Author: Thomas M. Leonard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842026475
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
James K. Polk's four years in office marked the greatest period of territorial acquisition in the history of the USA. This is an analysis of each of these expansions, showing that they were far more complex than the moral crusade that had been labelled Manifest Destiny.
Author: Eugene Irving McCormac
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Author: Robert W. Merry
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074329744X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
ROBERT MERRY’S BRILLIANT AND HIGHLY ACCLAIMED HISTORY OF A CRUCIAL EPOCH IN U.S. HISTORY. In a one-term presidency, James K. Polk completed the story of America’s Manifest Destiny—extending its territory across the continent by threatening England with war and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico.
Author: Walter R. Borneman
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 158836772X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the lion’s share of Oregon, and wrested California and much of the Southwest from Mexico. On reflection, these successes seem even more impressive, given the contentious political environment of the time. In this unprecedented, long-overdue warts-and-all look at Polk’s life and career, we have a portrait of an expansionist president and decisive statesman who redefined the country he led, and we are reminded anew of the true meaning of presidential accomplishment and resolve.
Author: BreAnn Rumsch
Publisher: ABDO
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43
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Book Description
This biography introduces readers to James K. Polk, including his early political career and key events from Polk's administration including the Oregon Treaty, the Mexican War, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Information about his childhood, family, personal life, and retirement years is included. A timeline, fast facts, and sidebars provide additional information. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Big Buddy Books is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Author: Sam Walter Haynes
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Longman
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
This biography explores the controversies, triumphs, and failures of the presidency of James K. Polk. Sam W. Haynes places Polk's expansionist agenda in both political and social contexts and examines the nature and origins of the expansionist impulse. Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American History and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times. This text incorporates the latest scholarship and draws upon the longer, far more extensive studies of Polk's life and times, but makes the story accessible to students in both survey and upper division courses in American history.
Author: Paul H. Bergeron
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
James K. Polk was one of the strongest and most active presidents ever to occupy the office. In the nineteenth century only Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln matched his overall leadership and domination of national government. Bergeron's crisp, insightful narrative shows how and why Polk achieved such stature and yet failed to attract the kind of popular support or retrospective recognition granted other presidential luminaries. A native of North Carolina, Polk prepared for the presidency by honing his leadership skills as a seven-term congressman, speaker of the house, and governor of Tennessee. Bergeron's summary and analysis of those years shed light on the foundations of the presidency that followed. He provides fresh new perspectives on Polk's relationship with his cabinet, his skirmishes with Congress over domestic economic legislation, and the curse of presidential patronage. But perhaps the most fascinating portions of this study are devoted to Polk's role as the western expansionist. By the end of his term, the United States had acquired enormous territories in the Southwest and far West. Bergeron demonstrates that Polk adroitly used both war and diplomacy to acquire and protect these lands. When the annexation of Texas led to the outbreak of war with Mexico, Polk was forced to become commander-in-chief of the American forces. In contrast, the potentially explosive dispute with Great Britain over Oregon's borders was settled through purely diplomatic means. Norman A. Graebner, in America's Top Ten Presidents, declares, "Polk's achievements in diplomacy were among the most remarkable in American history." Drawing upon a careful review of the extensive literature on our eleventh president, as well as Polk's personal diary, Bergeron has written a significant and balanced reassessment of the Polk presidency. In the process, he has also created a revealing portrait of a complex man who led the nation with imperial determination tempered with compassion, generosity, and even humor.
Author: John Seigenthaler
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805069429
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
"At home, however, Polk suffered a political firestorm of antiwar attacks, particularly from the Whigs. Despite tremendous accomplishments in just four years - from pushing the westward expansion to restoring an independent Treasury to ushering in an era of free trade - "Young Hickory" left office feeling the sting of criticism and suffering from a stressful presidency that had taken a heavy physical toll. He died within three months of departing Washington."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Eugene Irving McCormac
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 760
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Book Description
Author: William Dusinberre
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019992418X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
James Polk was President of the United States from 1845 to 1849, a time when slavery began to dominate American politics. Polk's presidency coincided with the eruption of the territorial slavery issue, which within a few years would lead to the catastrophe of the Civil War. Polk himself owned substantial cotton plantations-- in Tennessee and later in Mississippi-- and some 50 slaves. Unlike many antebellum planters who portrayed their involvement with slavery as a historical burden bestowed onto them by their ancestors, Polk entered the slave business of his own volition, for reasons principally of financial self-interest. Drawing on previously unexplored records, Slavemaster President recreates the world of Polk's plantation and the personal histories of his slaves, in what is arguably the most careful and vivid account to date of how slavery functioned on a single cotton plantation. Life at the Polk estate was brutal and often short. Fewer than one in two slave children lived to the age of fifteen, a child mortality rate even higher than that on the average plantation. A steady stream of slaves temporarily fled the plantation throughout Polk's tenure as absentee slavemaster. Yet Polk was in some respects an enlightened owner, instituting an unusual incentive plan for his slaves and granting extensive privileges to his most favored slave. Startlingly, Dusinberre shows how Polk sought to hide from public knowledge the fact that, while he was president, he was secretly buying as many slaves as his plantation revenues permitted. Shortly before his sudden death from cholera, the president quietly drafted a new will, in which he expressed the hope that his slaves might be freed--but only after he and his wife were both dead. The very next day, he authorized the purchase, in strictest secrecy, of six more very young slaves. By contrast with Senator John C. Calhoun, President Polk has been seen as a moderate Southern Democratic leader. But Dusinberre suggests that the president's political stance toward slavery-- influenced as it was by his deep personal involvement in the plantation system-- may actually have helped precipitate the Civil War that Polk sought to avoid.
