James K. Polk

James Knox Polk (1795-1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849.[2][3] Under his leadership, the United States fought the Mexican War (1846–48) and acquired vast territories along the Pacific coast and in the Southwest.[2] Although well known in political circles, to the public Polk was the first "dark horse" nominee in the history of the presidency.[2][3]

Early Life and Education

James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.[2][3] He was the eldest child of Samuel and Jane Knox Polk. At age 11 he moved with his family to Tennessee, where his father operated a prosperous farm in Maury county.[2] As a boy, Polk, the eldest of 10 children, moved with his family to Columbia, Tennessee, where his father became a prosperous land surveyor, planter and businessman. The younger Polk was often sick as a child, and as a teen he survived a major operation for urinary stones.[3]

Although frail as a child, Polk was also intelligent and studious. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818 and returned to Nashville to study law.[1] A top student, Polk graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818 and studied law under a leading Nashville attorney. He was admitted to the bar in 1820 and opened a law practice in Columbia.[3]

Marriage and Personal Life

On January 1, 1824, Polk married Sarah Childress, a woman from one of Tennessee's most well-regarded families. Sarah was very well educated; she often assisted her husband with speech writing and provided policy advice throughout his political career. The couple did not have any children, but they did raise a nephew, Marshall Tate Polk.[1] In 1824 James K. Polk married Sarah Childress, the daughter of a prominent slaveholding family. She helped foster Polk's political rise, serving as his eyes and ears in state and national politics through her friendships with leading figures of the day. When Polk became U.S. president, she was often referred to as "the Presidentress."[2]

Political Career

Early Political Rise

He entered politics in 1823 when he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives.[3] In 1823, he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, where he was known for consistently backing the political aspirations of "Old Hickory," otherwise known as General Andrew Jackson. For this support, Polk gained the nickname "Young Hickory." In 1825, Polk was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1835, he became Speaker of the House where he used his authority to strictly enforce a "Gag Rule" barring the discussion of slavery.[1]

Congressional Leadership

He served in Congress until 1839 when he was elected governor of Tennessee. As governor, Polk worked to regulate state banks and improve education, before losing his reelection campaign in 1841.[1] Despite his national success, James Polk kept an eye on the politics of his home state of Tennessee, returning to run for governor in 1839. He served one term as governor but lost his reelection bids twice, both times to a Whig candidate named James "Lean Jimmy" Jones. Polk had viewed the governorship as a springboard to higher office, but after two failed campaigns many believed Polk's star was on the decline.[4]

Path to the Presidency

In 1844, Polk set his sights on becoming vice president, expecting former President Martin Van Buren to secure the Democratic Party's nomination. In a surprising twist, Polk was chosen as the presidential nominee at the convention, largely because of his support for "Manifest Destiny" and expanding the United States' territorial holdings. The "dark horse candidate" faced off against Whig candidate Henry Clay and won, becoming the eleventh president of the United States in 1845.[1]

The Whigs used the campaign slogan "Who is James K. Polk?"—an allusion to the fact that Polk was not well known outside the world of politics. However, Polk's expansionist platform favoring the annexation of Texas appealed to voters. He narrowly won the presidency with 49.5 percent of the popular vote and an electoral margin of 170-105.[3]

Presidential Accomplishments

Territorial Expansion

As President he oversaw the largest territorial expansion in American history— over a million square miles of land—acquired through a treaty with England and war with Mexico. At the end of his single term, Polk had literally reshaped the nation, fulfilling the American spirit of manifest destiny.[4]

After successfully renegotiating the Canadian boundary to the 49th parallel with Great Britain, Polk instigated the Mexican-American War, a two-year conflict stemming from the 1845 annexation of Texas.[1] In 1846 Polk negotiated with Great Britain to set the boundary of the Oregon Territory.[15] Polk ended up compromising with Great Britain, establishing the boundary at the 49th parallel.[15]

Mexican-American War

In 1846, Polk sent American diplomat John Slidell to secretly negotiate a dispute over Texas' boundary claims and purchase the territories of New Mexico and California for up to $30 million. When the Mexican government turned Slidell away, President Polk ordered American troops under General Zachary Taylor to move into and occupy disputed territory, inciting the conflict with Mexico. At the conclusion of the conflict, the United States successfully acquired more than 500,000 square miles of Mexico's land holdings including present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.[1]

Mexico, in what was called the Mexican Cession, ceded over one-third of its territory to the United States, increasing the latter's size by one-fourth. This Mexican Cession now contains the present-day states of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, much of New Mexico, and portions of Wyoming and Colorado.[19]

