Polk, James K.

Polk, James K. (1795–1849), eleventh president of the United States.Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on 2 November 1795, Polk moved to Tennessee with his family in 1806, and graduated from the University of North Carolina. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1820. An active Jacksonian Democrat, he served in Congress from 1825 to 1839, was speaker of the house and later governor of Tennessee.

In 1844, Polk—known as “Young Hickory”—was elected president. He entered the White House with a clear and aggressive foreign policy agenda, and as president he employed the threat of war and war itself as instruments to achieve his territorial objective: the West Coast and especially its ports.

The United States annexed Texas in 1845, and Polk provoked the Mexican War a year later by making use of a climate of hostility, existing border disputes, and Mexican unwillingness and inability to accept U.S. offers to purchase its northern provinces. Polk proved to be a determined, tough, and successful commander in chief. Although he lacked military experience or training, he made many key military decisions and played a direct role in organizing and planning the war effort. Despite opposition from Whigs and some Democrats, Polk never wavered in his determination to use the war to acquire the territories of New Mexico and upper California.

Polk was not a popular president with his contemporaries. He was intensely partisan and had a proclivity for secrecy and evasiveness. He was constantly at odds with his two Whig generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Moreover, the Mexican War proved unpopular in the Northeast, and territorial expansion into the Southwest was a highly controversial political issue. Polk, however, is generally recognized as the first effective wartime president. Unlike James Madison during the War of 1812, Polk aggressively employed presidential power to conduct the military effort and achieve administration war goals, thus setting an example upon which Abraham Lincoln would expand during the Civil War.
[See also Commander in Chief, President as.]

Bibliography

Paul H. Bergeron , The Presidency of James K. Polk, 1987.
Sam W. Haynes , James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse, 1997.

John H. Schroeder