President Polk Quotes

John Quincy Adams was convinced that Polk's election meant the end of the civilized world

I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.

In the Mexican War, a skirmish between Mexican and American troops on the Texas-Mexico border led President Polk to state that “American blood has been shed on American soil,” and to ask Congress for war. Actually, the encounter took place in disputed territory, and Polk’s diary shows that he wanted an excuse for war so the United States could take from Mexico what the United States coveted, California and the whole Southwest.

In the nineteenth century, cholera struck the most modern, prosperous cities in the world, killing rich and poor alike, from Paris and London to New York City and New Orleans. In 1836, it felled King Charles X in Italy; in 1849, President James Polk in New Orleans; in 1893, the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg.

No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.

The sentiment of nativism, decidedly against foreign-born citizens and frequently anti-Catholic, had recently manifested itself in the American Republican party,

At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies—cotton—was America’s primary export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies. Our bodies were held in bondage by the early presidents. Our bodies were traded from the White House by James K. Polk. Our bodies built the Capitol and the National Mall. The first shot of the Civil War was fired in South Carolina, where our bodies constituted the majority of human bodies in the state. Here is the motive for the great war. It’s not a secret.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,” Lincoln lectured Herndon, “and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Finally, the ambassadors concluded their task of keeping Europe not only out of American affairs but, indeed, out of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1846 President Polk observed: “We must have California.” Since that Pacific littoral was part of Mexico, Polk provoked Mexico into a war with the United States. California, Arizona, and Utah were ceded two years later. More peacefully, the tidy-minded Polk acquired the Pacific Northwest by treaties with England. With the acquisition of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, the Union now filled the continent from sea to shining sea. In 1867 the Russians sold us their icebox, Alaska, while Hawaii was annexed in 1898, along with Puerto Rico and the reluctant Philippines. While this filling in of vast spaces with neatly ruled new states, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams produced for President James Monroe a doctrine declaring that the two American continents were off limits to Europe, as Europe would be to us. In 1917, by entering World War I, we in effect voided the Monroe Doctrine. But that was to gain yet another world, one that is currently—optimistically—called “global.” Benjamin

In the incongruous role of the insurgent party-builder, he made crystal clear the whole host of inferences we have drawn from the experiences of Monroe and Polk: that innovation, however orthodox, is inherently destabilizing; that the purely constructive leadership project is an illusion; that the affiliated leader cannot assume independent ground without ultimately embracing the role of the heretic; that the only way ever to be president in your own right is to become yourself a great repudiator and set yourself directly against the bulwark of received power; that political disruption parallels presidential significance. Roosevelt's insight was not simply that new achievements do not rest securely on old foundations, but that to save the handiwork of his presidency he would have to reconstruct its political base.

Time had been when friends had thought it possible that he might fill the President’s chair; but his name had been too much and too long in men’s mouths for that. Who had heard of Lincoln, Pierce, or Polk, two years before they were named as candidates for the Presidency?

the resources of the federal government to make a quality college education affordable for every American citizen who wants one. Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to . . . make war at pleasure. —Lincoln, justifying his stand against President James K. Polk’s invasion of Mexico February 15, 1848

Many of us understand that America was built on the brutality of slavery and the looting of Indigenous land. Fewer recognize the colonization of Mexico by the United States as a third pillar in the creation of present-day America. The first colonization of Mexico was of course by Spain. But the second colonization of my people came at the hands of the United States during the Mexican-American War. In school we learn of it as Manifest Destiny, as the God-given right of white people to steal native land. The result was not only the taking of land...but the reluctant acquisition of Mexicans. ...The annexation of Texas into the United States and a dispute over where the Texas border should be drawn gave President James Polk an excuse to loot more Mexican land...There were between 80,000 and 100,000 Mexicans living in the land stolen by the United States. Polk wanted the land, but not the Mexicans on it. They were never immigrants; they didn't come to the United States or cross the border; the border crossed them. After the war, the Mexico-U.S. border was carefully drawn to keep as many Mexicans out as possible, a purpose it still serves. But the border never stopped out roots from growing on both sides.

If the government was ever to be destroyed, Polk concluded, it would be by “the alluring and corrupting influence of executive patronage.

The agitation of the slavery question is mischievous and wicked, and proceeds from no patriotic motive by its authors,” Polk wrote in late December 1848.

He paused to write a five-thousand-word rebuttal.

