Polk, James K.

(1795–1849)

11th President of the United States

James Knox Polk was by far the strongest president between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and one of the strongest presidents ever. A poll of historians in 2000 ranked him 10th among U.S. chief executives—a ”neargreat” president. Yet Polk remains comparatively unknown to most present-day Americans. Perhaps this is because he embroiled the United States in a blatant war of aggression against its southern neighbor, Mexico—an act at odds with America's historical view of itself as a country that fights wars only in self-defense. Still worse, the conflict placed the nation more or less directly on the road to civil war a dozen years later. Noted Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in the Mexican War as a young officer: ”Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times” (v. 1, 56). Nevertheless, Polk must be credited for grimly, efficiently, and single-mindedly gaining for the United States precisely what most Americans wanted.

Born in North Carolina in 1795, Polk moved with his family to Tennessee when he was 11 years old and there made his life and political career. He won election to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1823 and soon became a friend and close associate of Andrew Jackson, who thereafter served as Polk's mentor and role model. Another close ally of Polk was his wife, Sarah Childress Polk, who served as a political adviser as well as a careful monitor of his often precarious health.

A firm Democrat, in 1825 Polk was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1839, the last four years as speaker of the House. Thereafter he ran successfully for governor of Tennessee but lost two subsequent bids for reelection. For that reason he seemed an unlikely choice for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844.

Polk did receive the nomination after the front-runner, Martin van Buren, publicly opposed the annexation of Texas, since 1836 an independent republic settled largely by Anglo-Americans. Correctly perceiving that the tide of public opinion was shifting toward a policy of westward territorial expansion, Polk came out squarely in favor of annexation, assisted behind the scenes by Andrew Jackson. He narrowly won election over his Whig opponent, Sen. Henry Clay, who, like Van Buren, had spoken against acquiring Texas.

Opposition to the annexation of Texas stemmed largely from warnings by Mexico that such a move would be regarded as a hostile act. Emboldened by Polk's election, however, Congress authorized the annexation by joint resolution in February 1845, and Texas became a state in December of that year. Polk, however, had much larger territorial ambitions: acquisition of the Oregon country in the Pacific Northwest, whose ownership was disputed with Great Britain, and acquisition of the Far West, especially California, from Mexico.

Despite a policy of seeming brinkmanship in which Polk famously sought the entirety of the Oregon country to the latitude of 54 degrees 40 minutes north—”Fiftyfour forty or fight!” was the bellicose war cry—Polk's administration was easily satisfied with the territory south of the 49th parallel, the present-day boundary with Canada. The government of Mexico, however, could not surrender the amount of territory Polk wanted (almost half of the Mexican republic's land area) without committing political suicide. In this instance, Polk's policy of brinkmanship was real. The American army that [Page 640]occupied Texas after the state's annexation was eventually ordered into a disputed region between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande—”sent,” as Grant subsequently noted, ”to provoke a fight” (v. 1, 68). The gambit succeeded. Polk was soon able to crow to Congress that Mexico had invaded American territory and shed American blood.

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