James K. Polk, Vol. 1: Jacksonian, 1795-1843

James K. Polk #1

by Charles Grier Sellers

Sellers, Charles

Genres: Presidents, History

548 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

A specialist in the history of antebellum America, Charles Sellers earned his B.A. from Harvard University in 1945 (graduation delayed by military service until 1947), and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1950.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read about James Polk before, and having read reviews of books I have and haven't yet read, I know a common critique of some of the more modern biographies is that they tend to rush through his early life and career to get to his presidency. So I thought I'd turn to this older, more comprehensive biography - the first in a planned trilogy - for a fuller look at Polk's pre-presidency. 

And… I guess be careful what you wish for?

What may have proven to be the definitive classic biography of Polk, along the lines of Robert Remini's trilogy on Andrew Jackson, appears not to be widely read today, since Sellers only wrote volumes 1 and 2 and quit before writing what would have been the concluding volume 3. Apparently he simply found other things he'd rather write about instead.

The thoroughness, research and scholarship that went into this volume can't be denied. Its value to historians and subsequent Polk biographers is likely immense. As for readability, however, the armchair historian will need to be super interested in Jacksonian-era Tennessee state politics in order to find this a page-turner.

The book charts Polk's early life and political rise. But since he owed his rise largely to his political cleverness and connections, particularly to Andrew Jackson, rather than any noteworthy achievements of his own, Polk often comes across as a supporting character in his own biography. At least until he gains prominence as Speaker of the House, Polk disappears for long stretches as Sellers explores the rise of Andrew Jackson and the political debates and issues of the time.

Much of this is quite good - Sellers' detailed examination of precisely why Jackson, Polk and their cohorts were opposed to the Bank of the U.S. and banks in general is among the best I've read. 

The leisurely pace of a 500-page book that doesn't even reach Polk's presidency also allows plenty of time for some colorful storytelling, including Sellers' description of what the Capitol building was like when Polk first arrived after being elected to Congress. And I found the most entertaining anecdote to be about Polk's pious mother reacting to a local church that featured an organ: "Jane was scandalized and sniffed contemptuously that there should be a monkey to go with this heathenish circus instrument." 

But the bulk of the book focuses on local politics. Similar to how any study of Martin Van Buren must delve deeply into early 19th century New York state politics, so must any Polk study provide a deep dive into Tennessee state politics. This is quite strong when exploring how local political machinations helped get Jackson nominated and later elected as president. But it bogs down post-Jackson and can try one's patience to read about every local political intrigue as Polk retreats from the national stage and wins, then loses, and loses again, the Tennessee governorship.

The book ends on something of a cliffhanger in 1843, as Polk, the two-time gubernatorial loser and frustrated vice presidential hopeful, finds himself in the political wilderness. Of course, we know he will soon experience a meteoric rise to the presidency just over a year later, and the pace and importance of his story will then pick up considerably.

Having now read in great detail the portion of Polk's life that many modern biographers skim over, I've reached the point in his life that modern biographers have covered well. So I'm inclined to read one of those books next, instead of Sellers' second volume. I don't like abandoning a series like this once I've started - but Sellers already did, so that makes the decision to move on just a little easier.

[Jaime Ball]

