James K. Polk
James Polk named four things he intended to do, did all four in a single term, kept his promise not to seek a second, and died fifteen weeks after leaving office. He was a Tennessee protege of Andrew Jackson, Speaker of the House and then a defeated governor, and he was nominated in 1844 only because the convention deadlocked - the first candidate of whom the opposition could ask who he was and expect no answer. He arrived with a programme of four items: reduce the tariff, restore the independent treasury, settle the Oregon boundary, and acquire California. He obtained all of them in four years, which no other president has managed with a list announced in advance. The first two were legislation and were done within eighteen months. Oregon was a bluff. His party had campaigned on a boundary at the latitude of fifty-four forty, which meant war with Britain; he demanded it, was refused, and quietly accepted a division at the forty-ninth parallel that had been available all along. California could not be bought, so he took it. He moved troops into territory Mexico claimed on the Rio Grande, and when they were fired on he told Congress that American blood had been shed on American soil and that a state of war already existed. It was a war of choice presented as a war of necessity, and a first-term congressman named Lincoln spent his single term demanding to be shown the spot. It worked completely and ruined everything. The United States took California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico and parts of three other states - half a million square miles, a third of Mexico - and with them the question of whether slavery would be permitted there. A proviso barring it from any territory taken was attached to war funding within months, failed, and was reintroduced for years afterwards, splitting both parties along a line that had previously run between them. Polk had no interest in the question and thought it agitation. Every crisis of the next twelve years was fought over the land he acquired, and he worked himself into an early grave getting it.
- Lived: 1795 CE – 1849 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
