By Allen Guelzo, Princeton University
Elected to Congress in the same year that the presidency was denied to Andrew Jackson by the “corrupt bargain”, James Knox Polk made himself a nuisance in Congress to President John Quincy Adams.
In the Footsteps of Andrew Jackson?
Once he was elected president, there was no question about James Knox Polk’s plans for Texas. Born in North Carolina of the same Scots/Irish ethnicity as Andrew Jackson, Polk’s family had followed Andrew Jackson’s path by moving to Tennessee in 1806.
James Knox Polk began practicing law in 1820. He went on from there into state politics, and from there into the inner circles of Andrew Jackson’s political councils. When Jackson won the election he believed he rightfully deserved in 1828, Polk became the floor manager for Jackson’s war on the Second Bank of the United States.
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Polk’s Good Fortune
When Jackson left the presidency in 1837, however, Polk’s political star seemed to dim along with Jackson’s. He was elected governor of Tennessee in 1839, but he lost reelection in 1841, and lost a second try at the governor’s race in 1843.
It was, therefore, Polk’s good fortune that in 1844 the Democrats faced a quandary about who to nominate for the presidency. Martin Van Buren, who had lost the 1840 election to William Henry Harrison, wanted another shot at the presidency, but no Democrat in their right mind wanted to run behind a presidential candidate whose principal image in the voters’ minds was economic catastrophe.
On the other hand, Henry Clay was ready for another run for the prize, and was actually trying to steal Democratic thunder by cautiously endorsing the Texas annexation.
Polk, the ‘Dark Horse’
The Democrats turned to Polk as the dark horse in the race. He didn’t have much public name recognition, but he did have all of the right ideological credentials, and in fact the term “dark horse” emerges on exactly those bases, as applied to Polk, for the very first time.
Polk was an outright annexationist, and he hoped even to edge the British out of Oregon. He was an upper South slaveholder with plantations in Tennessee and Mississippi, which netted between $6,000 and $7,000 a year. Thus, even though he wasn’t terribly well known, Polk was still in the right ideological place for the party’s nomination.
Clay’s Stance on Texas Annexation
As it turned out, Henry Clay’s endorsement of Texas annexation, instead of winning him Democratic votes, actually cost him the election. The case at issue was a letter that Clay wrote in June of 1844 to the editor of an Alabama newspaper who had asked about his stance on Texas. “Personally, I could have no objection to the annexation of Texas,” Clay wrote, “but I certainly would be unwilling to see the existing Union dissolved or seriously jeopardized for the sake of acquiring Texas,” he continued.
This immediately horrified the northern Whigs, who saw the annexation of Texas as nothing more than a stalking horse for Democratic expansion for southern agricultural interests, and, of course, for southern slave interests. This also infuriated southern Whigs by suggesting that people who had an interest in annexing Texas might also be potentially interested in disrupting the Union, and therefore had a whiff of treason to them.
Clay’s Loss
As it was, Clay lost by only a wafer-thin majority in the popular vote; 38,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast were the differential, and that was not much. The fact that Henry Clay had been unable to overwhelm a relative political unknown like Polk, however, much less lose to him, spelled the end for Henry Clay’s many presidential hopes.
The pall of depression triggered by the election extended over all the Whig Party. Even before Polk’s inauguration, the disheartened Whigs gave up the fight against the annexation of Texas in Congress, and allowed a joint congressional resolution to adopt a Texas annexation treaty on March 1, 1845. Three days later, James Knox Polk was inaugurated as the eleventh President of the United States.
“The unconstitutional manner, more than the simple act of annexation, ought to fill every enlightened patriot with alarm and apprehension,” Clay wrote afterward. “It will, I fear, totally change the peaceful character of the republic.”
Common Questions about James Knox Polk
Martin Van Buren, who had lost the 1840 election to William Henry Harrison, wanted another shot at the presidency, but no Democrat in their right mind wanted to run behind a presidential candidate whose principal image in the voters’ minds was economic catastrophe.
The Democrats turned to James K. Polk as the dark horse in the race. He didn’t have much public name recognition, but he did have all of the right ideological credentials. Polk was an outright annexationist, and he hoped even to edge the British out of Oregon. He was an upper South slaveholder with plantations in Tennessee and Mississippi, which netted between $6,000 and $7,000 a year. Thus, Polk, even though he wasn’t terribly well known, was still in the right ideological place for the party’s nomination.
Henry Clay’s comments on the Texan annexation horrified the northern Whigs, who saw the annexation of Texas as nothing more than a stalking horse for Democratic expansion for southern agricultural interests, and, of course, for southern slave interests. This also infuriated southern Whigs by suggesting that people who had an interest in annexing Texas might also be potentially interested in disrupting the Union, and therefore had a whiff of treason to them.
