Meet the forgotten eleventh president who shaped the United States into a continental gigant - but hastened its fall into civil war.

FRONTIER ORIGINS
In 1822, Polk stood for the Tennessee House of Representatives as a Democrat and won by a huge margin. Jackson supported his political career, causing the two to spark an alliance that would endure for the rest of Jackson's life. Polk played the 'Young Hickory to Jackson's gnarled 'Old Hickory. Months later, Polk also made another strategic alliance (possibly with Jackson's encouragement) by marrying Sarah Childress, the accomplished but strictly religious daughter of one of Tennessee's leading families. A year later at the 1824 elections, Jackson won the popular vote but failed to get a clear majority from Electoral College. The House of Representatives instead chose John Quincy Adams as president but he had come second in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Jackson and his supporters alleged underhand dealings by Adams and his supporters. When Polk came to Washington. DC, as a Tennessee Congressman in 1825, he took up Jackson's cause, calling for the abolition of the Electoral College and echoing Jackson's agrarian populist policies. These depicted the small farmer as the true American pioneer, and the urban, eastern establishment as a corrupt elite.
When Jackson won the 1828 election, Yolk became one of his closest advisors. As Jackson's voice in the House of Representatives, he rose quickly, learning how to manipulate the legislative machinery of committees and procedures as he went. In 1838, with a presidency in mind, he returned to Tennessee and won the governorship. But he was unable to master the Tennessee House.
MEXICAN STAND-OFF
The economy was still weak after the Panic of 1837 — a recession caused in large part by Jackson's policies — and in 1840, Jackson's presidential successor, Martin van Buren, lost the White House to the rival Whig party. The Tennessee legislature voted against Polk's requests for expensive programmes of education and infrastructure, and his Jacksonian proposal to strengthen state banks against financial panics instead of giving additional powers to a national bank. In 1841, Polk lost the governorship. He stood once more in 1843, only to face failure once again.
Still, Polk had positioned himself to inherit the nomination as van Buren's running mate in the 1844 elections. Polk was a diplomat in a Washington where political differences still led to duels, and where the issue of slavery was threatening to split the North and South. In a Jacksonian style, he also aligned himself with the issue that would force slavery to the top of the agenda by the end of the 1840s — the territorial expansion of the United States.
"THE POLK FAMILY SOON DOMINATED THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THIS NEW SOCIETY IN THE WOODS"
In 1836, the white settlers of Mexican-ruled Texas declared their independence. Jackson, then the president, had recognised the rebels but Mexican threats of war had prevented him from annexing the self-proclaimed Republic of Texas. Meanwhile, Britain, which had defeated the United States little over two decades earlier in the War of 1812, was courting Texas. The Texans were slaveholders while the British, having recently eradicated slavery, used their navy to become patrons of abolition. If the United States allowed Texas to fall into British or Mexican hands, it would become ,rote an obstacle to expanding west. But if America absorbed Texas as a pro-slavery state, it would exacerbate tensions between the South and the North's abolitionist majority. Tensions would also rise if Texas was absorbed without slavery, as it would become a haven for escaped slaves.
Polk, too, was a slave owner — he had inherited 20 slaves and a cotton plantation on his father's death in 1827. The right to hold slaves was protected in the American Constitution but he underestimated slavery's potential as an Issue capable of dividing the Union. He believed that expanding the country was a more pressing affair and one that, if realised could unite opinion around an expanded ideal of the nation. The Whigs and Democrats were both divided over Texas. When the Whig nominee, Kentucky's Henry Clay, declared that he was against annexing it, so did van Buren. Jackson, who favoured the plan, now pushed for Polk, presenting him as the only nominee capable of uniting the party and winning the presidency. Polk deployed his experience ao a party politician, olcilfully manoeuvring through nine ballots at the party convention of 1844, and took his chance.
"Who is James Polk?" became the Whigs election cry. He was the first 'dark horse candidate but he only appeared to emerge from nowhere. in reality, he was actually an experienced administrator, materialising from within a party in crisis, as Abraham Lincoln would as the Civil War loomed. Yet while Lincoln would become the candidate of a party on the edge of civil war, Polk won the 1844 election as a unifier.
AMERICAN SOIL

Britain and the United States both claimed the territory — Britain through the expeditions of Captain Cook and George Vancouver, and America through the land explorations of Lewis and Clark as well as the voyages of Robert Gray. Neither country wanted a conflict. In 1818, they agreed to administrate the land together but the influx of settlers in the 1840s tipped the demographic balance towards an American majority and patriotism rose accordingly.


