Twice defeated for his state's governorship, like Richard Nixon rising from the ashes, he captured his party's presidential nomination in a stunning reversal of fortune.Like the irrepressible George W. Bush, he prevailed in the subsequent election when a splinter candidate siphoned off enough popular votes to swing a critical state into his electoral column.
Upon his inauguration, he set four goals for his administration -- and accomplished all four, fending off a contentious Congress, dissident cabinet members, independent army generals, and the betrayal of false friends.
In a rare display of humility and integrity, he pledged to serve only four years, and kept his word -- thus avoiding the second-term failures that haunted so many of his peers.
Yet during his brief tenure, he oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. territory in history, earning himself the dubious honor of being christened our "least-known consequential president."
If only the Nashville Republican Banner -- mouthpiece for his oppositionist Whig Party -- had had his prescience and, peering into the future, been able to foresee this remarkable record, perhaps it would have reconsidered the derisive headline which greeted the announcement of his nomination: "Who is James K. Polk?"
While he may have been, indeed, a dark horse and a compromise candidate for the deadlocked Democrats at their 1844 convention, he was hardly an unknown quantity, having proved himself by the age of forty-nine to be an adroit politician, a capable administrator, and, despite his unassuming demeanor, a man of action.
As a rising Tennessean who at twenty-eight had been elected to the State House of Representatives, it was only natural that young Polk would fall under the tutelage of the state's most revered personage -- military hero Andrew Jackson, soon to be U.S. Senator, and presumptive presidential timber. Supposedly Jackson accelerated Polk's marriage to the respectable -- but homely -- Sarah Childress on January 1, 1824, by advising him that the best way to advance his political career was to find a wife and settle down. "Asked if he had anyone in mind, Old Hickory replied, 'The one who will never give you trouble. Her wealthy family, education, health and appearance are all superior. You know her well.' " (Borneman, p. 13)
Despite his winning a plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote that November, Jackson's presidential coronation was forestalled in the House of Representatives when Henry Clay, bitterly jealous of Jackson's military reputation, maneuvered three of his state delegations to throw their support to John Quincy Adams. Clay's subsequent appointment as Adams's Secretary of State -- a traditional stepping-stone to the presidency -- became the "corrupt bargain" which Jackson zealots would make their future rallying cry. Meanwhile, Polk relentlessly crisscrossed his district on horseback for six months en route to his first Congressional seat, outpolling four other candidates.
By the next quadrennial, the animosity between Jackson and Clay -- and Clay's ally, President Adams -- had not only intensified; it had engendered a new political alignment. On one side were Clay and Adams and their National Republican Party -- renamed the Whigs in 1834; their American System favored legislation promoting economic development, specifically protective tariffs and federally-funded roads, bridges, and canals. On the other side were the Jacksonian Democrats, who detested the disreputable and elitist power-brokers in Washington personified by the Bank of the United States, fiercely defended their peculiar institution against burgeoning abolitionist agitation, and aggressively sought to settle and acquire western territory in Texas, Oregon, New Mexico, and California.
Jackson stormed into the White House in 1828, garnering 56% of the popular vote and over two-thirds of the electoral college and and carrying both houses of Congress on his Democratic coattails. James K. Polk emerged as one of his most enthusiastic spokesmen -- helping draft a veto of the Maysville Road Bill, anathema to Jackson as an appropriation of federal money benefiting one state (Kentucky), and, "in the strongest speech of his [Congressional] career," attacking the Bank of the United States for resisting an investigation of its condition and operations. (Merry, p. 37)
A potentially unpopular veto of the Bank recharter bill could not prevent Jackson from handily brushing aside Clay to win reelection in 1832. Despite the impending expiration of its charter, Jackson was intent on destroying the Bank and its president, Nicholas Biddle. He induced Congress to initiate an investigation, and drafted Polk, now a member of the Ways and Means Committee, to lead the charge. When the Committee essentially whitewashed the Bank, Polk responded with a scathing speech indicting Biddle for mismanagement and subterfuge, the Bank for fiscal instability, and Congress for encroaching on the President's jurisdiction in such matters.
