A critical examination of evaluations of James K. Polk by American historians

255 Pages·012.202 MB·English

by  Price, Glenn Warren

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF EVALUATIONS
OF JAMES K. POLK BY AMERICAN HISTORIANS
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of History
The U niversity of Southern C alifornia
In P artial Fulfillm ent
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
Glenn Tfarren Price
January 1950
UMI Number: EP59616
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI EP59616
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346
This thesis, written by
c
..................GLSMJfARREN. PRICE......................................... n ¥ 3
m J I
under the guidance of h..is... Faculty Committee, ■
and approved by all its members, has been
presented to and accepted by the Council on
Graduate Study and Research in partial fulfill­
ment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Date...........JAN.yARY.12£
Faculty Committee
v* Chair map
u
Approval is granted for th is thesis
to be presented in e lite type*
Owen C. Coy, Ph. D.
Chairman of Thesis Committee
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I* HISTORY AND HISTORIES .................................................................................. 6
The w riting of history . . . ......................................................... 6
Variant fru its of a disciplined art 7
The p ro b lem ....................................................................................................... 7
President•Polk; a century of changing evaluations . . . 7
Organization of the s tu d y .................... .............................................. 12
II. THE POLITICAL CAREER OF JAMES K. PO LK .............................................. 13
Pre-presidential career .............................................................. . . 13
Congressman, Jacksonian Speaker of the House, Governor . 1k
Nomination for President ...................................................................... 18
Campaign of iQhh: Clay vs. P o lk ........................... 20
"Re-annexation" of Texas; "Re-occupation" of Oregon . . 21
Votes and the ta riff: Kane le tte r ........................... 21
Election . . . . . .................................................................................... 23
Annexation of Texas; joint resolution and Benton amendment 2l|
American society in l314ij expansionist democracy . . . . 25
Inaugural address ..................................... 26
Selection of the c a b in e t........................................................................... 27
Mexico and Texsis ................................ 29
Rupture of relations ............................................................................... 29
Texas approves annexation ................................................................. 30
General Taylor to Corpus C hristi .................................................... 31
Background of the "Mexican P ro b lem "............................................... 31
Poinsett, Butler .................................................................................... 32
The Texas revolution ............................................................................... 3h
C laim s................................................................................................................ 36
M ilitary in c id e n ts................................................... 37
P arro tt's negotiations ............................................................................... 38
S lid e ll1s mission; m inister or special envoy? ........................ 39
3
CHAPTER PAGE
President Polk decides for war ............................................................ Ij.2
May 9: Morning - War for C la im s.......................................................- li.2
Skirmish on the Rio Grande ............................................................. lj-3
May 9: Evening - "War by act of M ex ico "................................. Ill*
War messagej debate in Congress; declaration ........................ ilp>
Polk’s war aims ■ 2*6
Oregon diplomacy ......................................................................................... JU7
Buchanan - "God w ill not ju stify y o u " ...................................... bl
Polk - t’Look John Bull straight in the eye" ................... lj.8
Compromise on U90 .................................................................................... JU8
The War With M ex ico .................................................................................... h9
Polk-Santa Anna intrigue . ............................................................. h9
Polk vs. Taylor . ........................... 51
Polk vs. Scott ......................................................................................... 51
C alifornia: diplomacy, rebellion, occupation . ................... 53
Polk arid war propaganda..................................... 55
Polk vs. T rist ................................................... 56
Opposition to the w a r ......................................... 58
Henry C lay ............................................................ 58
Lowell, Thoreau, Emerson.................................................................. 59
Polk defends the w a r.............................................. 6l
House resolution: The war "unnecessarily and unconsti­
tutionally begun by the P resid en t"..................................... 62
L in c o ln ....................................................................................................... 63
Corwin .................................................................................................. 6h
Calhoun, Stephens ............................................................................... 65
Congressional defense of the war ................................. 66
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . . . . . ...................................... 68
The "Polk Doctrine" - America for the North Americans . . 69
The ta riff, internal impro cements and the independent
treasury .................................................................................... 70
Slavery ....................................................... 71
Polk as an adm inistrator; patronage problem s.................................. 73
Home to Tennessee; d e a th ........................................................................... 75
III. POLEMICS AND REMINISCENCES: l 8i|8 - 1886 . . . . . . . . . 76
William Jay .................................................................................................. 79
John S tillw ell Jenkins ............................................................................... 82
Thomas Hart Benton .................................... 8I4.
k
CHAPTER PAGE
James G. Blaine ......................... ....................................................... 88
Ulysses S. G r a n t.................................................................................... 89
038111113 M. Wilcox . . ............................................................................ 90
Benjamin Perley P oore.............................................. 91
Horatio 0. Ladd ..................................... . . . ................................ 92
W. A. P e te r s ............................................................................................. 9h
IV. VON HOLST, H. H. BANCROFT, RHODES: 1881 - 1892 . . . . . 96
Hermann Von H o lst........................... . . 97
Hubert Howe B a n c ro ft........................... 109
Carl Schurz ............................................................................................. 107
