Robert Merry
Appearances
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And at one point he suggested that maybe Lean Jimmy was more suited to the circus than a presidential campaign. And Lean Jimmy said, you're right. They were in a debate. You're right, Governor. I would be the clown, of course. And you'd be that little guy in the red jacket on the little tiny pony running around the circus circle.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And so when he suggested to himself that he wanted to run for the vice presidency, it was a last-ditch effort to basically resurrect himself as a potential down-the-road presidential candidate.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, Texas becomes the absolute overriding issue as soon as it emerged and exploded on the scene with Tyler's actions that we talked about. Now, behind Texas, however, are other ancillary issues that cannot be ignored. The concern of both Clay and Van Buren, among others, was that this was going to exacerbate the slavery issue because we get this vast new territory.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And how's that going to affect the slavery debate in America, which everyone knew was the most incendiary debate that we could get into? And there was also the question of... of what are we going to do in terms of expansion? Are we going to continue to just move all the way west? Or is there a place where we can sort of say, let's consolidate our position on this continent?
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And that was Clay's position, as well as the concern about slavery. And Van Buren shared that.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, the term was coined by a journalist named O'Sullivan, And it was to represent the idea that this midsection of North America was going to fall to the United States eventually somehow or another. And that was manifest as the destiny of America. And that pretty much summed it up.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
This was a country that was being built and the sense of it being built was a part of the East watching it happen, but also especially a part of the West when these people were engaged in moving westward, inexorably westward in larger and larger numbers and building towns and cities and churches and communities. And farmlands and all the rest.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
So, no, it was definitely a significant part of the zeitgeist.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
In his inaugural address, he said that we had a clear and appropriate claim on all of Oregon. That was highly incendiary, and the Brits went crazy. But he was prepared to accept the 49th. He was trying to be a little bit Trump-like in coming up with what was considered an outrageous opening bargain demand. But he was willing to come down.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
But even that became difficult in terms of negotiating with the British. He had a sort of iron nerve. He could be very outrageous, but totally tenacious, and come up with a compromise at the last minute that made it work.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
I think one thing that it doesn't really take into sufficient account is the extent to which Mexico at that time was very much a dysfunctional entity of dysfunctional country.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And one of the manifestations of that was a big, big amount of reparations payments that were due from Mexico to American citizens who had been abused by, in some cases, Mexican governmental officials and sometimes by rogue elements, people who were trying to do business in Mexico or who were there for various reasons.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And Mexico couldn't protect citizens of other countries who were in the region, in the area, or in Mexico, and ended up with these large demands of reparations. This doesn't get much attention in today's history, and some of the anti-Polk people ignore it almost entirely.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
But a self-respecting nation doesn't allow itself, its citizens to be abused by other countries and people from other countries. And France actually went to war with Mexico over their reparations demands and fired on Veracruz. And the Brits threatened to do the same thing. They got their payment, but we didn't. The Mexicans were pretty much ignoring us.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
So there was and there were congressional hearings and investigations about this. So there was a serious issue here and that doesn't get much attention. So Polk, in his inimitable way, is trying to figure out how he can get this territory. And you're absolutely right. He wanted this territory.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And he was centering his thinking on these reparations requirements because Mexico didn't have the money to pay it. So they could give us land and we could pay the reparations to our own citizens. That was sort of an underlying concept that doesn't get too much attention today.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, let's talk about the debates first. It was immense.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
It was a turning point in the saga of America's struggle with the slavery issue, because with all this new territory, the question had inevitably was going to rise and it arose even while the war was going on with the Wilmot Proviso, which basically said that there would be no territory acquired through this war that would be allowed, where slavery would be allowed.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
