Transcripts For CSPAN3 Booknotes John Seigenthaler James K.

President . Arthur called me on the phone and said youre in tennessee and james k. Polk is a tennesseen. And he said i want you to do one thing. He said allen evans has done a paper back that excerpts his diary, his president ial diary. Just take a weekend and read it and tell me no. And i read the excerpts from the diary and i could say no. I was fascinated about the man. Did you know much about him before this . I knew his grave was behind the capitol. There is no marker in nashville except a plaque on the side of a dirty motel wall. His old home place in columbia is preserved and ive been there many times and ive been there since. But i knew virtually nothing about him and almost nothing that was good. Result of what was done to him during his presidency over the mexicanamerican war left him a bad reputation. A reputation as a warmonger, and the attacks on him in congress in the latter days of his administration reminded me a great deal of the attacks on Linden Johnson at the end of his administration of the vietnam war. Similarities there. James k. Polk was president when, and tell us the four things he promised to do. Well, he was president from 1844. A oneyear president by his choice. He said i will not run for reelection, and he would not accept any suggestion and Many Democrats pushed him to run again. About the week of his inaugural he told his friend George Bancroft he was supposed to be secretary of navy, great historian, by the way. He said bancroft, there are four things i want to do with great measures. On;s u s lower the tariff, a controversial issue. Two, we will create an independent treasury. Well take all the governments money out of these corrupt private banks which pay us no interest, and well put those funds in private vaults to pay the bills and meet the payroll. Three, we will take california and well take oregon. That will make us from sea to shining sea. And he said he would do it, and he did it. What right did we have to take either texas or california or oregon . Well, the territory which was washington and oregon belonged to us jointly with great britain. And he considered it part of the natural right of the american nation to take that contig ws territory, and he threatened to go to war with the british over it. He bluffed them and said he was prepared to go to war over it. And at the last moment the british capitulated. California he had hoped he would be able to purchase. Both henry clay when he was secretary of state under John Quincy Adams and john tyler, both had tried to buy california. The mexicans were insulted by both offers and rejected blandishment by2zrpolk to give them territory for mun. So he went to war with them and took it. Theres similarities to today. The house of representatives 108 to 107 with 24 independents. When was that . Was that when she was speaker or president . Thats when he was speaker. He presided over the closest house at that time in history. And he had a terrible time as speaker. Hes the only speaker who became president of the United States. Nobody else has been able to make that springboard. As we skip richard is trying, who went all the way, but polk did it. He presided over a hostile house. Members of that house constantly were trying to bait him into duals, and henry wise from virginia called it dead shot from a man named patden from tennessee. Both insulted him on the floor. At one point they met him at the door and wise said you were very insulting to me today on the floor, and i mean uit. He was against dueling. He would not accept the duals. He would not challenge and return for an insult. And jackson, the great dueler wouldnt take any insult. He was jacksons protege, and everyone said that jackson would be critical of him because he took those insults. But on the contrary jackson said he admired his attitude and courage in accepting leadership and not responding as many did in that day. If he were here today where would he fit . Well, he was well we would call him today a yellow dog democrat. He was i think perhaps the most partisan president in history. Harry truman, another very partisan president once listed his eight great president s. And polk was one of those. He lists them in albphabetical order, jackson and jefferson, lincoln and polk. He rates them but clearly polks one of the top 8. I think truman admired him. Truman said he knew exactly what he was going to do, he was he was going to do it and he did it. And that made great hay with truman. He was also very critical of his generals as truman was with douglas mcarthur, so theres that similarity, too. But part of polk polk would have been at home right in todays hasidic washington environment. I think he would have been up to the needles in the digs and knives thatng are wielded. And i think he would have waded right into that environment and been right at home. He was a man for his team. Theres very little you can say that he left. His administration was sandwiched between the only two wig administrations in our history. And both of those administrations, the Harris Administration and the taylor administration, were of course interrupted by the deaths of those two president s. And so those two wig administrations did very little, and his administration is sandwiched between those, and he did a great deal. So its surprising to me that only historians recognize him. Every ten years theres a poll and he always winds up somewhere between 7th or 8th or 12th. Youve never seen polk lower than the 12 great president s. I kept writing down words you used to describe him. Perfectionist, workaholic, a brooder, humorless, angry, arrogant, unforgiving, called himself the hardest workingman in the country, straitlaced, a little prig from tennessee. A little prig from tennessee. The truth of that is, brian, when i got thru with this i was not in love with him. I admired him for what he did. He was a toughminded president , and, you know, he gave us a continental nation and a dozen states exist because he took us westward. I think you and i would have enjoyed having lunch with and certainly not dinner with. You want wont to go around the world with a bike with him. Nonetheless i did come away with Great Respect for him. And while not affection,b admiration because he did great things. His effort to finish the bank war that jackson had started jackson his role model, his hero, his mentor, the man who really made him president. He really trying to model himself after jackson and yet there were attributes to jacksons character that turned him off. So i didnt come away really in love with him. I would have to say that i dont like him very much. I dont thinkko he was a very likable man. And among other reasons he just was duplicitous. Two or three times a week theyd open up the white house, and to everybody. His worst enemies would come down from the hill. He and sarah, this lovely congenial woman would welcome them. His worst enemies. Hed make them feel like they were king for a day. And that night hed go up stairs and geniality and congeniality went out the window, and he would sit down with his diary and rip them to shreds. And obviously it hooked me. It was the