James K. Polk Tuesday

Regardless of what you think of Glenn Beck or his minions -- Stu and Pat, in this case -- you have to give them credit for acknowledging a certain dead president in recent years. Namely, James K. Polk, 11th President of the United States, whose term (1845-1849) is now well over a century and a half ago.

"I can almost guarantee you will get this on no other show in America."

William Polk Carey

Real estate businessman and philanthropist William Polk Carey died in early January, aged 81. Among many other things, Carey was a pioneer of the sale-leaseback financing structure, which involves a property owner selling real estate assets to investors and then occupying the same property under a long-term lease. The arrangement works well in most cases: the seller capitalizes its real estate, allowing it to do something else with the money, while the investors get a steady, locked-in rate of return from the property.

Currently W.P. Carey & Co. oversees a worldwide investment portfolio of about $12 billion. The company's investments through the sale lease-back structure are highly diversified, comprising contractual agreements with about 288 long-term corporate tenants spanning 28 industries and 18 countries.

Carey was also renowned for his generous support of higher education thorough the W.P. Carey Foundation. His beneficiaries included the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and Arizona State University. He also gave millions to private schools in Baltimore.

Carey was not, however, a direct (lineal) descendant of James K. Polk, 11th President of United States, as was reported in a number of news stories recently. President Polk had no children. That Carey was a relative of the president's -- as well as Gen. Leonidas Polk, CSA -- there is no doubt. The Polk clan was quite extensive; the president's immediate family alone included ten brothers and sisters, all of whom (remarkably) survived childhood.

William Polk Carey was well aware of his connection to President Polk. According to the New York Times -- which merely uses the term "descendant," which might include collateral descent -- "Mr. Carey’s middle name, Polk, is an acknowledgment that he was a descendant of the 11th president of the United States, James K. Polk.

" 'He was very proud of that,' Mr. Carey’s great-nephew, William Polk Carey II, said last week. 'He liked to hand out those $1 gold coins with engravings of his Uncle Jim. That’s what he called him.' ”

Polk: There's Gold in California. And Much More

On December 5, 1848, President Polk transmitted his fourth and final Annual Message to Congress ("State of the Union" wasn't the term until Franklin Roosevelt's time). As was the custom during the 19th century, Polk sent a written message to Congress, rather than making a speech. Wilson revived the annual speech-making custom, which had lapsed in Jefferson's time.

In Polk's message, he confirmed some common knowledge about gold in California. "It was known that mines of the precious metals existed to a considerable extent in California at the time of its acquisition," the president noted. "Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated. The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service who have visited the mineral district and derived the facts which they detail from personal observation.

"Reluctant to credit the reports in general circulation as to the quantity of gold, the officer commanding our forces in California visited the mineral district in July last for the purpose of obtaining accurate information on the subject. His report to the War Department of the result of his examination and the facts obtained on the spot is herewith laid before Congress."

Not just a gold strike, in other words, but a lot of gold. Gold that would inspire an historic gold rush, and figure no small part in the development of California as a part of the United States, and indeed of the whole country.

But Polk knew that the value of California to the United States was much greater than any gold that might be extracted. He spoke with uncanny foresight, considering that in our time, California has, despite recent setbacks, the seventh- or eighth-largest economy in the world, counted as a separate entity -- larger than Brazil and almost as large as Italy.

"Upper California, irrespective of the vast mineral wealth recently developed there, holds at this day, in point of value and importance, to the rest of the Union the same relation that Louisiana did when that fine territory was acquired from France forty-five years ago," Polk emphasized. "Extending nearly ten degrees of latitude along the Pacific, and embracing the only safe and commodious harbors on that coast for many hundred miles, with a temperate climate and an extensive interior of fertile lands, it is scarcely possible to estimate its wealth until it shall be brought under the government of our laws and its resources fully developed.

"From its position it must command the rich commerce of China, of Asia, of the islands of the Pacific, of western Mexico, of Central America, the South American States, and of the Russian possessions bordering on that ocean. A great emporium will doubtless speedily arise on the Californian coast which may be destined to rival in importance New Orleans itself."

Polk, Harding & November 2 Elections

November 2 is the birthday of James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States, who was the first of ten children born Samuel and Jane Knox Polk. The future president was born in 1795 on his family farm in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, though he came to manhood in Tennessee and entered politics in that state as a protégé of Andrew Jackson. Among other distinctions, he was the first president born in North Carolina and the first president whose mother survived him.

