Word: polks
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...James Knox Polk, who guided the House in the hectic Jacksonian era, took more abuse and needling than any other Speaker, before or since. Polk put his, and Jackson's, program through Congress and graduated to the Presidency...
...Camp Polk...
History as Inexperience. The year of decision really begins in the White House with James K. Polk scheming to get California away from Mexico, Oregon from England. "Who is James K. Polk?" Americans asked when he was nominated. They still ask. Yet Polk, says Historian DeVoto, was "the only 'strong' president between Jackson and Lincoln." He had "guts," "integrity," could not be "brought to heel." But he was also "pompous," "suspicious," "secretive," "humorless," "vindictive." He believed that "wisdom and patriotism were Democratic monopolies." He made an effort to be generous, sometimes confided to his diary: "Although a Whig...
There are glimpses of the amateur statesman Polk conspiring with (and getting double-crossed by) Mexican General Santa Anna, who was supposed to sell out Mexico for $30,000,000. When war came, Polk was all but crushed by his Presidential burdens. Says DeVoto: "Deliberately carrying twin torches through a powder magazine ... he made no preparation for either war. . . . He did not know how to make war or how to lead a people." Result : "Time after time the extemporized organizations broke down. . . . Millions of dollars were wasted, months were lost." But at last "the first modern industrial war somehow . . . succeeded...
Died. Frank Lyon Polk, 71, Under Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson; in Manhattan. Counselor to the State Department for four years, he was made Under Secretary in 1919, headed the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, resigned the following year to practice...