One-Term Wonder

...It was hard to believe, he wrote, "that Mexico will be mad enough to declare war...

...He played a crucial role in helping Jackson destroy Nicholas Biddle's Bank of the United States, and eventually became Speaker of the House...

...and Canada along the 49th parallel, but the British demurred...

...Had they been as intent upon full-scale war as some people have argued," writes Paul Bergeron in his excellent study, The Presidency of James K. Polk, "surely they would not have been caught as completely unprepared when the hostilities actually commenced...

...Instead, Trist began bombarding Polk with letters complaining about Gen...

...The consensus among historians is that the Texas annexation made war with Mexico inevitable...

...To secure California for the Unit ed States, Polk sent a special envoy, John Slidell of Louisiana, to Mexico City in October 1845 with an offer to pay Mexico up to $25 million in return for California, New Mexico, and Mexican recognition of the Rio Grande River as the new boundary with the United States...

...In their view, the boundary belonged further south, on the line of the Columbia River, since American settlements were concentrated south of the Columbia, but were virtually non-existent to its north, where Britain's Hudson Bay Company held sway...

...His mother, Jane, a great grand-niece of John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation, was a devout Presbyterian...

...Believing a two-term presidency promoted corruption, Polk served only one, as he had pledged he would...

...34 October r 9 9 6 . The American Spectator would prove equally effective with the Mexicans...

...Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that "the United States will conquer Mexico but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic which brings him down in turn...

...Polk was not a madman, but he wanted the British to believe he was...

...He now felt justified in withdrawing his offer completely," writes Thomas Bailey in his Diplomatic History of the American People, "reasserting America's claim to the entire area, and insisting that, 'If we do have war, it will not be our fault...

...But an entry in Polk's diary suggests that in sending Taylor to the banks of the Rio Grande, Polk was again engaging in brinkmanship, not provocation...

...Though barely literate, he convinced his father to send him to school, and after two years Polk was admitted to the University of North Carolina as a sophomore...

...Though the Mexicans were indeed not "mad enough" to declare war on the United States, neither were they "rational" enough to negotiate with Washington...

...After college Polk read law at Nashville, and when the opportunity presented itself, he entered politics...

...James Russell Lowell claimed that the war's only purpose was to acquire "bigger pens to cram slaves in...

...Having gained his southern objec tive (Texas) and his northwestern objective (Oregon), Polk was free to concentrate on his southwestern objective (California...

...Notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it," he wrote, "[war] exists by the act of Mexico herself...

...After Scott's forces entered Mexico City, Trist made contact with Mexican officials who were willing to negotiate...

...He sent Gen...

...Zachary Taylor and his 4,000 troops to Corpus Christi, south of the Nueces River...

...Since these terms were obviously unacceptable to the British, Polk's victory seemed to set the United States on a collision course with England...

...Scott...

...In the northwest, the United States and Great Britain were deadlocked over the disposition of the Oregon country, a huge swath of land encompassing parts of what today is Canada, as well as the United States...

...But Clay's position on Texas' annexation was unclear, and, in disgust, some of his abolitionist supporters voted for the tiny, antislavery Liberty party...

...As a result, Polk won the 1844 election by fewer than 40,000 votes out of some two and a half million ballots cast-the first ever "dark horse" candidate to attain the presidency and, at the time, the youngest man at age 49 ever elected president...

...Cass felt that the opportunity of bringing Texas under the Stars and Stripes was simply too good to pass up...

...Though many in Congress urged him not to t, rush, he immediately dispatched "confidential" agents to Texas to try to influence public opinion in favor of annexation...

...Hence Polk and his Secretary of War, William Marcy, did nothing to prepare the nation for war...

...As Samuel Eliot Morison puts it in his Oxford History of the American People, "folk baited Mexico into war over the Texas boundary question in order to get California, after concluding that Mexico would not sell California...

...It is impossible to conceive of an administration less warlike, or more intriguing than that of Mr...

...By sending American troops into the no-man's land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers that America and Mexico both claimed, Polk was sending the Mexicans an unmistakable signal: Either sell New Mexico and California at a handsome price, or prepare for war...

...To climb down would entail terrible loss of face...

...I have never in my life," he wrote in his diary, "felt so indignant...

...And just to get Mexico's attention, he also dispatched Gen...

...But Polk deserves more than passing mention, not merely because he acquired more territory for the United States than any other president, but because he provides us with a model of presidential excellence...

...But after delivering the valedictory address, Polk collapsed...