Biddle retaliated by funneling money to a local Whig newspaper; nevertheless Polk won a fifth term in 1833. Now Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he orchestrated a report upholding the President's actions and a bill authorizing him to remove federal funds from the Bank, although the Senate refused to acquiesce and instead passed a motion of censure -- the only one in American history.
With Jackson's endorsement, Polk ran for Speaker of the House in June 1834, losing to fellow Tennessean John Bell, a former Jacksonian now in the Whig and Biddle camp; he turned the tables on Bell the following year, thrusting himself briefly onto the national stage.
Jackson's anointed successor, Martin Van Buren, won the presidency in 1836 -- defeating, among others, Bell ally and Tennessee senator, Hugh Lawson White -- but inherited an economic firestorm, the fruits of Jackson's Specie Circular, which required payment for the purchase of federal lands in gold and silver. When New York banks terminated the redemption of paper money for gold and silver, prices plummeted, credit evaporated, unemployment skyrocketed, and panic ensued. With Van Buren's agenda under fire (he stubbornly ignored appeals to retract the Specie Circular) and the Democrats' majority in the House razor-thin, Polk's hold on the Speakership was tenuous.
Back in his home state, on August 30, 1838, after delivering a rousing two-hour denunciation of Whig policies, Polk bowed to the entreaties of his party faithful and agreed to run for the governorship against a two-term Whig incumbent; most likely he saw the move as better positioning for higher national office. His superior debating skills, analytical acumen, and caustic repartee soon drove his opponent into seclusion in the state capital. Polk's herculean campaign -- he traveled 1300 miles and gave forty-three scheduled and numerous impromptu addresses -- culminated in a 2616-vote margin out of 105,000 cast, and Democratic control of the state legislature.
Polk lobbied to replace Kentuckian Richard Mentor Johnson as Van Buren's running mate in 1840, but at their convention the Democrats adopted the bizarre strategy of deferring the selection of a vice-president until after the election. It didn't matter, as Whig war hero William Henry Harrison and John Tyler trounced the embattled Van Buren -- a blessing in disguise for Polk, who gained more national exposure but dodged the stigma of defeat.
Determined to capitalize on their momentum, the Whigs turned to James Chamberlain Jones -- six foot two, one-hundred-twenty-five pounds, ungainly, but clever, audacious, and lighthearted -- to challenge Polk in 1841. "Lacking Polk's conventional debating skills and expansive knowledge of the issues, [Lean Jimmy] brought to the campaign 'ridicule, sarcasm,wit, buffoonery, and a deluge of epithets.' " (Merry, p. 47) The pair's joint appearances drew huge crowds, in a grueling schedule that left Jones "weary, worn, and hoarse," and Polk bedridden. (Borneman, p. 50). "Whether it was the depression or Lean Jimmy or Polk's continued devotion to the discredited Van Buren, the governor lost his reelection bid by 3243 votes out of 103,000 cast." (Merry, p. 47)
Pressed into battle by desperate Tennessee Democrats and still savoring the vice-presidency on a ticket with Van Buren, who was sure to run again, Polk sought to avenge his defeat two years later. Once again he and Jones traversed the state's six hundred miles from one end to the other, speaking for five and six hours a day -- Polk relying on reasoned argumentation, Jones employing his bountiful repertoire of jokes, barbs, and "aw shucks" theatrics. Once again the clown prince prevailed, by a slim four per cent margin, carrying both house of the Tennessee legislature along with him into the Whig camp.
At forty-seven, James Polk, now a two-time loser in his home state, was left to ponder a bleak future -- and probably destined to live out the remainder of his days in political obscurity had not an issue which had been simmering for twenty years boiled to the surface: the annexation of Texas.
