Professor Dave here, I wanna tell you about James Polk.
James Knox Polk, a Jacksonian Democrat, is considered the only strong president during
the quarter of a century preceding the Civil War, and not just for his hairstyle, which
has been described as the first “mullet”.
He announced his intentions and met them, and having achieved his stated objectives,
he kept his campaign promise of serving only one term, retiring as the only President to
have served as Speaker of the House.
Polk was elected to Congress at the age of 29, and in his first speech he urged the abolition
of the Electoral College.
When his mentor and fellow Tennessean Andrew Jackson was elected in 1828, Polk became one
of his most vigorous supporters and was a key Jackson ally in Congress, becoming even
more powerful when he was elected Speaker of the House in 1835.
He supported Jackson’s handpicked successor, Vice President Martin van Buren, in the presidential
election of 1836, but the Panic of 1837, brought on by Jackson’s dismantling of the Bank
of the United States, made Van Buren’s tenure a stormy and ineffectual one.
In 1838, Polk decided to return to Tennessee and run for governor, as the state Democratic
Party had suffered losses.
However, the Panic of 1837 had impacted the state finances and hindered much of Polk’s
agenda, and he lost re-election.
In the 1844 presidential election, Van Buren faced opposition from his own party because
of his lackluster administration and his perceived disapproval of slavery.
Many Southern Democrats favored the fiery former Vice President John Calhoun of South
Carolina.
Ultimately, it was the issue of the annexation of Texas that disrupted the race.
Both Van Buren and Whig candidate Henry Clay opposed annexation and potential war with
Mexico while Polk and Jackson, along with most of the public, supported territorial
expansion.
Disappointed by Van Buren’s position on Texan admission, Jackson decided to support
Polk for the party’s presidential nomination, though Polk was skeptical about his chances
of winning.
But he did indeed win the Democratic nomination on the ninth ballot, becoming the original
“dark horse” candidate.
Like Jackson, he endorsed the idea that the United States had a “Manifest Destiny”
to acquire ownership of the land, “from sea to shining sea.”
Though he was just 49 when he took office, the youngest elected up to that point, Polk
pledged to serve just one term.
Mexico rejected the U.S. annexation of Texas, as Mexico still considered Texas to be part
of its territory, despite having ceded it to the Republic of Texas following its 1836
war of independence.
And though Polk genuinely wished to avoid war with Mexico, it was still his firmly held
belief that it was America’s destiny to stretch across the continent.
This sentiment led to war.
After the unstable Mexican government refused to acknowledge Texan independence, negotiations
broke down and Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to guard the Texan border, as both the US
and Mexico claimed the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande.
Camped north of the Rio Grande, Taylor was ordered by the Mexicans to leave the area
and was notified that hostilities had already commenced.
In response, Taylor began a blockade, and during a scouting party upriver on the northern
side of the river, a large force of Mexicans ambushed an 80-man American unit, killing
11 Americans and capturing dozens of others.
Polk then asked Congress for a declaration of war, and Taylor and General Winfield Scott
led the nation to an overwhelming and swift victory, eventually occupying Mexico City,
which inspired the opening lines of the Marine Hymn, “From the Halls of Montezuma...”
The Mexican War was not without its detractors, as young Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln
repeatedly denounced it on the floor of the House of Representatives, claiming the ambush
had been manufactured.
He called it immoral, pro-slavery, and a threat to the nation’s values.
Since Polk had accused Mexico of shedding “American blood on American soil,” Lincoln
introduced a series of resolutions demanding to know the “particular spot of soil on
which the blood of our citizens was so shed.”
Writer Henry David Thoreau found the war an unconscionable act of imperialism, and he
went to jail rather than pay his taxes to support it.
Yet the war was immensely popular and by the end of Polk’s presidency, the borders of
Texas had been more or less settled.
Mexico also ceded New Mexico and California in return for fifteen million dollars.
The war would always remain controversial, even among those that participated in it.
One American soldier, future president Ulysses S. Grant, would later write.
“I was bitterly opposed to it, and to this day, regard the war which resulted, as one
of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”
Grant would maintain that the bloodbath that was the Civil War was divine punishment inflicted
on the nation for its aggression.
Certainly, the Mexican War created vast new expanses of land to be settled, and it only
served to inflame the arguments about the morality of slavery in the new territories.
Polk was a slaveholder, having inherited more than 50 slaves, but he saw slavery as a lesser
issue compared to more pressing domestic concerns such as territorial expansion and economic policy.
As the issue of slavery became increasingly polarized after the Mexican War, due in no
small part to Polk’s expansionist policies, abolitionists claimed that spreading slavery
had been the real reason Polk had gone to war with Mexico.
A provision called the Wilmot Proviso, aimed at banning slavery in any territory acquired
from Mexico, passed in the House, though not in the Senate.
Polk argued instead for extending the Missouri Compromise line west to the Pacific Ocean.
That would have allowed slavery below the 36° 30’ line west of Missouri, and prohibit
slavery above.
Polk opposed the banning of slavery in the new territories but he also condemned southern
agitation on the issue, and he accused both northern and southern leaders of attempting
to use the slavery issue for political gain.
This shows that much of the weakness that plagued the pre-war presidencies had more
to do with the untenable situation that confronted each succeeding president: how to handle the
problem of slavery in the newly acquired Western territories.
Even the most decisive of presidents like Polk could not find an adequate solution to
a problem the Founders themselves were unable to resolve.
Polk also threatened war with Great Britain over ownership of the Pacific Northwest, demanding
the upper territorial boundary be 54, which led to the popular rallying cry, “54-40
or fight!” but eventually Polk compromised on a boundary of 49, reaching a settlement
in which the British sold the area that became the Oregon Territory.
Polk built an independent treasury system that lasted until 1913.
He also oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Smithsonian Institution, the
groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first United States
postage stamp.
The California gold rush began during his presidency, and he was instrumental in pushing
for the state’s admittance to the Union.
A notorious workaholic, Polk was plagued with diarrhea for much of his presidency, which
may have been related to the cholera that eventually killed him.
It was widely felt that Polk had undermined his health by his obsessive workload.
True to his campaign pledge, he only served one term as President, leaving office and
returning to Tennessee.
He died just three months later.
Scholars have ranked him highly for his ability to promote and achieve all of the major items
on his agenda.
Or as Harry Truman said of him, “A great president.
Said what he intended to do and did it.”