Opposition to the War

Although the next day Congress passed a war resolution by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate to the delight of many Americans clamoring for war, adverse reaction to Polk's war message quickly was expressed in Congress and the press. Many Whigs, deeming the conflict "Mr. Polk's War," charged that the president and members of his party in Congress had employed stampede tactics to ensure the resolution's passage and to foment public hysteria. Polk, they contended, had provoked the Mexicans to attack in order to start a war against a weak neighbor so that the U.S. could acquire with relative ease the desired western territory.[11]

Abraham Lincoln, a first-term Whig congressman from Illinois, condemned the war as an "unconstitutional" and aggressive act, even challenging Polk to take him to Texas and show him "the spot" on which Mexicans had shed American blood. This position proved unpopular with his western constituents and figured into his decision not to run for a second term.[19]

Slavery and Polk's Presidency

Personal Investment in Slavery

President Polk projected the persona of a benevolent and paternalistic slave owner who kept enslaved people because they were inherited from family members. In actuality, Polk was a profit-hungry slave owner, ripping apart families for his own personal gain.[21] Upon his death in 1827, Samuel Polk left behind 8,000 acres of land and fifty-three enslaved people to his wife and ten children.[21]

To shore up his financial security, Polk established a plantation called Somerville in southern Tennessee in 1831, becoming an "absentee planter." Although the plantation enjoyed moderate success, Polk sought additional profit. He sold his Tennessee plantation and wrote to his wife, Sarah Childress Polk, in 1834: "I am resolved to send my hands to the South, have given money to James Brown to buy the place & have empIoyed Beanland as an overseer."[21]

Secret Slave Trading During Presidency

Of the 19 enslaved people Polk bought during his presidential term (1845 to 1849), at least 13 were children, writes Lina Mann, a historian at The White House Historical Association.[22] Polk kept his slave trading a secret by instructing surrogates to buy enslaved children and young adults on his behalf and then discreetly transfer them to him, according to Mann. He then sent them to work on his Mississippi plantation, which he purchased as part of the land rush that occurred after the 1830 Indian Removal Act violently expelled the Choctaw Nation and other Indigenous nations from their ancestral lands.[22]

President Polk publicly supported the expansion of slavery into these territories, while employing enslaved individuals at the White House, including Henry Carter, Jr. and Elias Polk. Polk also made secret purchases of thirteen enslaved children through an agent during his presidency. These individuals were sent to work on his Mississippi plantation.[1]

Enslaved People at the White House

The Polks brought Henry, Jr. from Mississippi to work in their Tennessee homes. He was also likely the only enslaved laborer to consistently live at the Polk White House.[23] Elias Polk was one of the individuals enslaved by the Polks at the White House, before Elias's post-emancipation oratorical career catapulted him to controversial notoriety. Elias resided at the Executive Mansion briefly before he was sent back to Tennessee and forcibly "rented out" by President Polk to his former law partner, James H. Thomas. As other enslaved individuals came and went, Henry Carter, Jr. remained at the White House for the majority of the Polk presidency. Most likely he attained a high position in the household staff, perhaps as a butler or valet to the president.[23]

Death and Legacy

James Polk kept his campaign promise to serve just one term and did not seek reelection in 1848. He was succeeded by Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), a military leader who earned acclaim during the Mexican-American War and ran for the presidency on the Whig ticket. Polk left the White House in March 1849 and returned to his home, Polk Place, in Nashville. The stress of the presidency had left him in poor health, and he died that summer, on June 15, at age 53.[3]

Tragically, Polk died of cholera just 103 days after leaving office.[4] James Polk died on June 15, 1849, less than four months after leaving office, in Nashville, Tennessee of cholera. Many scholars agree that Polk practically worked himself to death while President; his four years in office exhausted him and destroyed his health.[10]

Historical Assessment

Polk left behind a legacy as one of the United States' most effective presidents, having accomplished all his goals in a single term; indeed, if one were to judge presidents solely on their ability to keep their promises, then Polk was perhaps the most successful in US history.[5] Polk is generally regarded as one of the most effective presidents from Jackson through Lincoln. Although Polk had successfully expanded U.S. territories, some of these acquisitions aggravated the sectional tension between free states and slave states that would eventually lead to the Civil War.[7]

Texas annexation led to a contentious war with Mexico which even in its own time was unpopular and hotly contested as imperialistic and incompatible with democratic ideals. The new territories inflamed sectional tensions between Slave States and Free States, and ultimately hastened the coming of the Civil War. James Polk made the United States larger and more powerful than ever before, but this rapid growth caused significant growing pains.[4]