In 1819, John Quincy Adams, then James Monroe's Secretary of State, with the advice and consent of Andrew Jackson, had negotiated a controversial treaty with Spain ceding Florida to the United States and establishing the Sabine River as the demarcation between the U. S. and Spanish Mexico -- "a gratuitous and unaccountable sacrifice" of western territory that enraged many expansionists. Two years later Mexico threw off its Spanish masters, and, in an attempt to establish dominion over the desolate land, opened Texas to American settlers willing to tackle the brutal conditions. In 1836 the hardy migrants -- now numbering over 40,000 -- won their own independence, elected Tennessee expatriate Sam Houston president of their Republic, and looked expectantly eastward for signs of welcome. (Merry, pp. 70-71)
Although Andrew Jackson had made advances to Mexico about purchasing Texas prior to its independence, by 1836 he had concluded that annexation risked embroiling the U. S. in a shooting war with its former owners -- who had never acknowledged the legitimacy of the Texas secession -- and fomenting sectional dissension by the creation of pro-slavery southern states. He officially recognized Texas only on his last day in office -- March 5, 1837. His successor, Van Buren, fearful of antagonizing his northern political base, rebuffed a subsequent annexation request by the Texans.
John Tyler, the Virginia patrician who had ascended to the presidency after William Henry Harrison's untimely death one month into his term, had already broken with Whig leader Henry Clay -- by asserting he was not merely a placeholder but had acquired the full powers of the office and by twice vetoing Clay-sponsored bills to recharter the national bank. Now a man without a party, he seized upon the annexation of Texas as the vehicle which could rally an expansionist-minded constituency, reassure anxious southerners looking for new slave markets, and propel him back to the White House.
With Texas mired in its own depression and burdened with mounting public debt, Tyler, prompted by rumors of British abolitionist agitation, instructed his Secretary of State, pro-slavery radical Abel Upshur, to initiate secret discussions with representatives now inclined to be receptive to his overtures. In the midst of the negotiations, Upshur and seven other persons (including the Secretary of the Navy) were killed when a gigantic gun on board the USS Princeton exploded during a demonstration firing. His successor, South Carolina firebrand, John C. Calhoun, consummated the agreement, and on April 22, 1844, Tyler sent it to the Senate for ratification.
The treaty stipulated that Texas would enter the Union as a territory, not a state; that its domestic institutions, i.e., slavery, would remain sacrosanct; and that its public lands would be transferred to the federal government in exchange for the latter's assumption of a $10 million debt.
Calhoun -- whose extremism had all but extinguished his own presidential hopes -- nevertheless was determined to expand the nation's slave territory and to entrench slavery as official government policy. In the treaty documentation, he included a letter he had written to British ambassador Richard Pakenham in which he declared that the actual rationale for the annexation of Texas was to protect southern slavery from British meddling. More disturbing was his impassioned defense of the institution, in which he praised it as beneficial to mankind and "essential to the peace, safety, and prosperity of those States of the Union in which it exists." (Borneman, p. 80)
Northern abolitionists were outraged, but even before Calhoun's letter was leaked to the New York Evening Post on April 27, 1844, curious citizens were inquiring of the leading presidential candidates, Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren, "Are you for or against the annexation of Texas?"
Sitting under the shade of a great white oak in Raleigh, North Carolina, Clay famously wrote that if the United States acquired Texas, it would acquire war with Mexico. But even if Mexico should consent, Clay went on, "I do not think that Texas ought to be received into the Union," (Borneman, p. 81), because it would disrupt the balance of power between "the two great sections of the Union," and spawn an ideology of conquest, as the injured region sought to redress the balance. (Merry, p. 76)
As for Van Buren, Calhoun's linking of the annexation of Texas with the preservation of slavery placed him in an untenable position. As a northerner, he would have to oppose Texas, which would severely impair his chances for the Democratic nomination. Like Clay, he tried to deflect attention to the diplomatic aspects of the issue and cloak his position in moral rhetoric, claiming annexation would be an act of aggression against Mexico and would violate the nation's fundamental principles of reason and justice. (Borneman, p. 82)
Van Buren's stand on Texas both saddened and rankled Andrew Jackson, at seventy-seven still intent on exercising his lingering influence. He wrote a devastating letter to the Nashville Union condemning his protege in the harshest language he could muster. Summoning Polk to his home in Nashville, he told him that Van Buren should withdraw from the race in favor of an annexationist from the southwest and that he, Polk, already on record as such, was the most available man for the job.
