Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk
Fri, 21 Feb 2025
Who is the most successful president in American history? George Washington secured American independence. Abraham Lincoln preserved the union and ended slavery. Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Depression, remade government, and won World War II. But if we define "success" as the ability to articulate your goals and achieve every single one of them, perhaps only one president in American history was ever perfectly successful. In 1845, James K. Polk, newly elected by a whisker-thin margin, confided to his friend George Bancroft the four goals of his four years in the White House. Acquire Oregon from Great Britain. Acquire California from Mexico. Reduce the tariff. Establish an independent treasury. Four years later, he'd done all this and more. As the historian Daniel Patrick Howe wrote, "Judged by these objectives, Polk is probably the most successful president the United States has ever had.” And that’s why Polk is the subject of today’s show. I don’t think another president in American history has so large a gap between his modern reputation and his actual achievement. There are two great biographies about Polk that I’ve read that have been published in the last 20 years. I’m very pleased that today, we have both authors on the show. Walter Borneman is the author of 'Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America.' And Robert Merry is the author of 'A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent_._' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Walter Borneman and Robert Merry Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who was the most successful president in American history?
Today, our second episode of Plain History kicks off with a fun, if impossible, question. Who was the most successful president in American history? I'd say we start with the obvious nominees here. George Washington defeated the British Army and then led the country born through his military accomplishment. Abraham Lincoln saved the Union and its slavery.
Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office when the U.S. was facing one of its worst economic crises ever. And more than a decade later, he'd remade the federal government and the U.S. economy with the U.S. bestriding the planet on the verge of total victory in World War II at the pinnacle of our geopolitical power. Those are three excellent, excellent choices.
But according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Walker Howe, the answer to the question, who is America's most successful president, might be none of the above. If success means articulating your goals and achieving all of them, none of those three are perfect fits. George Washington's negotiations with Britain failed to secure the recognition of US maritime rights.
FDR's court packing plan famously and infamously backfired. And while it seems kind of mean, absurd to blame Abraham Lincoln for his own assassination, I don't think it's debatable that his second term was a failure by his own standards, since his vice president, Andrew Johnson, who became president, had policies that were totally at odds with Lincoln's vision of reconstruction.
No, if success means achieving every single major thing you set out to do, then identifying the most successful president forces us to look a little bit further. In 1845, James K. Polk, newly elected president by a whisker-thin margin, confided to a friend, George Bancroft, the four goals of his four years in the White House.
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Chapter 2: What were the four main goals of James K. Polk's presidency?
Number one, acquire Oregon from Great Britain.
Number two, acquire California from Mexico. Number three, reduce the tariff. And number four, establish an independent treasury.
As Howe writes in his book, What Hath God Wrought, quote, judged by these objectives, Polk is probably the most successful president the United States has ever had.
Chapter 3: How did James K. Polk achieve his territorial expansion goals?
In fact, if you really wanted to press the case, Polk's term was even more successful than his objectives. By winning the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848, he didn't just acquire what we now think of as California. He acquired what is now West Texas, most of Arizona and New Mexico, half of Colorado, and all of modern Utah and Nevada.
The original 13 colonies made up about 400,000 square miles. James Polk expanded the U.S. by roughly 1 million square miles. And he did it in one term. And that's why Polk is the subject of today's show.
Because I don't think another president in American history has so large a gap between his modern reputation and his actual achievement. Now, here's where it gets interesting, because the nature of Polk's achievements are not what we associate with presidential greatness. Unlike Washington, he didn't wage war for independence, but rather for conquest.
Unlike Lincoln's war and emancipation, which ended slavery, Polk's embrace of westward expansion and manifest destiny extended the territory for and the market for slavery. And unlike FDR, Polk did not go to war for liberal humanitarian interests. He went to war for old-fashioned national interest.
Now, I don't think it's useful for people in the 2020s to exclusively insist on judging history by 21st century values. But what makes Polk's presidency so rich is that even his contemporaries considered him to be a manipulator.
Ulysses S. Grant, who fought in the Mexican-American War, called it, quote, the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.
There are two great books about James Polk that I've read, which have been published in the last 20 years. And I'm very pleased that today we have both authors on the show. Walt Bornemann is the author of Polk, The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America. And Bob Mary, who is the author of A Country of Vast Designs, James K. Polk, The Mexican War, and The Conquest of the American Continent.
I'm Derek Thompson. This is Plane History. Walt Bornemann, welcome to the show. Hi, Derek. Good to be with you. Robert Mary, welcome.
Thank you very much. Great to be here.
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Chapter 4: Why is the election of 1844 considered pivotal?
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.
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?
And that was Clay's position, as well as the concern about slavery. And Van Buren shared that.
It's interesting because looking at it from sort of the 30,000 foot Wikipedia level, you think James Polk is not a dark horse. He's the only person in American history to serve as Speaker of the House and President. That sounds like somebody who would be very firmly in the political limelight.
But to both of your points, he had a bit of the stink on him because he had just lost in consecutive elections to resume his governorship of Tennessee. So He had that feeling of a loser about him until Jackson's people got behind him and pushed him over the finish line. So we have this election of 1844, and it's fascinating. It's one of the closest elections in American history.
Clay, in what is certainly his best chance to become president, fumbles the Texas question and loses support among immigrants and anti-slavery voters in the North. It should also be said this election is rife with fraud. both you point out, in the Plaquemines Parish near New Orleans, the Democratic vote is larger than the entire white male population of all ages, including toddlers and babies.
