James
Polk was born in 1795 in North Carolina, and went on to become the 11th
and youngest (at the time) president of the United States (1845–1849).
Polk’s annexation of Texas led to the Mexican-American War (1846–1848),
and the U.S. victory thereby led to the acquisition of large territories
in the Southwest and along the Pacific coast, which in turn led to the
establishment of the Department of the Interior. The northern border of
the United States was also established under Polk, as were the Naval
Academy and the Smithsonian. He died on June 15, 1849, in Nashville,
Tennessee.James
Knox Polk was born in Pineville, a small town in Mecklenburg County,
North Carolina, on November 2, 1795, and graduated with honors in 1818
from the University of North Carolina. Leaving his law practice behind,
he served in the Tennessee legislature, where he became friends with
Andrew Jackson. Polk moved from the Tennessee legislature to the United
States House of Representatives, serving from 1825 to 1839 (and serving
as speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839). He left his congressional
post to become governor of Tennessee. Leading
into the presidential election of 1844, Polk was the frontrunner for
the Democratic nomination for the vice presidency. Both would-be
presidential candidates, Martin Van Buren for the Democrats and Henry
Clay for the Whigs, sought to skirt the expansionist ("manifest
destiny") issue during the campaign, seeing it as potentially
controversial. The first step in distancing their campaigns was
declaring opposition to the annexation of Texas. Polk, on the other
hand, took a hard stance on the issue, insisting on the annexation of
Texas and, in a roundabout way, Oregon.
Enter Andrew Jackson, who
knew that the American public favored westward expansion. He sought to
run a candidate in the election committed to the precepts of manifest
destiny, and at the Democratic Convention, Polk was nominated to run
for the presidency. Polk went on to win the popular vote by a
razor-thin margin, but took the electoral college handily. James
Polk took office on March 4, 1845—and, at 49 years of age, he became
the youngest president in American history. Before Polk took the oath of
office, Congress offered annexation to Texas, and when they accepted
and became a new state, Mexico severed diplomatic relations with the
United States and tensions between the two countries escalated.
Regarding
the Oregon territory, which was much larger than the current state of
Oregon, President Polk would have to contend with England, who had
jointly occupied the area for nearly 30 years. Polk's political allies
claimed the entire Oregon area for the United States, from California
northward to the 54° 40' latitude (the southern boundary of what is now
Alaska), and so the mantra "54-40 or fight!" was born. Neither England
nor the Polk administration wanted a war, and Polk knew that only war
would likely allow the United States to claim the land.
After
back-and-forth negotiation, and some effective hard ball played by Polk,
the British accepted the 49th parallel as the northern border (the
current border between the United States and Canada), excluding the
southern tip of Vancouver Island, and the deal was sealed in 1846.
Things
went less smoothly in the hunt for California and New Mexico, and
ever-increasing tensions led to the Mexican-American War. After several
battles and the American occupation of Mexico City, Mexico ceded New
Mexico and California in 1848, and coast-to-coast expansion was complete
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