Although Polk was intrigued by Jackson's proposition, he wrote that he did not "expect it to be effected." A more likely scenario would be for Van Buren's partisans to select another northerner for the top slot and then look south for a vice-presidential candidate. That might be Polk if he could maintain cordial relations with them.
When the Democratic convention opened on May 27,1844, the first order of business (after the appointment of a chairman) was to determine whether nomination would follow the past practice of requiring a two-thirds majority or break new ground with a simple majority. Since two-thirds of the votes were beyond Van Buren's reach, his opponents aggressively fought any rule change as the best way to stop him.
As the debate progressed, Polk's two stalking horses, Cave Johnson and Gideon Pillow, both Tennessee delegates, had to walk a fine line. They had to demonstrate allegiance to Van Buren, but could not control the rest of the Tennessee delegation. They and the other Van Buren-Polk delegates finally agreed to vote as a unit for the two-thirds rule -- to Van Buren's detriment -- in return for which the anti-Van Buren forces would vote for Van Buren on the first ballot and then switch to his lieutenant, Silas Wright of New York. (Borneman, pp. 99-100)
When the two-thirds requirement passed 148 to 116, Tennessee's thirteen delegates combined with twelve from Pennsylvania who voted contrary to instructions from their state convention were the deciding factors. Martin Van Buren's nomination was moribund.
On the ensuing first ballot, Van Buren tallied 146 votes -- the closest he was to get to the brass ring -- 83 (including Tennessee's thirteen, which Johnson and Pillow could not deliver) went to Lewis Cass of Michigan -- a gruff, inflationist frontier empire-builder, former governor, ambassador, and Secretary of War, whom the Van Burenites despised -- and Kentuckian Richard Mentor Johnson -- Van Buren's vice-president -- collected 24.
Six more ballots were taken that evening. By the seventh, Cass had overtaken Van Buren 123 to 99, and the momentum had shifted his way. Frantic to stop the bandwagon, John K. Miller of Ohio ignited pandemonium by moving to rescind the two-thirds rule and declare Van Buren the winner based on his first ballot total. As the Chair attempted to rule Miller out of order, other Ohio delegates rose to harass him. Finally a motion was made and carried to adjourn until nine the next morning.
That night, after writing to Polk that "there is a strong probability of your name ultimately coming up for President," Pillow was approached by George Bancroft of Massachusetts, poet, historian, and long-time admirer of James Polk. Bancroft had decided that it was time to thwart Cass, and that "it would be alone safe to rally on" Polk, but only, he was informed by Pillow, if "the name should be brought out by the North." By the time the convention had reconvened, Pillow had enticed delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and even Ohio to his cause. (Borneman, pp. 102-103.)
When the eighth ballot commenced, New Hampshire, the second state to be called, awarded its six votes to James K. Polk, followed by seven from Massachusetts, thirteen from Tennessee, and nine from Alabama -- for a total of 44. On the ninth ballot, an ineluctable force swept through the hall as, one after another, delegates rose to extol "the bosom friend of Old Hickory . . . the man who fought so bravely and undauntingly the whigs of Tennessee." (Merry, p. 93)
Pennsylvania had fulfilled its obligation by voting for Van Buren three times and then for its favorite son, James Buchanan -- but now was going for Polk. Virginia emerged from a caucus, and, after eight ballots for Cass, extended its seventeen votes to James Polk, submitting to "a higher duty" to defeat "the arch apostate Henry Clay."
