JAMES K POLK: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
by E.I. McCormac
JAMES K POLK: TO THE END OF A CAREER
(Volume Two of Two)
ISBN 978-0-945707-10-3 $32.50
348 pages including bibliography, index, illustrations and maps.
(continued from previous page) As
a disciple of Jackson, Polk regarded Federalism as an ineradicable taint
indicating an absence of moral sense. He was a good listener but intensely
secretive, and being so, suspicious. His only interest was politics
and his early association with politics in Tennessee and at Washington made
him an expert, except as a judge of men, but he certainly was a politician
first and a statesman afterwards. As a politician he was shifty, yet
when confronted with the responsibilities of executive power he became independent
and to that extent constructive - - a statesman if viewed in the light of
the results of his four years of power. As one reads of his interviews
with Atocha, and the direction in which those meetings led him, one cannot
feel that his moral plane was very high, and in his attitude toward the spoils
system, which filled him with wearied disgust, there appeared no appreciation
of the essential political immorality of such a scheme.
Professor McCormac relies upon Bancroft's statement, as to
Polk's four ambitions - - the reduction of the tariff, the establishment
of the subtreasury, the settlement of the Oregon question, and the acquisition
of California. Never robust in health, he was no doubt strengthened
in his decision (not to run for re-election) by the strain of executive
responsibility. He left office like so many of his predecessors and
successors, a disappointed man, but it was not the disappointment of frustrated
ambition, but rather that he had been misunderstood and not appreciated.
No occupant of the presidential chair worked harder, or shifted fewer burdens
upon his subordinates. He literally wore himself out in the White
House."
