In 1858, the discovery of gold in Cherry Creek, Colorado, near the site of present-day Denver, triggered a large overland migration known as the COLORADO GOLD RUSH. The California gold rush had provided the original model for a mass migration across the continent. The discoveries in Colorado a decade later produced many of the same outbursts of enthusiasm.
The first parties to go west headed for Pike’s Peak, under the mistaken impression that this was the site of the strikes. The immigration to Colorado of as many as 100,000 miners in the summer of 1859 was based on better information, and most of these overlanders headed to Cherry Creek. Nevertheless, Pike’s Peak retained a prominent place in the gold rush as the site, however erroneously identified, of the original strikes. In addition, the peak itself was, from a distance, the most prominent and visible sign of the Rocky Mountains. That it could be seen some 40 miles distant on a clear day gave the eager argonauts of ’59 their first glimpse of what they hoped would be the New El Dorado, the new CALIFORNIA. Consequently, many of the prospective miners who headed west in the summer of 1859 painted “Pike’s Peak or Bust” on the sides of their wagons. After the original enthusiasm had spent itself in disappointment, Pike’s Peak had another life as a familiar landmark for the flood of gold seekers moving through the area to the Continental Divide.
Further reading: Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Gold Seekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997).
Polk, James K. (1 795-1 849) 11th U. S. president The 11th president of the United States, James Knox Polk served only one term in office but is generally credited with accomplishing all of his major goals. Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, into a Presbyterian family of Scottish ancestry, Polk later attended school in Tennessee. He returned to North Carolina to attend the state university at Chapel Hill, graduating from there in 1818 with a reputation for hard work and achievement. After moving back to Tennessee to study law, he was admitted to the bar in 1820 and went on to practice law for three years.
In 1823, Polk was elected to the Tennessee legislature, serving for two years and establishing a friendship with Andrew Jackson, the state’s most prominent political figure. During that time, he married Sarah Childress. In 1825, he was elected to the U. S. Congress, where he opposed the policies of President JOHN QuiNCY Adams and was a strong Jackson supporter, a political alliance that continued after Jackson was elected president in 1828. From his position as chairman of the influential Ways and Means Committee, Polk pursued the Jacksonian line of opposition to the Second Bank of the United States. He also supported the president when he issued his controversial veto of the Maysville Road Bill. Polk served a total of 14 years in Congress, rising to become speaker of the House in 1835, a position he held for four years. While in Congress, Polk became a target of criticism from the new Whig Party, which alleged he was nothing more than Jackson’s errand boy.
Although a powerful member of Congress, Polk was drafted by his party to run for governor in Tennessee after the Whigs had captured the state’s highest office. He was elected governor in 1839, serving ably during his two-year term. He was subsequently defeated for reelection in 1841, however, and lost again two years later when he tried to regain the governorship. The second defeat seemed to end any serious political future for him, but Polk stubbornly continued to remain active, both in Tennessee and nationally.
The Democratic Party was determined to regain the White House, and most assumed they would nominate former president Martin Van Buren in 1844. Polk’s name was circulated early on as a possible candidate for vice president. The main issue of that year’s campaign was the annexation of the Republic of Texas, where SLAVERY was legal, to the United States. Van Buren hurt his hopes for nomination by coming out in opposition to annexation, which he did to head off protests from northern Democrats opposed to the influence of slaveholders within the party. With that stroke, Van Buren opened up the door for another candidate, especially one agreeable to the South. Former president Andrew Jackson was upset with Van Buren’s stance on Texas, and he began to search for another candidate, eventually throwing his support behind his old protege, James Knox Polk. The party as a whole
President James K. Polk (Library of Congress)
Remained divided, with Van Buren retaining significant support as the Democratic convention opened in Baltimore in May of 1844. After deadlocking between Van Buren and Lewis Cass of Michigan, the convention finally turned to Polk, who did support annexation, as a compromise “dark horse” candidate. In accepting the nomination, Polk pledged himself to a single term as president, in an effort to heal the divisions within the party. Polk and running mate George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania, running on an expansionist platform that called for American sovereignty over Texas and the disputed Oregon territory, then defeated Whig stalwart Henry Clay of Kentucky in a close election. Polk had been a consistent critic over the years of Clay’s American System. The Liberty Party candidate, James Birney, had drawn antislavery votes away from Clay that were crucial in a few states, including the key one of New York.
