Polk, James Knox

Polk, James Knox (1795–1849), eleventh president of the United States.A Jacksonian Democrat and devotee of Thomas Jefferson's agrarian political ideology, Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and reared in Maury County, Tennessee. Graduating with honors from the University of North Carolina in 1818, he first practiced law and in 1823 won election to the Tennessee legislature. He married Sarah Childress in 1824. Elected to Congress in 1825, he opposed President John Quincy Adams's domestic program of economic development and political consolidation. As chair of the House Ways and Means Committee in Andrew Jackson's first term, he led the Democratic party's opposition to federally funded internal improvements and renewal of the national bank's charter. He served two terms (1835–1839) as speaker of the House.

Polk backed the Democrat Martin Van Buren for president in 1836, but Tennessee voted Whig. Determined to regain political control of his state, he won the governorship in 1839. Tennessee again voted Whig in 1840, however, and Polk himself lost gubernatorial bids in 1841 and 1843. In 1844, seeing near‐certain Democratic defeat if Van Buren again headed the ticket, the aged Andrew Jackson persuaded the party to nominate Polk, a westerner who, he hoped, would annex Texas while bridging the deepening sectional divide. The first “dark horse” presidential candidate, Polk defeated both the Whig Henry Clay and James G. Birney of the tiny antislavery Liberty party by a razor‐thin plurality. Clay hurt his candidacy by issuing ambiguous statements on Texas annexation, while Polk limited his public utterances to a single statement on the tariff. The election revealed a nation almost evenly divided over expansionism, the tariff, immigration policy, and agrarianism versus the market revolution.

As president, Polk pursued five major goals: Texas annexation (already approved by Congress), settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain, tariff reduction, establishment of an independent treasury, and the purchase of California. In pursuing Texas annexation, Polk first tried diplomacy. He offered to purchase Mexico's northern provinces, not from a belief in so‐called Manifest Destiny but from a desire to preserve the agrarian republic. Each new generation of independent farmers, he believed, must find its own rich soil or sink into wage dependency. Mexico, rejecting America's right to annex lands west of the Sabine River, broke diplomatic relations shortly after Polk's inauguration. Polk sought to restore amicable ties, but Mexico's military rulers feared that the loss of Texas would precipitate other provincial uprisings and a further erosion of centralized control. For his part, Polk saw annexation as preferable to a drawn‐out defensive border war upholding Texas's sovereignty and its claims to the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. Convinced that Mexico intended to invade Texas and frustrated when Mexico snubbed John Slidell, his diplomatic emissary, Polk ordered Zachary Taylor and his troops to the Rio Grande. On 24 April 1846, a large Mexican force crossed the river and captured an American patrol. Reacting forcefully, Polk on 11 May informed Congress that “war exists by the act of Mexico itself.” The resulting war led to U.S. acquisition of Texas, California, and Mexico's other territories north of the Rio Grande.

The British cabinet, meanwhile, had decided to settle the Oregon dispute by accepting a boundary line at the forty‐ninth parallel. Contrary to the view of his secretary of state, James Buchanan, Polk had calculated correctly that the British would not go to war over its commercial interests in North America. Polk's diplomatic and military successes failed to bring political consensus at home, however, as the Whig party blamed him for giving up half of Oregon and denounced the Mexican War as immoral. Polk's expansionist policies postponed the demise of the agrarian republic, but left unresolved the profound economic, religious, and racial issues dividing the nation. Having accomplished his goals, he honored his pledge not to seek a second term. Polk succumbed to cholera at his Nashville, Tennessee, home just three months after leaving office.
See also Antebellum Era; Bank of the United States, First and Second; Texas Republic and Annexation.

Bibliography

Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk, 4 vols., 1910.
Charles Grier Sellers Jr. , James K. Polk, Jacksonian, 1957.
Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler, eds., Correspondence of James K. Polk, 9 vols., 1969–1996.

Wayne Cutler