New Yorker Benjamin Butler returned to the fray and -- having been unable to convince Van Buren loyalist Silas Wright to allow his name to be placed in nomination -- reluctantly pulled Van Buren from the roll call; he cast his vote for the man who fully met "the Jeffersonian standard of qualification, being both capable, honest, and faithful to all his trusts." When his delegation followed in his wake, the stampede was on. By the time it was over, around two o'clock in the afternoon, James Polk was the unanimous choice of the Democratic convention. (Merry, p. 94)
"The Calhounites were delighted. 'We have triumphed,' gloated Francis Pickens of South Carolina. 'Polk is nearer to us than any public man who was named. He is a large slaveholder and plants cotton -- free trade -- Texas -- states' rights -- out and out.' " (Howe, p. 683)
To appease northerners apprehensive about the addition of new slave states to the Union, the party platform laid claim "to the whole Territory of Oregon" (currently a matter of dispute with England) and declared that "the reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period, are great American measures, which this convention recommends to the cordial support of the democracy of the Union." (Merry, p. 95)
If Henry Clay -- nominated by the Whigs for a third attempt at the presidency -- was the more eloquent, flamboyant, and charming candidate, the dour, inelegant Polk more shrewdly assessed the sentiment of the electorate and moved expediently to address the obstacles to a victory.
The Whigs had long called for a one-term presidency, not only because it fit Clay's vision of limited executive government but also because it served to mobilize their ranks against the prospect of eight years under another Jacksonian oligarch. Polk silenced any potential attack on this front by writing, on June 12, in his acceptance letter, that if elected, "I shall enter upon the discharge of the high and solemn duties of the office with the settled purpose of not being a candidate for reelection." The declaration had the added benefit of neutralizing the hostility of ambitious party leaders (Cass, Wright, Buchanan, Thomas Hart Benton) hoping to succeed him. (Borneman, pp. 113-114)
Next Polk needed a flexible tariff policy -- one that would offend neither northern voters (especially those in the key industrial state of Pennsylvania) who preferred higher duties on imports to protect domestic producers nor southerners whose agricultural economy thrived on cheap imports.
Polk solved the problem by issuing a public letter to fellow Democrat John Kane of Philadelphia in which he expressed himself in favor of a tariff for revenue purposes -- that is, to fund the operations of the government -- which would "at the same time afford reasonable incidental protection to our home industry," it being "the duty of the Government," he added, "to extend as far as it may be practicable to do so, by its revenue laws, and all other means within its power, fair and just protection to all the great interests of the whole Union." Such deft fence-straddling seemed to satisfy both friends and foes of protection. (Merry, p. 99)
Meanwhile John Tyler, banished by the Whigs and deserted by the Democrats, had assembled a coalition of disgruntled sectionalists, a few influential newspaper editors, and the beneficiaries of his own patronage in a third-party movement -- 150,000 strong -- which might hold the balance of power. Polk enlisted the venerable Andrew Jackson to make his case. After Jackson persuaded the irascible Frank Blair, editor of the Washington Globe, to cease his withering attacks on the Administration, and warned Tyler, through letters sent to two of his confidantes, that his enduring reputation and, indeed, his place in American history, depended on his cooperation, on August 20 the sitting president penned his withdrawal.