James Ford Rhodes.................................................................................... 109
Theodore Roosevelt . . . . 110
V. POLK’S DIARY BECOMES AVAILABLE TO HISTORIANS: UNITED
STATES DESTINY AGAIN BECOMES MANIFEST: lQ9k “ 1918 . 113
James S c h o u le r................................ 119
John W. Burgess .................................................................................... 119
Edward Stanwood .................................................................................... 123
Woodrow Wilson ....................... 12k
Elisha Benjamin Andrews . .............................................................. 129
Enoch W alter Sikes and William Morse Keener ................... 126
Cyrus T. Brady .................................................................................... 127
Charles H. Owen .................................................................................... 128
George Pierce Garrison . ............................................................. 130
Jesse S. Reeves ................................................................................... 137
John Bach M cM aster................................ li|0
Milo Milton Q u a ife ............................................................................... llix
George Lockhart Rives . ............................................................. li;3
C. C. K o h l................................................... Ik9
Carl Russel F i s h .............................................. 190
A lbert Bushnell H a r t ..................................... 191
VI. THE WAR JUSTIFIED — THE PRESIDENT ACHIEVES RESPECTABILITY 193
Justin Harvey Smith . . . * .......................... 193
Eugene Irving M cCormac * 172
VII. THE SMITH-DIPLOMAT AND THE MCCORMAC-EXBCUTIVE ................... 179
Edward Channing . ..................................... 182
Allan N e v in s ............................................................................................. 18U
David Saville Muzzey .......................................... 186
Louis Martin S e a r s ............................................................................... 187
5
CHAPTER PAGE
John Holladay Latane . . ....................................................... 188
Russel B. Nye .................................... 190
Alfred Hoyt B ill ....................... . 190
Martha Mac Bride Morrel ........................... . 191
V III. JUSTIFIABLE PRESSURE BY AN' ABLE PRESIDENT................................... 19U
J. Fred Rippy . .............................. . ..*.......................................... 19k
St. George L. Siouss&t . 195
Frederick Jackson Turner . . . . 196
Charles Winslow E llio tt ‘ . 197
Samuel Flagg Bemis . . . . . . . . ...................... . . . 198
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Charles A. Beard . . . . . . . . . . ..................................... 206
IX. RESORT TO WAR BY A WILFUL PRESIDENT.............................................. 208
Nathaniel Wright S tephenson.............................................. 208
Randolph G. Adams . ..................................................... 210
Arthur Meir Schlesinger . . . . . ................................. . 210
Samuel E liot Morison and Henry Steele Commager . . . 212
Bernard DeVoto . ................................. . . . . . . . . . 215
X. THE UN SCRUPULOUS INSTRUMENT OF MANIFEST DESTINY . . . 220
Richard R. Stenberg . . . . . ........................................................ 220
Dexter Perkins . ................................................................... 225
W. E. Woodward ................................................................ 22?
James Truslow Adams ....................................... 228
Ray Allen B illington . ................................................................ 230
XI. PRESIDENT POLK AND CITIZEN-HISTORIANS .............................. 233
Polk a "Near Great" President ..................................... 233
Arthur M. Schlesingerfs presidential rating poll . 233
C riteria for greatness . 231+
Documentary factors In the re-valuation of President
Polk ........................................................................................................... 236
Patriotism as a factor in Polk!s rehabilitation . • 239
Rating the man of Power; some judgments on President
James K. Polk ............................................................ 21+3
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 2h7
CHAPTER I
HISTORY AND HISTORIES
It is a truism that there is no such thing as a definitive his­
tory of even the sm allest segment of tim e. History has to be continual­
ly rewritten* The unending effort is necessary not so much because more -
of the m aterials of the human past are always being laid bare as because
of the very nature of the art* History is the memory of the race but it
is not carried forward instinctively and whole by the human community*
It is a lig h t, fed and guarded by historians and made to illum ine one
aspect or another of human affairs in response to the changing necessity*
And in the continuing attempt to make the body of human experience use­
fu l new insights are gained of the experience itself*
Man must be forever re-casting his experience because he is con­
tinu ally re-orienting himself in the world* He must re-evaluate his past
because his values are new ones* Thus each generation, as has been, -said,
must w rite its own history; every man, indeed, must be his own historian*
But although h isto rical work is essentially subjective the craft
has developed s tric t disciplines le st the "record” become a meaningless
collection of individual idiosyncrasies* Without engaging in a discus­
sion of h isto rical methods we may summarize by noting th at the primary
aims are that the data be presented without distortion, that the selec­
tion of data be representative and th at the interpretation proceed logi­
cally from the sources* There is ample room w ithin that pattern for dif­
ferences of judgment but it provides the framework for coherent h isto r—
7
ical progress. H istorians are sharp judges of each other*s work, look­
ing suspiciously for evidence of suppressio veri or suggestio fa ls i. Has
valid data, damaging to the w riter’s th esis, been omitted? Has question­
able m aterial been accepted when it bolsters that the sis ?> Has the selec­
tion and exposition of the historian been colored by any of the myriad
ego-bolstering prejudices which dog the seeker fo r truths Is the carrier
of the memory of the race infected with party bias, national bias, racial
bias, religious bias? The historian as interpreter of events is lim ited
and held in check by the discipline of his craft.
H istorical events and personages which are the subjects of wide
disagreements among able historians therefore pose extraordinarily in­
teresting problems. A study of the ’’facts” and of the various depar­
tures from those facts provides valuable training in the methods of his­
to rical research and exposition. This study is a survey of comparative
h isto rical evaluations on a contentious period and personage in United
States history. It w ill, it is hoped, throw some lig ht upon the d iffi­
culties involved in any attempt to present the truth in history and per­
haps mark out some forces which disable the historian in his attempt to
recapture the past in meaningful form.
James Knox Polk, eleventh President of the United States, has
4
had an exhilarating career in American history. His starting point, in
the work of Herman von Holst and Hubert Howe Bancroft, was the igno­
minious, inglorious position where contemporary public opinion, inform­
ed and uninformed, had deposited him.