The 49-year-old Polk took office in 1845 as the youngest man to that point to serve as president. Although hampered somewhat by his one-term pledge, he proved to be an extraordinarily hard-working, focused, and in many ways successful president in terms of carrying out his program. He saw his four major goals in office as reducing the tariff; supporting an independent treasury, an institution by which the government kept its deposits separate from private banking interests; settling the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain; and acquiring the huge territory of California from Mexico. Thus, foreign affairs occupied much of his time, to a greater extent than it had most of his predecessors.
Although the United States and Britain had been negotiating over the Oregon territory and what should be the boundary between the United States and Canada, Polk forced the issue to a conclusion. He did so despite some disagreement within his own party on the issue, with Democrats from the Old Northwest favoring expansion and southern Democrats wary of war with Britain and skeptical of adding what was certain to be non-slave territory to the Union. The prospect of armed conflict with Britain ended when the two nations signed the Oregon Treaty of 1846, with the United States gaining most of the territory in question and Britain retaining Vancouver Island.
Relations with Mexico, however, continued to be strained and had been made worse when the United States annexed Texas shortly before Polk took office. Polk pursued the acquisition of California by offering to buy it from Mexico, which also owed the United States unpaid debts. When Mexico refused to repay its debts by selling California, Polk planned to ask Congress to declare war on that basis. In the meantime, however, American troops in a disputed area were fired on and killed by the Mexican army. Polk claimed that Mexican forces had actually invaded the United States and attacked its soldiers, which was arguable.
In any event, Congress declared war on Mexico, and the United States successfully prosecuted the war, conquering the enemy in a series of spectacular victories and capturing much territory in doing so. The Mexican-American War was not without its critics, with some decrying it as “Mr. Polk’s War” and condemning it as a conflict of aggression and expansionism. Polk proved to be a capable wartime leader, as the partisan Democrat was able to work with Whig generals such as Winfield Scott. Determined to both win the peace and secure California, the Polk administration negotiated with Mexico from a position of strength. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which formally ended the war, the United States gained title to the huge territory of California and New Mexico. However, the victory contained within it the seeds of civil war, as North and South clashed sharply in the aftermath of the conflict about whether slavery should be allowed in the new territory.
Polk also succeeded politically on the domestic front. At his urging, Congress lowered the tariff, with the new rates remaining in effect for 11 years. As a consistently antibank Democrat, Polk threw his support behind the idea of an independent treasury as well. Overshadowed by the tariff question and the war with Mexico, the independent treasury did not generate the controversy or interest it had in the late 1830s; Polk himself paid minimal attention to it. Nonetheless, the measure became law.
Another important domestic issue which Polk tackled as president was that of internal improvements. As befitting a staunch Jacksonian Democrat, he had consistently opposed efforts to use federal funds to build transportation networks, finding such plans to be beyond the constitutional boundaries of the federal government. In vetoing a bill that called for improvements in several western rivers and harbors, Polk said that federal funds for local projects would “produce a disreputable scramble for the public money.” Congress failed to override this particular veto, and when Polk later vetoed a similar piece of legislation, he again placed himself firmly in the Jacksonian tradition as he cited Jackson’s Maysville Road veto in his own message to Congress. Not only was the Constitution at stake, but the treasury and financial stability of the nation itself would be threatened by federal expenditures for so many projects, he warned.
Having kept his pledge to not run for reelection, Polk left office at the end of his term in 1849. He lived only a few months more, having exhausted himself through his hard work as president. One of the leading examples of a Jacksonian Democrat, Polk has generally received high marks from historians for having set out a specific set of goals as president and then proceeding to achieve them. While not quite as charismatic as his mentor, Polk, who was sometimes called “Little Hickory,” is generally considered to have been the most able president between Jackson and Lincoln. He died on June 15, 1849, and was buried in Nashville.
Further reading: Paul H Bergeron. The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1987); William Dusinberre, Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James K. Polk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); John C. Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2007); Charles Grier Sellers, James K. Polk, Continentalist (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1966).
World History