November 2 is also the birthday of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 29th President of the United States, who was the first of eight children of George Tyron and Elizabeth Dickerson Harding and named for great-uncle the Rev. Warren Gamaliel Bancroft. The future president was born in 1865 in Corisa, Ohio (now Blooming Grove), and came of age in Ohio and became the most recent president from that state -- the seventh born there and the sixth elected to presidency while a resident of Ohio. He was the first and only newspaper publisher elected president and the first president whose father survived him.

On November 2, 1852, Franklin Pierce and William R. King, Democrats, prevailed in the 17th presidential election over Winfield Scott and William Alexander Graham, Whigs. The Democrats won 254 electoral votes, while the Whigs got 42. Their shares of the popular vote were 50.8 percent and 43.9 percent, respectively. It was the death knell for the Whig Party. Minor parties in the race included the Free Soil Party, the Liberty Party, the Union Party and the Southern Rights Party.

On November 2, 1880, James A. Garfield and Chester Alan Arthur, Republicans, bested Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English, Democrats, in the 24th presidential election. The Republicans polled 48.3 percent of the popular vote, compared with 48.2 percent for the Democrats -- a difference of only about 2,000 out of nearly 9 million cast -- and took the electoral college 214 to 155. The Greenback Party, Prohibition Party and the American Party also fielded candidates for president that year.

On November 2, 1920, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Republicans, won the 34th presidential election over James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats. Harding-Coolidge took 60.3 percent of the popular vote and 404 electoral votes, while Cox-Roosevelt took 34.1 percent of the popular vote and 127 electoral votes. The Socialist Party nominated Eugene V. Debs, who was in prison at the time, and he received 3.4 percent of the popular vote -- the highest ever for a Socialist. The Farmer-Labor, Prohibition, Socialist Labor, Single-Tax and American parties also fielded candidates.

On November 2, 1948, Harry S. Truman and Alben W. Barkley, Democrats, upset Thomas E. Dewey and Earl Warren, Republicans, in the 41st presidential election, capturing 49.6 percent of the popular vote and 303 electoral votes, compared with 45.1 percent of the popular vote and 189 electoral votes. The States' Rights Democratic Party, which nominated Strom Thurmond for president, took 2.4 percent of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes; the Progressive/American Labor Parties, whose nominee was former Vice President Henry Wallace, also took 2.4 percent of the popular vote, but no electoral votes. The Socialist Party and the Prohibition Party also fielded candidates.

On November 2, 1976, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, Democrats, won the 48th presidential election, beating Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, Republicans. Carter-Mondale took 50.1 percent of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes, while Ford-Dole captured 48 percent of the popular vote and 240 electoral votes. A number of other parties fielded candidates, such as the Libertarians, Socialists, Communists, People's and U.S. Labor.

Sarah Polk's Birthday

Today is the birthday of Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States from 1845 to 1849. She was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1803 to Joel Childress, a prominent planter and merchant, and Elizabeth Whitsitt Childress, and educated at the Moravians' "female academy" at Salem, North Carolina, one of the very few institutions of higher learning available to women in the early 19th century. Sarah married James Knox Polk when she was 20.

"In an age when motherhood gave a woman her only acknowledged career, Sarah Polk had to resign herself to childlessness," says her White House biography. "Moreover, no lady would admit to a political role of her own, but Mrs. Polk found scope for her astute mind as well as her social skills. She accompanied her husband to Washington whenever she could, and they soon won a place in its most select social circles.

"Constantly -- but privately -- Sarah was helping him with his speeches, copying his correspondence, giving him advice. Much as she enjoyed politics, she would warn him against overwork. He would hand her a newspaper -- 'Sarah, here is something I wish you to read...' -- and she would set to work as well."

She is credited with requesting that "Hail to the Chief" be regularly played for the president during his entrances, though it had been played on occasion for previous presidents. Historian William Seale posits that Sarah Polk was concerned the President Polk "was not an impressive figure, so some announcement was necessary to avoid the embarrassment of his entering a crowded room unnoticed."

Sarah Polk outlived her husband by 42 years, passing away in 1891.

