RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –
James K. Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in a log cabin in Mecklenburg, North Carolina, the oldest of 10 children. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818, studied law in Nashville, and was admitted to the bar in 1820.
Polk married in 1824, but the couple didn’t have children. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1825, serving seven terms and was the Speaker of the House for four years. He left Congress to become the governor of Tennessee in 1839.
A protege of the 7th president, Andrew Jackson, and was given the nickname “Young Hickory,” a play on Jackson’s “Old Hickory” moniker.
In the election of 1844, Polk was considered a long-shot candidate, but the democrat won the presidency, with 49 and a half percent of the popular vote and the electoral vote 170 to 105. At 49, becoming the youngest president at the time.
Polk believed in Manifest Destiny”, that it was the fate of the United States to expand across North America. By the end of his four years in the White House, with the addition of the Oregon Territory, parts of what is now the Southwest and California, the nation extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
The “54-40 or fight” etched on the barrel next to his statue was his campaign slogan. It refers to the northern boundary of Oregon’s latitude line of 54 degrees and 40 minutes, land Polk wanted to claim. The Oregon Treaty set a U.S.-British border in the territory.
He kept his campaign promise to be a one-term president and did not seek reelection in 1848.
The stress of being president contributed to his poor health, and he died in 1849, 103 days after leaving office. James K. Polk was only 53 years old.
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