The Presidency of James Polk - Essay Example

 The Presidency of James K Polk Introduction: The Presidency of James K Polk is the subject of three different books, which were written in recent times. One of the major subjects dealt with in all the three books is the war of the United States with Mexico in order to acquire territories in Texas, New Mexico and California. Each of these three books however, deals with different aspects of the war and Polk’s political career. An analysis of these three books is carried out below, in order to shed more light on the presidency of James K. Polk. From a historical perspective, the Polk Presidency has been viewed as a predominantly favorable one, because it was able to achieve territorial acquisitions within a short time span. But as these authors have revealed, such a conclusion may be questionable in the light of the events that surrounded the Presidency and Polk’s political career. By highlighting elements and aspects of the Polk Presidency that have not been as widely or as well known, these three authors have questioned whether Polk’s contribution to the United States was an entirely favorable one. Analysis: Bergeron’s book has also detailed the American war in Mexico and President Polk’s role in American acquisition of territories in the southwest. This book is notable in that it highlights the covert role of the executive in manipulating the events that led to the declaration of hostilities between the United States and Mexico over disputed territories in Texas, New Mexico and California. Bergeron has discussed covert operations undertaken by President Polk, notably the annexation of new Texas territory. This operation was designed in such a manner as to incite a confrontation and thereby provide an excuse for the United States to annex the territory (Bergeron, 1987:67-70). As a part of this strategy, Commodore Robert Stockton was posted to the disputed Mexican border, in order to monitor the developments there. In May of 1845, Stockton recommended that the Texan authorities should gather their forces and challenge Mexican claims to the territory between the rivers Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. He proposed that local militia units should be called up under the command of General Sidney Sherman and armed with weapons to be covertly supplied to them by the United States Government but purportedly acquired from private sources. Stockton’s plan was supported by President Polk, but failed to go through because Anson Jones, who was the President of the Texan Republic, rejected it. Jones was able to recognize that President Polk was secretly the prime mover behind Stockton’s plan and that the ultimate objective was to create a pretext for annexation of the disputed territory to the United States. Anson also did not hesitate to publicly implicate President Polk for his covert operations. The result was that President Polk was forced to abort the Stockton plan and reconsider direct military intervention to annex the disputed territory in Texas. In 1846, Alexander Atocha visited President Polk, in the capacity of an emissary for the former exiled Mexican leader, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He came offering a deal for President Polk, whereby if the United States were to help Santa Anna to return to power in Mexico, he would be prepared to cede the disputed territory in favor of the United States. He was also amenable to ceding territory in New Mexico and California in return for a private payment of $500,000 and official compensation for Mexico of 30 million dollars. (Bergeron, 1987: 70-71). Polk did not act upon this offer, possibly because he doubted the reliability of Atocha as an emissary and preferred to first try diplomatic means through negotiations and talks with the Pardes regime that has just been established in Mexico, in order to resolve the conflict. Bergeron further details how Polk’s efforts at a diplomatic means to achieve the desired ends was frustrated by the continuing atmosphere of political instability in Mexico. This led to an increasing recognition by President Polk that it might not be possible to achieve the desired territorial objectives through diplomatic means, so he sent a reconnaissance force under General Zachary Taylor into the disputed territory, posing a direct challenge to Mexican claims on the land. As a result, the Mexican military fired upon General Taylor’s forces, which in turn led President Polk to summon his cabinet immediately to draft a resolution declaring war, to be placed before Congress. (Bergeron, 1987: 75). According to Schroeder (1973), President Polk directly incited the war with Mexico by deliberately sendiong soldiers into disputed territories, which had however been historically controlled by Mexico and not by the United States. While this declaration of war was ultimately approved, the margin of approval was small enough to highlight the political dangers that the Polk Presidency faced in so far as the conflict with Mexico was concerned. This functioned as a direct spur for the President to also revert to a covert operation to establish contact with the exiled Mexican leader Santa Anna and arrange for the naval blockade of Mexican ports to be lifted just long enough to permit Santa Anna to slip through in August 1846. (Bergeron, 1987: 83-84). But while this resulted in Santa Anna being