The war with Mexico fiercely divided the American people. While the majority supported the war, a loud minority despised it, and their rancor filled the newspapers and the debates in the houses of Congress. A newly elected congressional representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, declared: ‘The war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.’ Lincoln challenged Polk on the issue that American blood had been shed on American soil and implied that the American troops were the aggressors. He charged that Polk desired ‘military glory … that serpent’s eye which charms to destroy … I more than suspect that Polk is deeply conscious of being in the wrong and that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.’ However, like many critics of the war, Lincoln voted for an appropriations bill to support military operations. An Illinois newspaper responded to Lincoln’s fulminations by branding him a ‘second Benedict Arnold,’ and Lincoln was defeated for reelection. Comparing Lincoln to Arnold was perhaps the most vicious charge that could then be made against an American. General Arnold has been a trusted favorite of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. In August 1780 he had turned traitor and attempted to turn over the American army’s position at West Point to the British in exchange for money and a brigadier’s commission in the British army. His act of treachery was discovered but he was able to escape to safety behind British lines. Henry Clay, a former senator from Kentucky and unsuccessful candidate for president, often called the ‘Great Pacificator’ or the ‘Great Compromiser’ for his efforts to hold the Union together, spoke out forcefully: ‘The Mexican war,’ he said, ‘is one of unnecessary and offensive aggression … Mexico is defending her firesides, her castles, and her altars, not we.’ Representative

Democrats on the Supreme Court also forged the majority in the notorious Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and insisted that blacks have no rights that a white man needs to respect. Democratic presidents after Jackson—from Polk to Buchanan—protected slavery from abolitionist, free soil, and Republican attack.

Polk was his favorite president because “he had the courage to tell Congress to go to Hell on foreign policy matters.

The acts of the Federal Government corresponded with the views announced by its President. Briefly, but conclusively, General Polk showed in his answer that the United States Government paid no respect to the neutral position which Kentucky wished to maintain; that it was armed, but not neutral, for the arms and the troops assembled on her soil were for the invasion of the South; and that he occupied Columbus to prevent the enemy from taking possession of it.

Loeser’s arrival prompted an announcement by President Polk of the momentous discovery in California, an announcement that is often interpreted as the starting pistol for the Gold Rush.

the arms-for-hostage deal that in the twilight of the Reagan presidency became known as the Iran-contra affair,

At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies - cotton - was America's primary export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies. Our bodies were held in bondage by the early presidents. Our bodies were traded from the White House by James K. Polk. Our bodies built the Capitol and the National Mall. The first shot of the Civil War was fired in South Carolina, where our bodies constituted the majority of human bodies in the state. Here is the motive for the great war.

As Coates notes in “The Case for Reparations”: The early American economy was built on slave labor. The Capitol and the White House were built by slaves. President James K. Polk traded slaves from the Oval Office. The laments about “black pathology,” the criticism of black family structures by pundits and intellectuals, ring hollow in a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of black fathers, on the rape of black mothers, on the sale of black children. An honest assessment of America’s relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nurturer but its destroyer. And this destruction did not end with slavery.6

Coates notes in “The Case for Reparations”: The early American economy was built on slave labor. The Capitol and the White House were built by slaves. President James K. Polk traded slaves from the Oval Office. The laments about “black pathology,” the criticism of black family structures by pundits and intellectuals, ring hollow in a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of black fathers, on the rape of black mothers, on the sale of black children. An honest assessment of America’s relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nurturer but its destroyer. And this destruction did not end with slavery.6

Of course, some captains are more adept at doing so than others. A successful president correctly discerns what existing conditions require and creates the impression that he is the master of circumstance rather than its servant. James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley offer illustrative examples.

Clay, Webster, and other prominent Whigs. By letting Polk get away with his obfuscations, they sent an unintended message to later Presidents that when they asked the House and Senate for war, those Commanders-in-Chief could be duplicitous too.

(When I was a law student, Wachtell’s firm was the holy grail of summer associateships. I’d been devastated, in the way only students can be, when it rejected my application. I had to slum it at Davis Polk, like an ambulance chaser or President Grover Cleveland.)

However, annexation was extremely popular throughout the South, and the issue was seized upon by former House Speaker and Tennessee Governor James K. Polk, whose strong support for bringing Texas into the Union propelled him to the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

As Coates notes in “The Case for Reparations”: The early American economy was built on slave labor. The Capitol and the White House were built by slaves. President James K. Polk traded slaves from the Oval Office. The laments about “black pathology,” the criticism of black family structures by pundits and intellectuals, ring hollow in a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of black fathers, on the rape of black mothers, on the sale of black children. An honest assessment of America’s relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nurturer but its destroyer. And this destruction did not end with slavery.