Presidential Plaques on the Floor of the U.S. Capitol

In the Old House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol -- called Statuary Hall these days -- there are small plaques on the floor identifying the location of the desks of House members in the chamber (1807-57) who later went on to become president: J.Q. Adams, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln and A. Johnson.

With the exception of Lincoln, these plaques are among the few memorials for these presidents in Washington, DC. Take President Fillmore, for example. Sign the Compromise of 1850 and send Perry to Japan, and that's all you get. Whatever its other seductions, high office doesn't guarantee immortal fame.

November 2, 1795 & 1865: James K. Polk's and Warren G. Harding's Birthdays

November 2 offers a rich vein of dead presidential anniversaries. James K. Polk was born this day in 1795, and 70 years later, Warren G. Harding was. Both were the unexpected nominees of their parties in their respective election years, 1844 and 1920. The results of the 1844 election were the first ones ever transmitted by telegraph; the results of the 1920 election were the first one ever broadcast by radio (it was Harding's 55th birthday). Winning the West proved to be the focal point of the Polk administration; a place in the West called Teapot Dome set the tone for the posthumous reputation of Warren Harding and his administration.

In 1783, George Washington gave his farewell address to the Army, near Princeton, NJ.

On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison signed the statehood bills for North and South Dakota, one after the other. In which order? Harrison said he didn't look.

On November 2, 1983, Ronald Reagan signed a bill making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday, starting in 1986.

Under the the standardization of presidential election dates, a scheme that Congress passed and President Polk signed in 1845, November 2 is the first possible date of the general election; November 8 is the last. Elections were held on November 2 in 1852, 1880, 1920, 1948, 1976 and 2004 thus far, resulting in the election or re-election (respectively) of Pierce, Garfield, Harding, Truman, Carter and G.W. Bush.

September 25, 1846:Zachary Taylor Takes Monterrey

A number of presidential events happened on September 25. After of hard-fought battle against Mexican forces, Gen. Zachary Taylor, later 12th President of the United States, captured the Mexican city of Monterrey on this day in 1846. President Polk, mindful of Taylor winning too much military glory, did not reward Taylor for his success, but in fact removed most of his command from him and gave it to Winfield Scott. Nevertheless, the following spring, Taylor won another signal victory at Buena Vista, and by 1848 the formerly apolitical general was the Whig candidate for the presidency -- and won.

On this day in 1957, President Eisenhower used the US Army to enforce desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas -- the 50th anniversary has been well publicized. In 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. The first Supreme Court appointee of President Reagan, she has the distinction of being the first woman to hold the position.

June 15, 1849:James K. Polk Dies

The lyrics of "Napoleon of the Stump" by They Might Be Giants (John Linnell and John Flansburgh):

In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Lewis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tariffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump

And a non-professional video made to the song, better than many on YouTube.

May 24, 1844:"What hath God wrought."

Samuel Morse (left) sent his famed telegraph message from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, and it's often mentioned as if it were the very first message ever relayed by telegraph, but it isn't so. It was a public demonstration of the revolutionary communications technology (the "Victorian Internet"), and so of course was widely publicized.

But Morse and his men had been testing the system that spring, including relaying the results of the presidential nominating conventions, which were both held in Baltimore that year. The Whig Party nominated Henry Clay on May 1, 1844, and the news traveled to Washington by wire faster than a train could take the message. Morse's famous message was still about three weeks in the future when that happened. (The Democrats met on May 27.)

According to Cornell University Library's exhibition, "Ezra Cornell, A Nineteenth-Century Life," the man who made his fortune in the telegraph business and founder of Cornell University (right) was involved in the technology early on. Getting the system fuctioning to transmit Biblical quotes or presidential news or anything else was no small task: "While traveling in Maine, Ezra Cornell met F.O.J. Smith, editor of the Maine Farmer. When Congress appropriated $30,000 for the laying of a test telegraph cable between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Smith had taken a contract from the inventor, Samuel F.B. Morse, to lay the lead pipe which enclosed the telegraph wires.

"In the summer of 1843, on his second trip to Maine, Cornell visited Smith's office and found him struggling to design a machine to lay the cable underground. At Smith's request, Cornell created a plow that would both dig the trench and lay the cable. Morse came to Maine for a demonstration of the machine, approved it, and hired Cornell to lay the cable for the test line. In October 1843, Cornell went to Washington to begin work on laying the telegraph line. As the work proceeded, he became concerned that the insulation of the wires was defective. He notified Morse, who ordered the work stopped. Cornell then devised a machine for withdrawing the wires from the pipes and reinsulating them.

