James Polk has no large monuments
dedicated to him, no presidential library burnishing his reputation,
but he is an American president whom history buffs can't help bumping
into. In high school I learned of Polk's role in acquiring
Oregon and the Mexican Cession for the United States, though not
about the sense of betrayal this evoked in Northern politicians, who
resented Polk's reneging on his promise to acquire British Columbia as
well. In college I came across George Alec Effinger's sci-fi story
“The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything,” in which omniscient
aliens revealed that Polk, who had fulfilled all his campaign
promises in one term, was the greatest American president. Who was I,
mere Earthling, to argue? Effinger's story probably inspired They
Might Be Giants' now-classic song “James K. Polk,” which I
discovered in grad school and inflicted on my survey classes for
several years.* On Facebook, I briefly indulged in the online version
of Oregon Trail, in which Polk appeared as a minor
tavern-lounger. And a few years ago, when I attended a stimulating
NEH seminar at the University of North
Carolina, a handsome statue reminded me that UNC had been the
eleventh president's alma mater. Polk has been, as I say, a hard man to escape.
I hold no brief for Polk's personal or
political virtue. The thin-skinned Tennessean was not merely a
slave-owner but a slave-dealer, and his acquisition of New Mexico and
California little more than piracy, abetted by Mexico's
political instability and its embroilment, as Brian Delay has ably shown, in a two-front war against the United States and the
Comanches. I've not yet read through Tom Chaffin's new book Met His
Every Goal?, but what I've seen of it suggests that Polk never even
made the campaign promises that he fulfilled during his presidency,
and he under-fulfilled two of those ostensible promises: acquiring
Texas (actually accomplished by his predecessor, John Tyler) and
acquiring all of the Oregon Country (he actually agreed to divide the
territory with Britain). I will give Polk credit for one thing,
though: his ability to endure intense pain. In his youth James
suffered through surgery to remove bladder stones, an operation that
probably left him sterile (he and his wife Sarah Childress had no children) and
which, I suspect, left him with periodic discomfort thereafter. Polk's
supporters called the Tennessean “Young Hickory,” in reference
to his patron Andrew Jackson. Insofar as hickory trees were tough and
given that Jackson also endured considerable pain (due to dental
problems and several old dueling wounds), the nicknames were
aptly-chosen. Lucky we are to live in a century with decent
health care.
* In 2013 I had the pleasure of hearing
TMBG perform this song live in Saint Louis. Achievement Unlocked.
