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Zusatztext “[Merry] brings a historian's perspective! a journalist's nose for the story and a novelist's eye to one of our country's most dramatic and defining moments. In strong! precise and elegant prose! Mr. Merry brings the key players of the day to life in terms of both personal characteristics and the causes they personified.” -- Washingtonian Informationen zum Autor Robert W. Merry is the author of five previous books, including President McKinley: Architect of the American Century and A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. He spent a decade covering Washington for The Wall Street Journal and served as an executive at Congressional Quarterly Inc. for twenty-two years, including twelve years as CEO. He also is the former editor of The National Interest and The American Conservative. He lives with his wife, Susan, in Langley, Washington, and Washington, DC. Klappentext Merry examines how, in a one-term presidency, James K. Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny by expanding its territory across the continent. A Country of Vast Designs I NTRODUCTION : R ITUAL OF D EMOCRACY The Emergence of an Expansionist President P RECISELY AT SUNRISE on the morning of March 4, 1845, the roar of cannon shattered the dawn’s early quiet of Washington, D.C.—twenty-eight big guns fired in rapid succession. Thus did the American military announce to the nation’s capital that it was about to experience the country’s highest ritual of democracy, the inauguration of the nation’s executive leader and premier military commander. James Knox Polk was about to become that leader and commander. On this morning he was ensconced along with his wife, Sarah, at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, known popularly as Coleman’s, just ten blocks east of the White House. That night the two of them would be residing at the presidential mansion. At forty-nine, Polk would be the youngest of the country’s eleven presidents—and, in the view of his many detractors, the most unlikely. Until the previous May of 1844, when he had emerged unexpectedly as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, few had imagined the man would ever rise to the presidency. Indeed, just a year earlier his political career had appeared in ruin following his third campaign for Tennessee governor. He had won the office in 1839 but had been expelled two years later by a backwoods upstart known as Lean Jimmy Jones, who had greeted his exacting rhetoric and serious demeanor with lighthearted buffoonery. Trying again in 1843 to outmaneuver this unlikely rival, he once again failed, causing friend and foe alike to dismiss his political prospects. But those observers hadn’t grasped Polk’s most powerful trait— his absolute conviction that he was a man of destiny. Throughout his political life he had been underestimated by his rivals in the Whig Party and also by some of his own Democratic colleagues. When he had captured his party’s presidential nomination, the country’s leading Whig newspaper sneered in derision. “This nomination,” declared the National Intelligencer , “may be considered as the dying gasp, the last breath of life, of the ‘democratic’ party.” The newspaper said it couldn’t imagine a “less imposing” opponent. It was true Polk lacked the soaring attributes of the era’s two rival political giants, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. He didn’t possess Jackson’s forceful presence or his blunt-spoken way of attracting men instantly to his cause and his side. Nor could he match the lanky Clay’s famous wit, his smooth fluency with the language, his ability to amuse and charm those around him even as he slyly dominate...
