Even if you hadn’t guessed it by the award the John Locke Foundation presents in his name each year, James K. Polk is one of JLF President John Hood’s favorite historical figures.
That’s why John is likely to enjoy the following passage from John Steele Gordon‘s review in the new Commentary of the latest book on Polk, A Country of Vast Designs. Gordon explains why Polk is the only man among the lesser-known presidents who served between Jackson and Lincoln whose reputation deserves rescue from obscurity:
James K. Polk belongs only chronologically among these nobodies. At the beginning of his presidency, on March 4, 1845, the United States encompassed 1.7 million square miles and barely reached the Rocky Mountains. Four years later, the United States had a long coastline on the Pacific as well as the Atlantic and would soon come to dominate both oceans, a fact that has had ever greater geopolitical consequences. The national territory increased by 70 percent under Polk, as Texas, Oregon, and the Southwest were acquired.
Indeed, much of iconic America today ? Hollywood, Las Vegas, the Alamo, the Grand Canyon, the redwood trees ? became part of this country not only while James K. Polk was president but also because he was president. Polk was, unabashedly, the president of Manifest Destiny. ?