Texas remained in the forefront of the campaign. On June 8, the Senate voted on the Upshur-Calhoun Annexation Treaty. For Clay, the politically astute course of action, according to Andrew Jackson, would have been to suppress his ego and "order his majority in the Senate to ratify the Texas treaty and rid him of the question." Clay chose not to recant, and twenty-eight of twenty-nine Whigs joined seven Van Buren Democrats in rejecting the treaty 35 to 16. (Borneman, p. 116)
Advised by an Alabama newspaper that he was losing support in the state among both Whigs and Democrats, Clay attempted to moderate his position -- but only succeeded in digging himself into a deeper hole. When he wrote that "far from having any personal objection to the annexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it [if it could be accomplished] without national dishonor, without war, and with the general consent of the states of the Union," Democrats accused him of flip-flopping while abolitionists castigated him for caving into southern demands for more slave territory. (Borneman, p. 123)
Polk survived the most notorious dirty trick of the campaign when an Ithaca, N. Y., newspaper, quoting from a work of fiction entitled Roorbeck's Tour through the Southern and Western States in the Year 1856, reported that forty slaves sold at a Tennessee market bore the initials JKP branded on their shoulders. "The grossest and basest [falsehood] I have ever known," said Polk, and the newspaper retracted the story. (Borneman, p. 121)
The outcome of the election hung in the balance as states voted throughout the first twelve days of the November. When the numbers were tabulated, Polk was elected the country's eleventh president by a slim margin of 39,490 out of 2,703,659 votes cast. Polk captured fifteen states worth 170 electoral votes, while Clay pulled eleven for 105 electoral votes. However, those statistics are not reflective of the closeness of the contest.
Polk won New York State's 36 electoral votes by a plurality of only 5106 votes: 237,588 to 232,482. If Clay had carried New York, he would have defeated Polk in the Electoral College 141 to 134. The scales may have been tipped by the Liberty Party candidate and abolitionist James G. Birney who tallied 15,812 votes.
Polk's totals were most certainly boosted by the growing Catholic immigrant vote (Clay and the Whigs had espoused tighter naturalization laws) and by the vigorous candidacy of Van Buren loyalist Silas Wright, who polled a larger majority in the New York gubernatorial race than the national ticket.
"An ardent Clay supporter in Illinois bemoaned the result. 'If the Whig abolitionists of New York had voted with us,' sighed Abraham Lincoln, alluding to Birney's showing, 'Mr. Clay would now be president.' " (Borneman, p. 128)
A thousand miles further south, Old Hickory summed it up most succinctly: "Who is J. K. Polk will not now be asked." (Borneman, p. 128)
As for John Tyler, after four frustrating years in office, he would not be denied one final triumph: the annexation of Texas. In a lame duck session of Congress beginning in December 1844, annexationists set about passage of a resolution that would make Texas a state by a simple majority vote rather than by a treaty ratification which required two-thirds approval of the Senate. The substantial Democratic majority in the House of Representatives swiftly passed Texas admission.
In the Senate, Thomas Hart Benton and other Van Burenites opposed the resolution on the grounds that it failed to address questions regarding the extension of slavery and the boundary with Mexico. Polk, now ensconced in Washington, worked with several key Democrats to craft a compromise: Give the president -- presumably the president who was to be inaugurated on March 4 and therefore James K. Polk -- the choice between admitting Texas forthwith as a state under the terms of the House resolution (it would retain its debt and its public lands; if divided into future states, slavery would adhere to the Missouri Compromise line) or negotiating further with Mexico and Texas to settle the still-undefined boundary by treaty. Polk encouraged Benton and his cohorts to believe he intended to return to the negotiating table; this reassured enough of them to vote for and pass the resolution on February 28,1845.
But Polk never got the chance. On March 2 -- two days later and two days before the inauguration -- in the twilight of his presidency, John Tyler convened his cabinet and dispatched an envoy to offer the Texans immediate annexation without further international discussions. "He wasn't going to wait for his successor to make good on Texas." (Borneman, p. 141)
But there was still much to be done. In the next four years, the new dark horse president -- drab in temperament, frail in body, solemn, reserved, at times sanctimonious, but hard-working, focused, and convinced he was a man of destiny -- would reshape the nation's borders, transform its highest office, and, in launching one war, light the fuse for a catastrophic conflagration.
REFERENCES
Borneman, Walter R. Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency. New York: Random House, 2008.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009