restored to power, allegations of President Polk’s involvement and the pay off bargain also surfaced in the press, so that any ceding of the territory by Santa Anna became untenable and there was an outbreak of open hostilities and military action. Bergeron’s narration of these events highlights the exposure of the role of the executive in manipulating Santa Anna’s return to power (Bergeron, 1987). The presidency of President Polk has generally been viewed as a good one, but Bergeron’s account highlights the dual role played by President Polk – open military maneuvers as well as covert action to manipulate events such that the United States could acquire territories in the southwest. This suggests that Polk’s Presidency may not necessarily have been a good one as historians have set it out to be. A similar conclusion appears to ensue in Dusinberre’s book, which argues that the United States could have achieved its territorial objectives to gain titled to southwest territories without engaging in the war which Polk deliberately provoked. He also examines the dual role of President Polk as a slave owner and a politician cum slaveowner, analyzing how this dual role impacted upon his political career and leads to the conclusion that this Presidency may not necessarily have been a predominantly good one as it was claimed to be. Dusinberre has detailed the contents of a letter written during the 1844 Presidential campaign, where in response to the allegation that Polk was a slave owner, his neighbor Gideon Pillow stated that Polk was in fact a “warm hearted paternalist” who only bought and sold slaves on a few occasions and mainly with the objective of uniting families, which created a “comforting image” of the slaveowner who was campaigning to be President of the United States. (Dusinberre, 2003: 11-12). This was however, a deceptive image of the President who actually purchased many slaves who were mostly young males in the age groups of twelve to twenty one, thus belying his reputation as a benevolent slaveowner who only sought to keep slave families together. Dusinberre has described Polk’s history as a slave owner - his intent was to make his plantation a successful source of income to “make his finances more secure” and therefore, his “principal impulses as a slavemaster were acquisitive rather than paternalistic.” (Dusinberre, 2003: 13-14). Through a detailed description of Polk’s slave owning history and the fate of several of Polk’s slaves, Dusinberre has challenged the prevailing notion that Polk was a paternalistic slave owner; he contends that as opposed to the public perception of Polk as a sectional moderate, the President’s true beliefs on slavery may have more closely adhered to those of extreme Southern rights advocates. For example, President Polk denied Congress the right to interfere with slavery and several of his rulings were geared towards ramming through the “gag rule” in Congress. (Dusinberre, 2003:123). Since he was one of the most powerful leaders of the southern Democrats during the 1840s it was largely the policies that he set which became the prevailing policies on slavery. Apart from his refusal to allow Congress to intervene in the issue of slavery, President Polk’s policy of territorial acquisition in the southwest contributed to the allegation of expansion of slavery, despite the allegations to the contrary. (Dusinberre, 2003:145). In fact, Dusinberre contends that if Polk had not brought to the “national stage the constricted views of a Tennessee slavemaster”, then civil war could itself have been avoided. (Dusinbere, 2003:169). He argues that it was the move of the southern Democrats to expand slavery into more territories and their efforts top secure more slave states that contributed to the rising tensions between the northern and southern states which erupted into war. The subject of Schroeder’s book is the internal dissent that was generated within the United States for the war with Mexico; in highlighting the opposition to the war that existed in Congress and within the country, Schroeder (1973) corroborates Dusinberre’s argument in also contending that the territorial objectives of the United States could have been achieved without the necessity of going to war. Schroeder has detailed the controversies that were generated within Congress with the revelations of President Polk’s role in manipulating a war situation with Mexico. Although President Polk’s initial strategy may have been to achieve a diplomatic solution to the problem, he did not persist in pursing this diplomatic situation. Rather he sought to achieve the desired goals through military action, first by covert means in seeking to manipulate events to provide a military excuse for the United States to intervene and annex the territories and later, by directly taking overt military action and seeking to influence the political situation in Mexico. Schroeder has also described the events occurring after war had commenced in 1846. When the opposition Whigs captured the control of the House of Representatives in 1847, a congressional investigation was taken up into the allegations in the Press about a conspiracy by the Polk administration to manipulate the political situation in Mexico by restoring General Santa Anna and seeking to gain control over territories in New Mexico and California through the payment of bribes to the General (Schroeder, 1973). The Whigs demanded the release of secret executive communications pertaining to the negotiations with the previously exiled General Santa Anna and the covert operations which were geared towards provoking a war in the disputed territories. The President however, fearing that the revelation of the conspiracy to restore Santa Anna to power would impact negatively on his Presidency, denied the Congressional request for access to the documents by exercising the executive privilege. (Schroeder, 1973). This also set a trend for future Presidents, who have resorted to the executive privilege in maintaining the privacy of executive operations. In President Polk’s case, this privilege was successful in achieving the objective of stifling Congressional demand for documents. Conclusions: In comparing the Presidency of President Polk as detailed in these three books, it may be noted that all of them have acknowledged that Polk is best known for having successfully achieved the ceding of territories in the southwest - Texas, New Mexico and California. But all the three authors have questioned the necessity of war to achieve these objectives, although the primary focus of each of the books is different. Bergeron’s book seeks to provide a detailed look into the Presidency of Polk from a purely political perspective with an emphasis on the events leading up to the war with Mexico and the events following thereafter. His book points out that President Polk played a dual role in the context of the war, pursuing a covert operation as well as pushing for overt military action, seeking to gain the desired territories by any means, whether fair or foul. The focus of Schroeder’s book on the other hand is the internal dissent that was generated within Congress and within the country, when the Press revealed the secret negotiations and manipulation of events, which had been undertaken by President Polk. The direct interference and the attempt to influence and manipulate the affairs of another country, especially in restoring General Santa Anna, who had a questionable reputaion, was opposed by several individuals and members of the public and Schroeder (1973) has carefully detailed such dissent as well as the reasons that lay behind them. Dusinberre(2003) has also dealt with the issue of the war with Mexico which was one of the landmarks of Polk’s Presidency. But the focus of his work is the President’s role as a slave owner, and his indirect support for the retention and support of slavery. This author establishes the link between the President’s history as a slave owner and his political career, pointing out how the desire for territorial expansion of the United States was also fuelled by the underlying objective of extending slave owning states. The author has argued that this may have functioned as an indirect wedge to deepen the chasm of disagreement between the beliefs of the North and the South on the issue of slavery. Polk’s actions could have significantly influenced a different outcome if he had allowed the institution of slavery to persist purely as a capitalist enterprise, so that it would have died a natural death when business was no longer profitable. But in seeking to extend this institution, the President may have accorded it further legitimacy and strength, which made it unacceptable to the North and ultimately led to the civil war. These books also dispute the existing historical claims that President James K. Polk in effect, ranks as one of the nation’s better Presidents, mostly because he was able to achieve territorial acquisitions within a short one term of his Presidency. The questionable means that were employed to achieve these ends, and which these authors have detailed, suggests that the Presidency may not necessarily have been such a good one. The President’s role in extending slavery is also one that belies the historical claims. But Polk’s Presidency did establish some precedents, such as the invoking of the executive privilege, as well as manipulating political outcomes in other countries, which has since been repeated by other Presidents who followed him. Polk’s own history as a slave owner may have also exacerbated the persistence of slavery as an institution for a longer period and strengthened its grip on the South, since he influenced policy as one of the most powerful leaders among the Southern Democrats. In the interest of furthering his own financial goals and seeking a stable and profitable income from his plantations, President Polk may have in reality, pursued a policy that was quite different from his publicly perceived image as a benevolent slave owner. His apparent perusal of diplomatic initiatives in resolving of territorial disputes with Mexico is also belied by the controversial underhand dealings which were also being carried out simultaneously, in seeking military solutions. The notion that his Presidency was predominantly a favorable one therefore becomes questionable in the light of the details provided in the three books analyzed above. References: * Bergeron, Paul, 1987. “The Presidency of James Polk”, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press * Dusinberre, William, 2003. “Slavemaster President” The double career of James Polk”, Oxford University Press. * Schroeder, John H, 1973. “Mr. Polk’s war; American Opposition and Dissent 1846-1848”, Madison Press Read More