So historians are quite sure now that Democrats essentially boarded voters on a steamboat and just sent them down river to vote over and over and over again, a little riverboat tour of voter fraud.
But Walter, to you, before we dive into the meat of the show, which is Polk's presidency and what he accomplished in his four years, how do you think we should remember the 1844 election, the initial subject of your book project?
Well, in the broadest sense, it really is a referendum on Manifest Destiny and that Polk is going to be given free reign, not only in the Southwest, but also in Oregon. But I think in terms of focusing on how narrow the margin, 5,000 votes in the state of New York determined this election and made Polk instead of Henry Clay president.
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Chapter 5: Why was the acquisition of Oregon significant for the US?
And by giving advice to the British offer of making that division rather than standing firm and asking for all of it, the Senate's sort of on the hook for the fact that the northern part of the territory remains with Great Britain. But Polk has gotten the better part of the territory. The Senate's taken responsibility for at least some of that.
And to the point that we're about to get into, Polk's kept us out of a two-front war because while all of this is going on, things are simmering in Texas.
Bob, as Walt just explained, one really interesting thing about Polk's negotiating strategy here is that he is playing up the Democrats' unreasonableness as a bargaining chip at the same time that he's negotiating down his position with the Brits. What do you consider the most impressive piece of Polk's diplomatic accomplishment here?
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.
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.
So what I find so interesting about this deal is not just its success, but the fact that it comes together in truly the nick of time, because not 10 days after the British accept the Oregon partition proposal, which again, gives the US modern Washington state and Oregon and leaves Britain in control of what is now British Columbia,
Just 10 days later, word reaches London that war has broken out between Mexico and the United States. Like one of those amazing pieces of history, because I wonder sometimes like if the Mexican-American war had started two weeks earlier, Britain might have driven a much harder bargain and Seattle and Portland might not be parts of Canada.
But Walt, this now brings Mexico into the picture and it brings Texas back into the picture. How does war with Mexico begin?
Well, to Bob's earlier point, Texas really, in the last couple of days of John Tyler's administration, is on the road to American statehood. Few hoops to jump through and everything before it's actually admitted as a state.
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Chapter 6: What role did Manifest Destiny play in Polk's presidency?
But being on that road, James K. Polk, who really owes his election, certainly owed his nomination to standing firm on acquiring Texas, is bound and determined to protect Texas. So by the spring of 1846, we have American troops in Texas. And the issue really is, where's the boundary of Texas? Is it the Nueces River or is it the Rio Grande?
Well, Polk and many people in the American government and military, for long historical reasons, really feel that it's the Rio Grande. Mexico, of course, is not recognizing Texas independence anyway, but if they were to, they would say the boundary was at an oasis.
And just a quick geography asterisk here. Texas in 1846 is not Texas as we know it today. The Nueces River is both north and east of the Rio Grande. So much of West Texas, or what we call West Texas today, was disputed territory back then. So back to you, Walt. How does war with Mexico begin?
So the long and the short of it is that Polk sends Zachary Taylor and American troops to the border of the Rio Grande on what's today the Texas side of the Rio Grande, and basically puts them out there, almost like pushing a pawn, if you will. See if Bob agrees with that analogy. But putting them out there in a place where there's a likelihood there's going to be some level of confrontation.
That confrontation with Mexican cavalry patrols that crossed the Rio Grande or on the Texas side occurs in April of 1846. And Zachary Taylor is able to report that military conflict back to Polk. And we can talk about the war powers and declaration of war in a second. But basically, Polk's message to the American Congress is that
American blood has been spilt on American soil, meaning all of that ground north of the Rio Grande.
Bob, I think the conventional wisdom today is that the Mexican-American War was an extraordinary act of manipulation and aggression by the U.S. I mean, here you have Polk sending Zachary Taylor and American soldiers into contested territory, essentially daring Mexico to fire the first shot, and then running back to the Senate to scream that war has already begun.
What part of this conventional wisdom, this idea of Polk as an imperialist manipulator who used illegitimate power to manufacture a necessary war, what part of that analysis do you think we might get wrong?
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.
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Chapter 7: How did Polk navigate the Oregon territory negotiations?
Well, let's talk about the debates first. It was immense.
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.
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.
Absolutely seminal. Quoting the historian Daniel Walker Howe here, the consequences of the election of 1844 went far beyond Texas annexation, important as that was. If Henry Clay had won the White House, almost surely there would have been no Mexican War, no Wilmot Proviso, and therefore less reason for the status of slavery in the territories to have inflamed sectional passions, end quote.
Walt, as the North and the South are falling to quarreling over the spoils of war in the West, something else is happening. In 1848, gold is discovered in California. How does the discovery of gold and the gold rush play into Polk's legacy?
Well, I guess I would say the gold rush may prove up Polk's interest and reasons for taking California. The gold rush occurs much after Polk has done his – maneuvers in terms of getting, and this is 1846, 1847, getting California to fall into the American orbit.
And it's not until, I think, December of 1848 that someone comes to the Oval Office, or it's not the Oval Office yet, but it's the White House. Someone comes to the White House and basically shows him glimmers of gold from the initial discoveries in California. So what happens is that with the great rush to California in 1849, there's this huge flow of population.
California becomes a state by 1850. And in those short two years from the discovery of gold two years later, I mean, my goodness, think back to Henry Clay saying, no, I don't really think that we ought to acquire more land or, you know, that's a long term deal.
The California gold rush really proves up Polk's claims and interest in why California should become part of the United States and puts that window on the Pacific.
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