...But there are no statues in the United States honoring James Knox Polk...

...Like Jackson, Polk was an ardent populist, a sharp critic of eastern "money interests," and a consistent opponent of protective tariffs, which he believed benefited the manufacturing interests at the expense of the common man...

...Winfield Scott across the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz...

...to go the other way would mean war...

...In 1843 the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination was former president Martin Van Buren of New York, and his principal rival was Senator Lewis Cass of Missouri...

...So he engaged in what we would nowadays call "brinkmanship...

...because they had such a weak case, the Americans repeatedly rejected arbitration and insisted on the 49th parallel...

...Most Americans know little about our eleventh president, even though during his administration the territories that now constitute California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, as well as parts of Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming, came under American control...

...When asked how he could justify a war with the world's mightiest power, Polk refused to back down...

...Mexico is an ugly enemy," noted Daniel Webster...

...35 The American Spectator • October 19 9 6...

...I n most nations, a leader who presided over a major wara war that transformed his country into a transcontinental power with vast new holdings of treasure-laden territories-would be memorialized in song, story, and statue...

...Jacksonians like Polk were strong believers in Manifest Destiny because they hoped that territorial expansionism would ward off the twin corruptions of urbanization and industrialization, as well as reinforce America's commitment to a simple, honest and virtuous agrarian way of life...

...Polk addressed these problems quickly and decisively...

...His Concord neighbor, Henry David Thoreau, spent a night in the local jail because, protesting the war, he refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax...

...Even the recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery commemorating the 15oth anniversary of the founding of the Smithsonian, 1846: Portrait o f the Nation, mentions Polk only in passing, alongside the Mormons, Indians, pioneers, slaves, inventors, industrialists, artists, writers, composers, reformers, scholars, and whalers who made the United States, as the popular expression then went, such a "go ahead" nation...

...instead, once he arrived in Mexico, Santa Anna put himself at the head of the Mexican army that was fighting the Americans...

...And in the southwest, both Britain and America cast covetous eyes on the Mexican province of California...

...Samuel Polk believed his son's poor health was caused by bladder stones...

...On his own authority, he signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico on October 2,1848, by which Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as its northern border, while the United States paid Mexico $15 million for California and New Mexico, sixty percent of what Slidell had initially offered...

...that if congress faultered [sic] or hesitated in their course, John Bull would immediately become arrogant and more grasping in his demands...

...In his mon umental study, Let the Sea Make A Noise..., Walter McDougall speculates that this incident scarred Polk for life, filling him with self-doubt because of his "uncertain standing" with the Lord...

...Totally unschooled in foreign affairs, and with little support from his cabinet (Secretary of State James Buchanan was too busy pursuing his own presidential ambitions to serve as Polk's Kissinger), Polk played the Game of Nations with subtlety and daring, and succeeded in winning an incredibly large and valuable pile of chips for his country in a very short time...

...They reacted to Polk's brinkmanship by doing something he never anticipated: absolutely nothing...

...but how could he justify using force against Mexico when the Mexicans hadn't used force against the United States...

...His aunt paid it for him...

...and to stand still was impossible...

...Many Americans agreed...

...With Slidell's failure, Polk raised the pressure on Mexico a notch...

...He distinguished himself, graduating at the top of his class...

...If he simply kept Taylor's troops on the banks of the Rio Grande, his implied threat to take military action unless the Mexicans sold California and New Mexico would gradually lose all credibility...

...It is just as well he did so, for the British charge in Texas, Charles Eliot, was in the process of working out an understanding with its president, Anson Jones, whereby Texas agreed to reject Congress's annexation offer in return for Mexico's recognition of Texan independence...

...As with Texas, Polk feared that the British would establish a foothold in California if he didn't act first...

...Many Americans -Polk included-felt that their country must do likewise...

...out of church before their son had been baptized...

...The fact remains, however, that Polk was one of the most spectacularly successful presidents in U.S...

...Many historians believe that he did so in order to provoke a war with Mexico...

...that the only way to treat John Bull was to look him straight in the eye...

...His father, Samuel, was an irregular churchgoer who quarreled with the local minister on the day of baby James's baptismal ceremony, leading the Polks to walk...

...He came out in favor of Van Buren and annexation...

...It was not the short war Polk had hoped for...

...And a young Whig congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, demanded that Polk reveal the exact spot where Mexico had allegedly invaded the United States, thereby earning himself the nickname "Spotty Lincoln...

...to the atrocious war waged upon Mexico...

