James Polk

James Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. He was referred to as the first "dark horse" president. Polk was very studious and industrious and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818. He became friends with Andrew Jackson and was a young lawyer in Tennessee he went into the legislature. Polk, while in the House of Representatives, became chief lieutenant for Jackson's Bank war. He later became the Speaker of the House from 1835-1839. Until his interest was raised, Polk was the leading candidate for Vice President but then decided to run for president and see what happens. Nobody saw it coming and when he took up the issue of expansion, he picked was for annexing Texas and adding California to the United States. The leading candidate for the Democratic Party at the time and the leading candidate for the Whig party were both against expansion. He luckily sensed what the people wanted and came out of nowhere and won the democratic ballot. In the presidential election, it was him against Henry Clay and people of the Whig Party made fun of the democrats by saying, "Who is James Polk?" Polk ended up winning the election and became the last Jacksonian president that we would have to date. In 1845, Polk proposed to the British that they wanted to extend the boundary between the U.S. and Canada to the 54'40' parallel and later was decided that it was too much and we could not get that territory without war. Neither the U.S. nor British wanted war at the time so Polk proposed it to be on the 49th parallel and the British refused again. Polk went back to taking all of it and the British agreed with giving us the 49th parallel down with the exception of the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The treaty was signed in 1846. While Polk was in office, Congress passed a joint resolution that offered annexation to Texas. Polk sent Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande to put pressure and Mexico saw this as aggression, so they attacked Taylor's troops. Congress then declared war and the United States ended up winning. We offered Mexico 15 million dollars for the territory in a resolution to get Texas and California and the American assumption of damage claims. The acquisition of all of this land brought a bitter quarrel between the north and the south about whether they should expand slavery or not. Polk left office due to his health after working so hard in his presidency and died in June 1849.