So I just had a book come out last July on the decade leading up to the Civil War, a decade of disunion. And it was all stemming from the Mexican-American War, as you point out. So it was pivotal and seminal.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And also, if I may add, it lends credence to Bismarck's comment that God watches over small children, drunks, and United States of America. America seemed to be the country of good fortune. Everything seemed to go its way. And I was expanding. It was the country of vast designs. And here we are. We fought a war.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And sure enough, we discover gold in California, just as if it was a good fortune in America that God watches over us.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
But I would posit the point that that territory was not going to remain with Mexico indefinitely in any event. It was going to be acquired by some larger entity, probably the Brits. I just jotted down some interesting numbers. In terms of population, in 1790, Mexico had 5 million people. The United States had 4 million people. By 1840, the U.S. had 17 million, and Mexico had but 7 million.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And so Mexico was not in a position, nor would it have been able to maintain that territory indefinitely.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
It's hard to say. I would say that that territory that you just described was very sparsely populated and which is one of the reasons that many people in America were interested, the United States of America, were interested in that land because they wanted to populate it with people of their own culture, their own background, their own ethnicity.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, I think that A.O.P. Nixon had it about right. That's what he did. His legacy, as I wrote, is manifest in the outlines of the map of the United States of America. And it was, as you have noted throughout this conversation, quite a remarkable achievement that reflected some tremendous capacity on the part of this rather unprepossessing man.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Thank you.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, I think American history would be very different. I think that the slavery issue would probably have not come to a head as early as it ended up doing. But I think that ultimately that territory that Polk brought into the Union was going to be brought into the Union. And that the basic outline of the United States would be roughly the same today as it ended up being.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, getting into the whole question of the Civil War and the slavery issue is much more difficult, and I hesitate to really sort of toss that out. It's hard to say, but there was going to be a comeuppance and a confrontation on slavery. I don't see how it could have possibly been avoided, which is one of the themes of my book that came out in last July.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
So history has a way of moving along a broad course and it can, rivulets can move here and there, but basically it's going to continue on the course that it sets for itself.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Oh, I see attention there, but I just think that American expansionism was a force of nature, and it was an inevitability to what was going to come about.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Thank you very much. Great to be here.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Oh, yeah. I have to give full credit to my editor, Simon Schuster, at that time, the late Alex Mayhew, who I had written a book on American foreign policy. But that was kind of a polemical book. And she knew that my passion was narrative history, as was hers. So when that was done, we came up with a few ideas. She didn't really like them.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And she finally said, so what do you know about the Mexican War? And I said, well, I'm not a military historian. That's not my meat. But I love politics. And I know that was a yeasty political time. And I know that James Polk is a very fascinating character. So how about if I come up with some ideas of how we would go about doing that? And she liked him. And there we were.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Well, Texas had been an independent country, according to its own lights, for 10 years. It got its independence from Mexico in 1835. And Mexico never, however, acknowledged that and always suggested that it was going to get Texas back.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And it was a delicate situation for the United States because we wanted to recognize the Texas independence, but we also didn't want to have a terrible warlike situation with Mexico. So even Andrew Jackson, as bellicose as he could be, was wary about it and didn't recognize Texas until the end of his second term. So that was kind of the state of play.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And it was essentially a status quo situation. Texas was thriving as an independent nation. Sam Houston was playing a major role in bringing it into fruition. And then John Tyler. who was kind of in a political no man's land. He had been a Democrat and he was a Whig, but he wasn't really a very good Whig based on the Whig sensibility. Certainly Henry Clay didn't think so.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And he was looking for a way to get himself some attention so that he might have a chance to retain the presidency. He had succeeded to the presidency after the death of William Harrison. And so he entered into negotiations with Texas about annexation.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
And it exploded upon the political scene in America because it really did encapsulate that concept of American expansion, of being a country across the midsection of North America from sea to sea. What a concept, what an idea. And that was beguiling American politics.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
But I just want to note, I think it's been noted, but I think I want to emphasize the extent to which James K. Polk was washed up after that second defeat when he was running for governor against James Jones, lean Jimmy Jones, who was a jokester and kind of ran rings around Polk because he was a serious minded, sober sighted fellow.