...Because he was in a weak and insecure position [at home]," writes Jaime Suchlicki in his useful history, Mexico, "Pres...

...Polk's Mexico strategy was simply a replay of what he had done in Oregon: Go to the edge of war in order to get the other side to accept a negotiated settlement...

...there was no reason to doubt that it ca;b When asked how he could justify a war with the world's mightiest power, Polk refusedto back down...

...Known in Mexico as the War of the North American Invasion, the Mexican-American war dragged on for eighteen months and cost 14,000 American lives-about 2,000 troops dying in battle, the rest perishing from disease...

...On the ninth ballot, Van Buren's people threw their votes behind Polk, who thus, to everyone's surprise but his own, became the Democratic presidential nominee...

...Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison editorialized in the Liberator, "We only hope that, if blood has had to flow, that it has been that of the American, and that the next news we shall hear is that Gen...

...By Joseph Shattan 32 October 19 9 6 . The American Spectator was elected governor of Tennessee...

...the Mexicans still wouldn't negotiate...

...Yet Polk still believed he could be president...

...After the War of 1812, America and Great Britain had jointly occupied the Oregon country, half a million square miles of land lying west of the 33 The American Spectator . October r 9 9 6 Rockies between the 42nd and 54th parallels...

...As he wrote in his diary: I remarked...

...the Mexicans wouldn't negotiate...

...thanks to his decisive action, Texas entered the Union as the 28th state in December 1845...

...That way, he guessed, they would reconsider their opposition to the 49th parallel, which was the line that he, like earlier presidents, had wanted all along...

...Although the treaty's provisions struck the super-hawkish "All Mexico" men as too generous, Polk-who thought the war had dragged on much too longdecided he had no choice but submit it to the Senate, which ratified it after bitter debate...

...Polk's agents frustrated these designs...

...When he assumed office in March 1845, the spirit of "Manifest Destiny"-a phrase coined by John O'Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, to describe the widely-held view that the United States was geographically predestined to expand as far west as the Pacific Coast-was in the air...

...When the British minister, Richard Pakenham, rather brusquely turned it down, Polk professed to be deeply insulted...

...Polk," wrote Missouri's Democratic Senator Thomas Hart Benton, a Polk ally...

...At the Democrats' Baltimore convention, Van Buren's opposition to claiming Texas deprived him of the two-thirds majority necessary for nomination, while Cass's opposition to Van Buren denied him the backing of Van Buren's supporters...

...This approach had served him quite nicely with the British...

...Throughout his career, Polk would repeatedly drive himself to the limits of physical endurance, and then some...

...The two men were divided over whether the United States should annex the Republic of Texas, which had declared its independence from Mexico in 1836...

...that I considered a bold and firm course on our part the pacific one...

...Jimmy Polk's War," as they derisively called it, had been bitterly opposed by America's intellectuals...

...Some of this anger has rubbed off on contemporary American historians, most of whom despise Polk for waging an "imperialist" war against Mexico...

...An ardent supporter of Democratic President Andrew Jackson, whom Polk idolized and even physically resembled, the youthful Congressman became known as "Young Hickory...

...But when Polk came into office, most Americans were persuaded that war with Britain was inevitable-and in the north, not the south...

...history...

...Polk guessed correctly...

...Congress was a dangerous place in those days...

...In the 1844 election, besides demanding the annexation of Texas (or, as Polk's supporters put it, the "reannexation" of Texas, since they claimed, somewhat obscurely, that Texas was America's by reason of the Louisiana Purchase), the Democrats also demanded the "reoccupation" of Oregon...

...He sent Gen...

...Finally, Polk sent Nicholas Trist, Chief Clerk of the State Department, to Veracruz with instructions to work out a deal with the Mexicans...

...Today, by contrast, populists generally favor high tariffs, which they believe protect the common man against the man ufacturing interests...

...Taylor's men...

...He immediately began drafting a message of war to Congress...

...The result was deadlock...

...In 1824 he was elected to his first of seven terms in Congress...

...Because they had such a strong case, the British repeatedly offered to settle the issue through international arbitration...

...Polk also fired Trist, who had to wait nearly a quarter of a century for the government to reimburse his expenses and demonstrate its gratitude by appointing him postmaster of Alexandria, Virginia...

...Cautious and self-possessed, Polk handled himself well in this environment, refusing to be baited into duels by his Whig opponents...

...As he wrote in his diary, "The onI9 way to treat John Bull was to lookhim straight in the eye...

...And when Polk had second thoughts and recalled Trist, Trist refused to go home...