Charles Sellers is a master at understanding the controversy around Polk and Jackson and I find his paper Andrew Jackson versus the Historians interesting when reading other works by Sellers. To understand Polk, you must also understand Jackson. The seventh American president of the United States is commemorated on the twenty-dollar bill and the irony of this is stunning due to the fact that Jackson did not believe in paper money and also dismantled the national banking system. Reconsideration on replacing his image with Harriet Tubman is also in the works even though it could be years before this takes place. Jackson’s own image has also changed over time to cast a kinder, gentler Jackson in recent years. Historians’ views of Jackson have evolved over time as well, and not always looking towards him in the positive light of a national hero as many did during the last thirty years of Andrew Jackson’s life. Early historians and biographers are detailed in Charles Sellers Andres Jackson versus the Historians where James Parton is described as the first historian to attempt at writing a biography of Andrew Jackson and Parton understood Jackson was viewed by many Americans as the country’s greatest leader since the founding fathers. Although even Parton found that Jackson was an enigma. In 1860, less than 20 years after Jackson’s death, the journalist now called “America’s Biographer” wrote the first scholarly biography of Jackson. Parton notes the struggle he had in researching Jackson that many of the accounts he came across didn’t agree with one another. Parton even goes on to describe Jackson as both a patriot and a traitor. Parton explains that after months and months of research he can not still discover the true face of the great Andrew Jackson. He writes:
“Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and traitor. He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A writer brilliant, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence, or spell words of four syllables……He was the most candid of men and was capable of the profoundness dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-abiding citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.” (Parton 1860)
Parton found it very hard to find objective information regarding a man that Parton claimed was “deified” by two thirds of Americans and “vilified” by the other one third. So prophetic are his words that historians and biographers would find the same problem in modern times when modern Americans view the current political landscape and how the legacy of Andrew Jackson fits into the creation of the United States. Parton wrote many best-selling biographies, but Jackson’s have persisted as his best known (Charles Grier Sellers 1958). Parton relied on surviving participants in Jackson’s administration and life and every biographer after Parton have relied heavily on his biography. Parton remained critical throughout his biography of Jackson, especially of the “spoils systems” where he removed many federal employees even as lowly as rural postmasters and replaced with his own loyalists. Parton exclaimed that this was an “evil so great and so difficult to remedy, that if all his other public acts had been perfectly wise and right, this single feature of his administration would suffice to render it deplorable.” (Parton 1860) Yet, Parton goes on to describe Jackson as a hero of a military leader, a rugged and strong frontier Indian fighter, and the ultimate title holder of the “common man”. Modern historians, where they indeed mention the moral dilemmas of the spoils system, that does not seem to be where they draw their harshest criticism of Jackson toward. Writing during a time when one could interview people with vivid memories of Jackson and his life Parton takes account of Jackson’s immense popularity with American Democrats. Parton realized that the people who most admire are the same people we most identify and relate with. Jackson represented a type of American man at that time that was a rebellious and Parton believed that this close identification to Andrew Jackson would not last forever.
Fredrick Jackson Turner in his “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” lays a foundation for a “Jacksonian America”, a land full of self-made men calling themselves frontiersmen. Turner claimed that the western frontier and its white settlement had been a central focus of American history down to his own time, although now with the closing of the frontier in 1890 he saw the future of America would become very different. The character of Americans had been shaped by people having the ability to escape the East into the frontier and the experiences the frontier gave these people. Turner’s view of life on the frontier was much like how American’s viewed Andrew Jackson, individualistic, optimistic, pragmatic, inquisitive, and strong. Andrew Jackson was the personification of Turner’s frontier American. Of course, this idea excluded women, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and immigrants. Marquis James, who wrote The Life of Andrew Jackson, and later won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography in 1938. James had sympathized more with Jackson than Parton had, minimizing the number of federal offices Andrew Jackson had cleared for his loyalists. James also celebrated Jackson’s stand against South Carolina’s attempted nullification. James depicted the removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi to Oklahoma and Kansas as “the best that Indians could hope for”. James was seen as less of an academic writer and more of a professional writer that went on to be paid to write official biographies for famous businessmen. His books sold well but they cost him credibility and his biography on Jackson for people during the Depression era didn’t stay on academic bookshelves. (Charles Grier Sellers 1958) There were also various interpretations of Jackson from viewpoints of Whig and Progressive historians. These viewpoints were formed more by Jackson’s policies and Whig historians’ viewpoints were quite negative. Even though most Whig historians claim that it had nothing to do with Jackson’s personality they continually called him arrogant, ignorant, and “not fit to be president”. Many of the Whig historians came from wealthy or middle-class Northern families. Bias could have been due to the fact that many prominent Whig families had control over politics prior to 1829, when Jackson became president. On the other hand, Jackson was seen as a hero and a common man of the people to the Progressive historians. Like Jackson, many Progressives grew up in small rural towns, in the same areas that had Jackson had claimed from Native Americans, the west and southern parts of the United States. Differing views continued up until a twenty-eight year old prodigy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., son of a Harvard professor began to take a different look at the study of Jackson. Schlesinger believed that Jackson’s presidency had a purpose to put down the power of capitalists and create opportunities for lower classes. Schlesinger broke with Turner’s emphasis on the western frontier as the framework for American Democracy, Schlesinger promoted a “Jacksonian Democracy” that expressed a working-class ideals and resentments. He also hardly even mentions Schlesinger wrote that Jackson’s war on the national bank rallied the working class against negative changes that capitalism was promoting. Industrialization was making skilled craftsman obsolete in the new mechanized factories and their assembly line workers during Schlesinger’s time and his readers saw Jackson as the hero against the capitalistic elite. Other historians continued to disagree with Schlesinger, while others supported his idea or enhanced it, saying Jackson was almost similar to a Marxist. Sellers points out, interpretations that Whigs and Progressives have about him are not wrong, there is just a need for more information on the topics around Andrew Jackson. The Jackson era is filled with controversy and multiple viewpoints from historians “suggests that we are poor in the data by which our hypotheses must be checked”. (Charles Grier Sellers 1958)

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 3 out of 5]

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James K. Polk, Vol. 1: Jacksonian, 1795-1843 by Charles Grier Sellers is the first volume in a proposed trilogy studying the 11th President of the United States. Mr. Sellers is a historian, a Southern liberal specializing in antebellum America.

This book tells of the rise of James K. Polk in Tennessee and the national, political scene due to his wits and connections with President Andrew Jackson. Much of the book talks about Polk, Jackson, and others opposing banks and paper money.

In much of James K. Polk, Vol. 1 by Charles Grier Sellers, the titled man takes a back seat to the huge figure of Jackson. The author tells of the rise of Andrew Jackson and an analysis of the political debates which were the hot topics of the time.

Polk himself takes a backseat and often isn’t even mentioned for many pages. However, once he becomes Speaker of the House, Polk returns to the forefront of his own biography.

Much of the book examines why Jackson, Polk, and their supporters opposed banks and paper money. While the narrative could be dry at times, the research and analysis are solid and I managed to understand their views very well. To be honest, I liked Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter R. Borneman much better.

But this book doesn’t even reach Polk’s presidency. The majority focuses on local politics, Van Buren’s New York politics, and of course the politics of the state of Tennessee. While some of it is interesting, it slows down the book tremendously. The ending is supposedly a cliffhanger, where James K. Polk finds himself ousted after losing, again, the governor’s office, and hoping to gain the vice president’s office.
We, however, know what’s coming.