"Cornell spent that winter in Washington studying works on electricity and magnetism in the Patent Office library and the Library of Congress. His reading convinced him that underground wiring was impractical and that the wires should be strung on glass-insulated poles. He was retained as Morse's assistant at the pay of $1,000 per year. In the spring of 1844, Cornell built the overhead line from Washington to Baltimore, and on May 24, Morse tapped out the historic message: 'What hath God wrought.' Some of Cornell's earliest telegraph communications relayed the results of the 1844 Whig and Democratic Conventions, which nominated Henry Clay and James K. Polk, respectively."

February 13, 1849:Polk Longs for Private Life

The presidency has had a way of wearing men down. Often, the stresses of office are visible on their faces toward the end of their terms, and in some cases the presidency seems to have ruined the officeholder's health. Others have articulated their relief at leaving office, and a scattering of those thoughts have been preserved for posterity.

On February 13, 1849, James K. Polk wrote the following in his diary: "I am heartily rejoiced that my term is so near its close. I will soon cease to be a servant and become a sovereign. As a private citizen, I will have no one but myself to serve, and will exercise a part of the sovereign power of the country. I am sure I will be happier in this condition than in the exhalted station I now hold."

James Buchanan, after relinquishing his post to Abraham Lincoln, supposedly told him:"If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [his home], you are a happy man indeed."

And US Grant, ever the succinct communicator, said this about leaving office: "I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency."

February 2, 1848:The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Polk administration was one of achievement -- the president had success in every major initiative he undertook in four years -- but the signal achievement of his presidency literally changed the map of the United States. The war with Mexico might have been, as US Grant observed in his Memoirs, "an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory," and most modern historians would probably agree with that assessment. But no one is suggesting the return of the territory thus won, about 529,000 square miles, to Mexico. Polk's legacy stands.

On February 2, 1848, US and Mexican negotiators inked the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo just north of Mexico City. The US representative was Nicholas Trist, "a colorful and eccentric figure... who had studied law with Jefferson and been private secretary to Jackson," wrote Page Smith in The Nation Comes of Age (1981). "Trist knew Spanish and... was handsome and urbane but conceited and self-important."

Trist had been send by President Polk to conclude a treaty, but before long the president had second thoughts, and recalled him. It wasn't merely a matter of picking up a telephone, however, as a modern president can do. Trist ignored his recall and pressed on.

"Although Trist had been ordered home by Polk," Page continued, "who had denounced him as 'impudent, arrogant, very insulting, and personally offensive,' he remained with [General Winfield] Scott and pushed negotiations for peace... When Polk received a copy of the treaty, he was at first disposed to reject it, but a majority in Congress pressed him to send it to the Senate for ratification and it passed that body by a vote of 38 to 14."

Grant had this to say about the treaty many years later: "It is to the credit of the American nation, however, that after conquering Mexico, and while practically holding the country in our possession, so that we could have retained the whole of it, or made any terms we chose, we paid a round sum for the additional territory taken; more than it was worth, or was likely to be, to Mexico. To us it was an empire, and of incalculable value; but it might have been obtained by other means."

January 11, 1852:Death of Jane Knox Polk, Presidential Mother

Only three mothers of presidents lived longer than their sons, one of whom was Jane Knox Polk. She died on January 11, 1852, more than three years after James Knox Polk, 11th president of the United States. The only other presidential mothers to outlive their sons were Eliza Garfield and Rose Kennedy, both of whom lost their boys to assassins.

A combination of overwork and cholera seems to have done in President Polk. At 53, he died relatively young -- younger, in fact, that any other president who died of natural causes, and third youngest among all the presidents, living longer than James Garfield (49) and John Kennedy (46). Polk survived his term by a little more than three months.

According to the web site of the President James K. Polk State Historic Site in North Carolina: "The oldest of ten, Polk was raised on tales of the American Revolution by his father, a prosperous farmer. A pious Presbyterian, Polk's mother was said to be descended from the fiery Scottish religious reformer John Knox. Both parents instilled in their son a fierce patriotism, a keen interest in politics, and a deep religious faith."