...they wouldn't even meet with him...

...He was born in 1795 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina-a place, according to scholar Norman Graebner, "where men lived simply on the fruits of their own labor without expectations of easy wealth and dealt honestly with each other on a basis of rough equality and mutual respect...

...He arranged for Mexico's deposed leader, Santa Anna, to return to Mexico from his Cuban exile after an envoy of Santa Anna's assured him that the conqueror of the Alamo would work for peace...

...Their rallying cry, "54 40' or Fight" would have placed America's northern border at the southern tip of Alaska...

...She will not fight-and will not treat...

...They wanted a small war, just large enough to require a treaty of peace...

...He intended to use the governorship as a springboard to the presidency, but he lost his campaign for a second term in 1841, and was beaten again two years later...

...Jose Herrera did not wish to jeopardize his presidency by being accused of selling out to the Americans...

...In 1838 Polk left Congress and ONE TERM WONDER ca~~ It's the 150th anniversary of theMexican War, and President JamesPolk ought to be an Americanhero-for much else, as well.Why has history slighted him...

...Van Buren feared that if Texas were annexed, Southerners would carve half-a-dozen slave states out of it, and thereby dominate the Union...

...Polk, however, could hardly afford such a war at the very moment he was facing the possibility of a showdown with Mexico...

...Polk, who had learned a thing or two from his fourteen years in Congress, played his cards very shrewdly...

...A tough, no-nonsense, extremely hard-working chief executive, Polk set himself a few clear goals, attained them all, and left the United States a far greater country when he departed the presidency than when he entered it...

...Polk's Whig opponent was the accomplished and charismatic Henry Clay of Kentucky, a national figure who was expected to walk away with the election against his relatively unknown opponent...

...In the south, although Congress, on President John Tyler's (Polk's immediate predecessor) last day in office, had expressed a willingness to annex Texas, the Lone Star Republic had not yet accepted Congress's offer, and the British were scheming feverishly with Texan politicians to pre vent Texas from joining the Union...

...But Manifest Destiny faced a determined and formidable opponent: Great Britain...

...But Polk would not accept dead lock...

...Polk had climbed all but one of the steps on the ladder of escalation...

...Polk had boxed himself into a corner...

...0 n May 9, 1846, as Polk and his cabinet were pondering their dilemma, word arrived that a Mexican patrol had killed or wounded sixteen of Gen...

...As the New York Courier put it in 1845, "This idea that England is desirous to possess herself of the Cal ifomias seems as great a bugbear with the American people as the designs of Russia on India are with the English...

...He died in 1849, only 54 years old, totally exhausted from four years of intense effort...

...It was all a bluff, of course...

...Scott and his army are in the hands of the Mexicans...

...JOSEPH SHArr is consulting editor o f The American Spectator...

...On his deathbed he finally requested, and received, baptism...

...Horace Greeley proclaimed the New York Tribune's "open and fearless hostility...

...That, and Polk's not particularly attractive personality, may account for his obscurity...

...On January 13,1846, he ordered Gen...

...On May 13,1846, the United States officially declared war...

...Polk's problem, however, was that all the intrigue in the world couldn't bring Mexico to the bargaining table...

...Faced with the prospect of a war that would play havoc with their trade, and possibly endanger Canada, the British blinked, and surrendered everything south of the 49th parallel to the Unit ed States...

...Trist's insubordination infuriated the president...

...Yet it was the State Department clerk who saved the day...

...Taylor to move his troops south all the way to the mouth of the Rio Grande, threatening the Mexican town of Matamoros...

...Rifle duels - like the one in which William Graves, the Honorable Mem ber from Kentucky, blew out the brains of Jonathan Cilley, the Honorable Member from Maine-were not uncommon...

...At last, the Mexicans had given Polk a way out...

...England must think of her own interests, and secure the Bay of Francisco and Monterey," declared the London Times in 1845...

...Several administrations had subsequently tried to work out a compromise with the British by offering to set the border between the U.S...

...He went through the motions of submitting a compromise proposal to the British-the old 49th parallel...

...and so when he was 17, James underwent an operation to have the stones removed...

...When James Polk was eleven, the family moved to Tennessee, where Polk grew up frail and sickly...

...But the Mexicans didn't agree to Slidell's terms...

...Although doctors in those days knew nothing of anesthesia, the operation was a success: Polk's pains vanished and he was filled with new vigor...

...Mexico] has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil...

...Taylor 200 miles into Mexican territory...