the discharge of the high and solemn duties of the office with the settled purpose of not being a candidate for reelection.” He was the first president not to seek reelection. Polk left the nation not only his record of political accomplishment and territory acquired, but also a diary that is an invaluable record of his presidency.
After his successor, Zachary Taylor, was inaugurated, the white-haired Polk returned to his home in Nashville, Tennessee, worn out by four years of hard work. He became ill with cholera and died on June 15, 1849. Polk was buried in the city cemetery and later reburied on the ground of his estate, Polk Place. Mrs. Polk lived at Polk Place until her death in 1891 and was buried beside her husband. In 1893, the Polks’ remains were moved to a tomb on the grounds of the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville.
