It has been a dazzling first year in office for Polk, a man whom few thought would make it to adulthood, let alone be elected president. Perpetually ill as a child, he frustrated his rugged planter father, Samuel. James Knox Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795, with his family moving to Columbia, Tennessee, soon after. He is a weak child, unable to perform manual labor on the plantation and showing little interest in his schoolwork.
