James K Polk was born on November 2, 1795 in rural North Carolina where his family had moved from Pennsylvania. He was the oldest of ten children and his father always groomed him to take over the family farm but he proved too sickly and weak to handle the strenuous work. In 1806, his family moved to Tennessee but he would return to the state of his birth in order to pursue his education. He graduated from the University of North Carolina with honors on 1818. He pursued a career in law under a leading Nashville attorney Felix Grundy. Polk was admitted to the bar in 1820 and he quickly established Polk entered the political scene as a clerk of the Tennessee Senate where he became a friend and a firm supporter of Andrew Jackson and he vehemently supported Andrew Jackson’s bid for the US senate seat from Tennessee. In 1823, he was elected member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, where he served for two years. In 1825, Polk successfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives from Tennessee, a success he repeated six times. Largely due to support from President Andrew Jackson, Polk served as the speaker of the House till 1839. Polk left the house in 1839 to return to Tennessee to serve as the Tennessee governor. During his governorship he attempted to introduce various banking reforms but the times were very difficult in the country around the late 1830s largely due to President Jackson’s banking and monetary policies. Due to this there were a lot of bankruptcies and foreclosures. A lot of blame was heaped on the Democrats by the Whigs. Consequently, Polk lost the re-election, and two years later he lost again. After the two losses he focused his attention to his plantation waiting for the right moment to get back into politics. Polk attended the 1844 Democratic Party convention in Baltimore as a supporter of Martin Van Buren. Van Buren was the frontrunner for president and Polk was the frontrunner for vice president. Van Buren failed to secure a 2/5th majority and Polk wont the nomination making him the first dark-horse candidate to win his party’s election. During the 1844 presidential election, the campaign was centred on expansion. The Whig nominee Henry Clay was against re-annexation of Texas. However, Polk publicly asserted that Texas should be re-annexed and all of Oregon re-occupied. Polk wanted to re-annex Texas, which was a very popular decision among the Southerner and he also wanted to re-occupy Oregon which was attractive to the Northerners. This way he hoped to please both parties. Polk's campaign slogan of "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" refers to the latitude coordinates of the disputed territory of Oregon. Polk …show more content…
In January 1846 he sent troops under General Zachary Taylor into the disputed area between the Río Grande and the Nueces. In late April a Mexican force under General Mariano Arista crossed the Río Grande and attacked an American patrol, killing or wounding 16 soldiers. On May 11, Polk sent a message to Congress and demanded a declaration of war against Mexico, claiming that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood.” His stated objective was the acquisition of California and New Mexico.
The war outraged many New Englanders and Whigs. In New England, those who wanted an immediate end to slavery, called abolitionists, viewed the war as a conspiracy to increase slave territory. In Congress a first-term Whig congressman, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Polk to show him the spot on American soil where American blood had been shed. However, the war was immensely popular with most Westerners and with a majority of Southerners.
In August, New Mexico fell to the forces of Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny. California, where Mexican rule had always been weak, fell before the combined assault of Commodore Robert Stockton's naval forces and the so-called Bear Flag army of Captain John C. Fremont. General Taylor invaded Mexico from the north, while General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico at Veracruz and marched inland to capture Mexico