The policy of the administration confirmed these impressions. Polk had no great ideas, no inspiring imagination, no kindling enthusiasm, no moving eloquence, no contagious humor, no winning personality. He was not exactly a “burning bush” of patriotism, hallowing the ground about him, and forcing men to put off their grimy, everyday shoes of selfish designs. To sway the nation or even the Democrats in any grand way lay beyond him. He was a partisan, to be sure, but without a party. His trumpet note—has shed “American blood upon the American soil”—came from a newspaper. Almost his only resource, therefore, was patronage, and the business of trading offices for support is essentially a mean one. It makes intrigue a profession, creates many enemies while it creates few friends and renders confidence well-nigh impossible. Without calling the President “mendacious,” one can understand how J. K. Paulding came to say, that he possessed no honesty of purpose, no frankness of heart. Tossing out a plump lie now and then would have given less offence than continual secretiveness and evasion caused. Polk described the cunning Pillow as “one of the shrewdest men you ever knew.” That gave Polk’s measure, and political necessities developed his natural disposition. “This little mole,” Blair called him. Blair was prejudiced; but for a different bête noire he would have chosen a different name.[5]
POLK DISLIKED
New York state affairs had an especially bad effect on Polk’s reputation and influence. Knowing that he had played the part of Jacob, the Supplanter, to Van Buren’s Esau at the Baltimore convention, and not expecting to be forgiven, Polk probably felt thoroughly distrustful of the Locofocos from the beginning. Silas Wright’s declining positively to run for the Vice Presidency on his ticket doubtless gave offence. His bad faith in refusing to accept Flagg, apparently to save himself from being overshadowed, after virtually agreeing to do it, seemed inexcusable. His taking Marcy into the Cabinet at the behest of an active but rather unscrupulous remnant of the “irregular” Conservatives heightened the dissatisfaction of the substantial elements. The defeat of the New York Democrats in the fall elections of 1846, which was charged by the regulars to treachery on the part of the Conservatives, created still further trouble. Making factional appointments, and especially choosing for a high post at New York City a “poor, stupid dutchman by the name of Bouck,” as an extremist called him, seemed to the faithful nothing less than party treason. In thus alienating the ablest and best Democrats of the state, who were trusted and admired by the party as a whole, and supporting a faction that had no national standing, the President made a great mistake. He “has proved himself to be a poor devil,” said one of Van Buren’s correspondents; even Tyler’s name was less execrated than “Jim Polk’s,” wrote one of Judge McLean’s; and for thus weakening the Democrats in the Empire State, he was naturally blamed in all quarters.[6]
A variety of minor yet serious complaints helped fill up the measure. Polk was equally anxious and unable to harmonize the party, and as he tried to satisfy clamorous malcontents, it came to be said that he was always ready to hang an old friend for the sake of gaining two new ones. Ranking low in ability to judge of character, enjoying but a limited acquaintance, and placing an unreasonable value upon experience in Congress, he too often appointed unfit men when he meant well, or put the right men into the wrong places. Naturally office-seekers dogged his footsteps, and numberless disappointed aspirants bore grudges deadlier than stilettos. His wriggling out of emphatic declarations in favor of our broad Oregon claims excited profound wrath in the west, and made a bad impression in other sections. Senator Hannegan proclaimed that if the President accepted the line of forty-nine degrees, he would be consigned to “a damnation so deep that the hand of resurrection” would never be able to “drag him forth”; and he did accept it.[7]
The veto of a river and harbor bill that offered captivating opportunities for looting the treasury brought upon him the woes of Tyler. The government, said the aggrieved, “is fast degenerating into a mere quadrennial elective despotism”; Polk “wants the purse of the nation for his own schemes of presidential ambition.” Finally, the apparent hampering of Taylor and Scott, and the playing off of the one against the other seemed to a multitude of citizens unworthy of a President, unpatriotic and mean; and then partisans accused him of letting Whig generals have all the glory, lest a Democratic warrior should gain the Presidential nomination in 1848. Truly, “deep and dismal was the ditch,” as B. F. Butler said, into which Polk fell.[7]
Moreover a whole sheaf of arrows, not directly aimed at him, struck his administration. The annexation of Texas rankled still in many bosoms, and the extremists were implacable. Lowell did not shrink from recommending secession:
“Ef I’d my way I would ruther
We should go to work an’ part,—
They take one way, we take t’other,—
Guess it wouldn’t break my heart.”