WESTWARD HO
In September 1847, Mexico City fell to the United States and Polk imposed the terms of Mexico's defeat via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Texas was to become the 28th member of the Union and
the Rio Grande its southern border.

Mexico also ceded a vast tract of land— known, as California — in the west and its northern border touched the southern border of the American half of the Oregon Country. It included almost all of the future states of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, large parts of Wyoming and Colorado, and half of, New Mexico In retim, America paid Mexico $15, million — less than half the amount that Polk had offered before the war — and agreed to settle claims amounting to $3.25 million by American citizens against the government of Mexico.
‘Texas entered the Union in 1845 asa slave- holding state. Soon after, Iowa entered as a ‘free’ (nonslavery) state in 1846. Califoriia, its population suddenly increased by the Gold Rush that began just a week before the annexation in 1848, entered the Union in 1850 as another ‘free’ state. Nevada became a free state just before the elections of 1864, its admission potentially hurried through because Lincoln wanted to ensure a Republican maiority in Congress.

The expansion of the United States south and ‘west exacerbated tensions over slavery — its already divided polltical parties disagreed over whether the ‘peculiar institution” should be extended to the
new territories. Polk, once the master of political compromise, didn’t stay in office and attempt to reconcile the pro- and anti-slavery factions. He had secured the Demociatic nomination in 1844 as a
compromise candidate — but the compromise was that he wouldn't run for a second term.
Yet there could be no lasting agreement on slavery. With Polk retiring from the presidency, the Democratic Party would soon split over its expansion into the newly won states. When the Democratic convention chose Lewis Cass,a strong supporter of spreading slavery, as its presidential nominee, Democrats from the northem states, who opposed expanding it, broke away.
Calling themselves the Free Soil Party, they nominated van Buren as their candidate — but this, split the Democratic vote and allowed the Whigs nominee to move into the White House. The new president, swom into office in March 1849, was none other than Zachary Taylor, the star of the ‘Mexican American War.
"THE INFLUX IN SETTLERS TIPPED THE DEMOGRAPHIC BALANCE"
TROUBLED WATERS
Despite his relative youth, Polk was exhausted after four years in the top job. He and his wife decided to leave Washington, DC, in 1849 to begin a planned tour of the south of the country that was meant to
end at their new home in Nashville. Instead of a triumphal return, the tour would eventually tum into a funeral march.
The Polks kept to a busy schedule of festivities as they travelled down the East Coast. Never physically strong, Polk picked up a heavy cold as their tour turned west towards Alabama. Taking a riverboat destined for New Orleans, he ignored rumours of a cholera outbreak, despite several passengers dying of the infectious disease on their journey down the Mississippi River.

When the Polis arrived in New Orleans, Polk continued to ignore swinling rumours of cholera cases in the city and insisted on honouring his invitations and his public. He and Sarah then tock another ship bound for Tennessee. At one point on the joumey, be fell soll that he had to disembark and spend several days in bed on dry land, While a doctor assured him that he definitely did not have cholera, Polk kept drinking water, even during the epidemics. As Sam Houston, his fellow Tennessee Democrat, Joked, Polk was ‘a victim of the use of water as a beverage’.
The Pols quickly retumed to Nashville and settled into their new home after a visit to Polk's ageing mother. Polk's health rallied and it seemed he was in the clear — but he suddenly declined again, He finally died at home on 15 June 1849, probably from cholera.