Polk, James K.

(b. November 2, 1795; d. June 15, 1849) Member of House of Representatives, including speaker of the House; eleventh president of the United States (1845–1849).

James Knox Polk was born November 2, 1795, in North Carolina and raised in Tennessee. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818, practiced law, and was elected to the Tennessee Assembly in 1823. Polk's political career ascended with his serving seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1825–1839), including four years as Speaker of the House (1835–1839). After leaving Congress, he served as governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). Polk was elected president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. A life-long devotee of Thomas Jefferson's political creed and a loyal son of Andrew Jackson's democracy movement, Polk holds a unique place in American history as the first "dark horse" candidate for president, the first former Speaker of the House of Representatives to serve as president, and the first commander in chief to lead the nation in a foreign war.

The issue of the nation's expansion gave a serious cast to the otherwise boisterous presidential contest of 1844. The threat of war with Britain over Oregon and with Mexico over Texas framed the political discourse of the campaign. Polk was elected by less than a majority of the voters and the narrowest of popular pluralities, proving that the American electorate was divided almost evenly between expansion and consolidation, between free trade and protection, between tolerance of immigrants and native xenophobia, and between agrarian rule and market revolution.

Despite his narrow win, Polk took the presidential oath with a determination to personally direct the administration of the general government. Pledged to serve but a single term, he accomplished all four of the major goals he set for his presidency: reduction of tariffs, creation of an independent Treasury divorced from the banking industry, institution of a republican government in the Oregon Country, and the acquisition of Upper California from Mexico. In the course of meeting his objectives, he also led the nation into war with Mexico in the defense of Texas annexation.

From the Mexican point of view, the United States had no right to annex lands west of the Sabine River, and, as promised, Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the United States shortly after Polk's inauguration. Polk sought to restore amicable ties, but Mexican leaders would not accept the loss of their eastern province, fearing that demonstrating weakness in the Texas question would encourage other provincial uprisings and result in a further loss of centralized control by the military. Recovery of Texas would not be required; occasional war along the Rio Grande would suffice to keep the Texas claim alive and civil authority intact. For his part, Polk did not wish to pursue a long-term border war defending Texas's right of self-determination. Convinced that Mexico intended to move its army into Texas, Polk sent Zachary Taylor and his troops to the Rio Grande. On April 24, 1846, a Mexican force of sixteen hundred crossed the river and captured an American patrol of sixty dragoons.

Within a week of learning that the Mexican and American armies had clashed, the British cabinet decided to settle the Oregon boundary dispute and sent instructions to their minister in Washington to agree to a partition at the forty-ninth parallel. Some of Polk's advisors, Secretary of State James Buchanan included, had feared that the British would fight over their control of the Oregon Country and that the United States might find itself engaged on two fronts, a land war in Mexico and a maritime struggle with the British navy. Although militarily the United States stood unprepared for either, President Polk calculated correctly that Britain would not go to war over its commercial interests in Oregon, Texas, or Mexico. Polk's diplomatic successes in settling the Oregon question and his military strategy for winning the war in Mexico, however, failed to bring political consensus at home, for Whig opposition blamed him for giving up half of Oregon and charged him with fighting an immoral war in Mexico.

Polk made every effort to resolve the Texas issue through diplomacy and offered to purchase Mexico's northern provinces, not because he believed in Manifest Destiny but because he knew that the agrarian republic

could not close its borders and so prevent emigration. The Texas-Oregon pattern of occupant rule was replicated in New Mexico and Upper California, and neither the government in Mexico nor that in Washington could contain the migration. Successive generations of independent farmers would find their own rich soil or go begging into wage dependency.

Polk's expansion policies postponed the end of the agrarian republic but did not resolve the problems of a Union divided by incompatible economic, religious, and racial interests. In four tumultuous years he accomplished his goals, and true to his word he declined all interest in a second term. Although blessed with a strong constitution, "Young Hickory" fell victim to cholera and died at his home in Nashville on June 15, 1849, just three short months into his retirement.

Texas, Republic Of.

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