Almost entirely anonymous to those outside of groups discussing presidential history, James Knox Polk is considered one of the most underappreciated and unfairly forgotten presidents in all of American history. In just 4 years, Polk accomplished every single thing he promised to accomplish during his initial bid for the presidency in 1844. For this - and often for this alone - he is dubbed a favorite of many presidential historians and enthusiasts and is still well-liked by just about everyone else. I, on the other hand, heavily disagree with this assessment. While he was effective, he used that efficacy to conduct some of the most abhorrent and disastrous behavior in the history of the American presidency.
In 1844, Polk ran for president as the nominee of the Democratic Party. That year, he promised, among other things, to use the office of president to annex Texas. However, during the lame-duck period of the incumbent John Tyler, Texas was already annexed by the American government on March 3, 1845. This dragged the US and Mexico into a border dispute surrounding the question of where Mexico ended and American Texas began. According to the American government, the border was located at the Rio Grande River. Meanwhile, according to the Mexican government, the border was north, at the Nueces River.
On April 25, 1846, Polk exploited this dispute by sending American soldiers - soldiers who, interestingly, were commanded by future-President Zachary Taylor - to cross the Nueces River into territory that the Mexican government interpreted as its own. As Polk had anticipated and desired, the Mexican military saw this as an invasion and shot at the troops, killing several of them. Polk then used this incident as an excuse to appear before Congress on May 11, 1846, and ask them to draft a declaration of war against Mexico. Congress obliged, and Polk signed the resulting document on May 13, 1846. With this, the Mexican-American War commenced. In short, Polk had sacrificed his own country's troops - one of the groups he should respect the very most - by sending them into an area he knew they'd be killed for traveling to so he could come up with an excuse to launch an imperialistic war. Few other presidents have done something that heinous.
The Mexican military, in September of 1847, surrendered during an American attack on Mexico City. Following this decision, peace negotiations began. Mexican and American officials then brokered the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Upon being signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. Under this agreement, the Mexican government was required to recognize Texas as part of the US, rather than as an independent nation or as part of its own land. It also forced the Mexican state to acknowledge that its border with the US was at the Rio Grande River, rather than the Nueces River. Most importantly, the treaty had the Mexican government, in exchange for $15,000,000, cede what are now the states of New Mexico, Utah, California, Arizona, and Nevada to the US. Polk had stolen an immense amount of land from Mexico. It was an untenable act of expansionism.
But the Mexican-American War and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo didn't exclusively hurt Mexico. It also damaged the US. The territorial gains from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo sparked a vicious debate about whether or not slavery should be allowed in the new lands. This debate drastically worsened the growing divide over enslavement and would later prove to be a major cause of the American Civil War.
Additionally, at the beginning of August 1846, Polk asked Congress to draft a bill that would set aside $2,000,000 of the federal government's money for postwar peace negotiations. Congress obliged and created such a bill. David Wilmot, a Democrat and abolitionist representing Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives, then amended the bill to include a provision that would have banned slavery in all land obtained from Mexico in the treaty that ended the conflict, then on-going. This proposal, known as the Wilmot Proviso, also heavily contributed to the tensions over slavery that would eventually erupt into the civil war.
Polk demonstrated other imperialistic tendencies outside of his attacks on Mexico. At one point, he attempted to purchase Cuba from Spain, which, at the time, controlled the island. While he failed in this endeavor, he succeeded in others. Another promise from Polk's 1844 campaign was the acquisition of the Oregon Territory. While he was unable to obtain the entire area from Britain, which controlled it, he did broker a compromise in which the lower half of the territory went to the US. The northern half remained under British hands.
While this is obviously an extremely minor point in comparison to his imperialistic policies, Polk also reduced tariffs. As a protectionist, I oppose this action as well.
Earlier, I mentioned that the acquisition of the Mexican Cession, i.e. the lands taken from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, opened up a divisive argument about slavery and its expansion. This leads into one of the areas where I give Polk credit and one of a few reasons that he isn't lower on my list. Back on December 18, 1818, Missouri applied for statehood. Prior to this, there were 11 slave states and 11 free states. As a result, both types of states received equal representation in the Senate. So, Missouri's entry into the Union threatened to upset this balance. If it entered as a free state, there would be more free states than slave states. And if it entered as a slave state, there would be more slave states than free states. Consequently, both sides of the slavery debate were adamant to ensure Missouri's admission into the Union on their side.
The resulting tensions almost sparked a civil war. However, on March 6, 1820, then-President James Monroe diffused the situation by signing the Missouri Compromise. Under this law, Missouri was admitted into the Union as a slave state. Then, to maintain the balance in the Senate, Maine was admitted into the Union as a free state. Lastly - and this leads back into the topic of Polk and his presidency - the bill outlawed slavery in all areas both obtained in the Louisiana Purchase and located north of the southern border of Missouri, with the obvious exception of Missouri itself.
Polk's proposal to resolve the debate over slavery in the Mexican Cession was to merely extend the Missouri Compromise line - the area at which the Louisiana Purchase was split into its slaveholding south and free north - to the Pacific Coast. The Missouri Compromise worked the first time, so it may have worked this time. Additionally, it would have banned slavery in a majority, albeit only a slight majority, of the Mexican Cession. However, Polk did not enforce this idea in any way, even though he had more than a year in office left to do so. As a result, Polk doesn't get much credit and may actually lose points for having the right idea but doing nothing to implement it.
Another pro of the Polk Administration - and one that doesn't carry the caveats that his proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise did - was the Treaty of New Grenada. This agreement allowed the US, its citizens, and its businesses to freely move across the Ismuth of Panama. In exchange, the American government agreed to never interfere in the affairs of New Grenada, which contained what are now the countries of Colombia, Panama, and parts of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil.
Moreover, Polk revived the independent treasury. Created in 1840 by Martin Van Buren, the independent treasury was a set of private organizations tasked with holding deposits made by the federal government. I like this idea as it prevented a repeat of what happened in 1832 when Andrew Jackson dissolved the Second Bank of the United States. That year, Jackson abolished the SBUS and distributed its funds across a group of state and private banks. This created an increased demand for loans that the state banks began printing money to keep up with. As a result, an inflation crisis broke out that heavily contributed to the eventual Panic of 1837. Had Jackson had a safe, surefire place to put the bank's money, such an incident may have never occurred. John Tyler, however, disbanded the independent treasury. Polk, though, revived the organization. So he deserves credit for that. Another organization Polk deserves credit for is the Department of the Interior, which he founded on March 3, 1849.
In the end, though, Polk was an atrocious president. Not only did he reduce tariffs, but he stole immense amounts of land and sacrificed numerous Americans to do so. In stealing the land he did, he also pushed his nation into the abyss of internal conflict and civil war. And even when he had the ability to prevent such in-fighting, proposing exactly what was needed to quell the conflict before it grew out of control, he did not utilize that potential.
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