A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Robert W. Merry

James Knox Polk was a protege of the better-known American general and President Andrew Jackson. He was the eleventh president and, though despised and reviled by many of his rival Whig Party enemies (including a young Congressman, Abraham Lincoln) , the United States had a territory 500,000 square miles larger than it had been four years earlier when Polk first took the Oath of Office on a rainy day in Washington City in March of 1845.

The better-known Jackson served two four-year terms (1828-1836) and ignited a new democratic spirit in the nation--a spirit that because of the times was confined to working white men and small farmers, and not include women, blacks, or Native-Americans.

Jackson, "Old Hickory" he was called, was a hard-bitten rawhide figure who managed to gain great success during the War of 1812 by defeating a British force at the Battle of New Orleans and later driving Native-American fighters like the Seminoles off their lands.

He was the first President from the then-frontier state of Tennessee, and the neo-Jeffersonian champion against the forces that wanted a National Bank. (Which he felt put too much power in the hands of New York speculators, among other things.) Jackson is immortalized still on the $20 bill and remained an immensely popular Chief Executive until the beginnings of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

And yet, you could make the argument that James K. Polk, the man known as "Young Hickory" , did more in the four years he was President (1844-1848) than his mentor did in eight.

Polk was an accidental President in many ways. A former shining light in the Jacksonian Democratic Party, stalwart Polk (1798-1849) had gone from point-man for Jackson to Speaker of the House in Congress in the mid-1830's. He was from the same state as the shrewd and imperious Jackson and basically didn't go to the bathroom without consulting the older man.

A few years later, however, the rival Whig Party started to gain ground thanks to the leadership of Henry Clay, a Congressman who popularized an "American System" of internal improvements (canals, roads, port facilities) into the growing nation. The Whig Party was a national movement that favored high tariffs to develop the nation. This was seen as favoring the industrializing centers of New England and the Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest where slavery had been pushed out of existence. Low tariffs, favored generally by the Democrats, helped promote trade with Britain, France and Europe--especially agricultural crops like cotton, which were slave-labor dependant.

Polk was a defeated candidate for governor of Tennessee in 1843. The political career of this Tennessee plantation (and slave) holder seemed to have peaked and he went back to the town of Columbia, south of the state capital, Nashville, to lick his wounds.

But one year later Polk was back in the ascendancy. He had his name placed in nomination for the Vice-Presidency. With a new "two-thirds" approval rule in the Nomination Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, however, none of the favorite candidates could pull off a super-majority of the delegates. A compromise candidate was needed, someone who was from a border state (like Tennessee) who could draw both Northern and Southern support. And Polk--after multiple ballots--got a bigger prize than he had hoped for.

It was a hard-fought national campaign for the Presidency, however. Polk's opponent was the great Henry Clay himself. Clay has served in Congress longer than Polk and had a national reputation as "The Great Compromiser" who had staved off clashes between free and slave states in the young Republic. Along with Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, he was one of the three greatest political leaders of the Jackson Era and remained so until his death. Yet Polk beat him--narrowly, in part, the author states, because Clay underestimated how important the expansion of the nation was to many voters, particularly those who wanted to see the new republic of Texas (which had gained independence from Mexico in an Anglo-American inspired uprising a decade earlier) admitted to the Union.

Clay was lukewarm on the Texas issue, knowing that it would lead to problems with the balance of power between slave and free states. (Texas was a slave republic, which was one of the reasons white men fought to be free of this part of Mexico's northern frontier. Mexico has abolished slavery when she won independence from Spain.) "Young Hickory", however, was pro-Texas, and he also articulated in his letters to his followers--it was considered unseemly to openly campaign in those days--- that he wanted as much of the Oregon Territory as well, which was then jointly administered by the USA and the British through their Hudson Bay Company.

He was also not shy about being prepared to go to war with Mexico to secure Texas and also take New Mexico and California as well, either by purchasing them from the cash-strapped Mexican government or by conquest.

A "war of choice" you might say.

There is enough political intrigue in "A Country of Vast Designs" to keep any history nerd like me enthralled. Polk himself is not a very intriguing figure, but he was focused and stubborn and, whatever can be said for the immorality of the Mexican War--which cost 11,000 American lives and many more Mexican ones--he changed the map of America forever and made it a transoceanic power. The careful negotiations with Great Britain over Oregon, where Polk was at odds with his own more-cautious Secretary of State, James Buchanan, also make for interesting reading. If Britain and Mexico had formed an alliance against American western expansion, as Buchanan feared, it would have been a disaster.
That was another thing about Polk, he was not a great leader, but he was damn lucky.

Well, except for the fact that he died four months after he left office from disease author Merry says says was brought about by stress and exhaustion battling with Congress and his own cabinet over the shape of the nation and its fiscal structure.
It is likely his early death that prevented James K. Polk--The Napoleon of the Stump-- from getting his rightful share of both Machiavellian credit and moral blame for the "vast designs" of America in modern America. He personified the Age of Manifest Destiny.

Here's a song about the 11th President, courtesy of the off-beat 80's rock band They Might Be Giants