bait that led me to do this biography. Its fascinating reading. How much did you read . I read all of it. Its four volumes. After i read nevens brief paper back i then got the four volumes and poured over them and read them all. How big are the four volumes . Well, each one is around 400 pages. Its a long8rec read. But its conversational, and he was a good writer. He knew how to write a simple declarative sentence, and thats and his that line you quoted i know im the hardest workingman in america, i mean that sort of reflects the evil maniacal instinct that emerged. He said ive learned i can learn every department of the government without their help. And then he said im the hardest workingman in america. Truth is he probably was. He was a workaholic, around the clock, Early Morning late at night. And very, very sickly during much of his administration. You graphically described when he was 17 years old the operation he had. Now, where did you get that . Has been somewhat in question. Some of the earlier historians said that it was for gold stones. I ran across an important piece in the 1980s by a medical doctor. He wrote this piece and he points out we didnt have a operation 15 years in this country after polk had his, and he concluded it was for urinary stones. And there were documents that were left from mcdowel, the danville, kentucky, specialists, one of the great surgeons in the history of this. Xn country. He left papers and those papers relied onto demonstrate this was really a urinary stone operation, and it was a brutal operation. He is a 17yearold young man ill with lower abdomen pains. Finally his father whos wealthy decides the best man in the country is dr. Philips in philadelphia. And they put him in a covered wagon with a bed. And this ambulance, horse drawn, heads north to pennsylvania. Gets up around the green river in kentucky, and he has Violent Attacks and they rush him to danville where this other surgeon operates. The operation as i said was brutal, no antiseptic, and they only could give him brandy. They didnt have any antisepsis to stop the poison. They held him down. His uncle was with him. They put him up on their shoulders. It sounds, a[l and they went through the scrotum and anus, right through the prostate. How he ever survived is remarkable, but he did. How much of that went on back then . Did you check . 8c,cwell, yeah, there are Historical Records and medical records are somewhat sketchy. But with regard to james hick polk theyre there, and think after he became the speaker of the house he corresponded with the doctor. There were just a couple of physicians who were capable of doing this. Made a search before he decided he wanted him to do this, and mcdowel had been on his agenda i think was just fortunate. I think mcdowel was close to him as he was when they got him there. Theres no doubt in my mind, and this is why i think the operation was important. Theres no doubtxw÷e in my mindt he was childless as a result of this operation. I take my conclusion on that one step beyond where bob left it, although i know he agrees with that. And i created a panel of about nine doctors who names are acknowledged in the book. Some specialists, some general practitioners all thought it was q6q that not much doubt he either left sterile or impotent or both, so it was sick and he was how long out of office after only one term that he died . He died 90 days after he left the presidency. He went home to die. He left the presidency worn and sickly. Probably contracted cholera even on the way home or after he arrived. It was a long trip. He went all the way south to new orleans and came up the river, up the mississippi and then down the cumberland, across the ohio and down the cumberland river. Arrived home and was welcomed by tennesseeans, his old friend from congress aaron brown was now governor and they welcomed him home. And he had 90 days of bad health and died. 53 years old. 53 years old. He at the time was the youngest president in history. And died younger than any president in history. This series, you mention Arthur Schlesinger and times books. Are they doing all 42 as of now, there are 22 i think listed. I hope they do them all. I know that i had some conversations with my editor robin dennis who is a terrific editor and during the course of the writing and the research, iz got into the issues involving his secretary of state James Buchanan who became president , of course. And in discussing it with the editor, she said, well, i probably let had better let the author of the book know where youre going with this because well see where he comes down and i never felt followed up on that so i just dont i just dont know where that is going to go or how that is going to come out. When did you start it . Two years. It took two years to do. And what lengths did you go to make sure you had the right stuff. Where did you go . I went everywhere i could to possibly find sources. The best stuff is in the diary. And in his papers. At the university of tennessee, there is a historian, dr. Wayne cutler who is the curator of the pope papers. And he has by the time hes through, it will be 14. 15 volumes, but he spent decades just developing these pdp reall huge volumes of polks correspondence. Between the diary and the correspondence you get a real sense of who the man is. There were three excellent biographies. One by john jenkins which was done maybe 40, 50 years after his death and another by Eugene Mccormick which came in the 30s and then charles sellers had a two volume biography but stopped before he got to the presidency. Im sorry he didnt do the third volume. Sellers . Sellers. Because i relied on it very x a heavily. At times, came to different conclusions than all three, but i found that in the research, it was a chance to know a lot about people i never had looked at people who made our country what it is. And it was necessary to read biographies of tyler and van buren and buchanan and others ix order to fill in the foundation on which the biography had to stand. I mean, you couldnt very well write a biography about polk who had almost routine conflicts with his secretary of state without finding out something about that secretary of state. The same was true James Buchanan. James buchanan. What was your reaction when you saw how much they fought . Could you do that today . I could not for the life of me imagine why polk put up with it except that as he said to his friend k. Johnson, shortly after he won the election, i intend myself to be president. Ctu you know, i talked to wayne cutler about this conflict. Cutler, who has been looking at james k. Polk for all of these years now, and i said, i cannot for the life of me figure out why polk kept buchanan as secretary of state. They were constantly at war. And cutler said he was the secretary of state himself. And he could control buchanan. He could control him but couldnt keep him from popping off or telling him he was wrong or even lecturing him. What did they fight about . They fought about foreign policy. They fought about a good example, hes getting ready to the british and the french are constantly meddling in u. S. Affairs. Theyve got interests in the middle of this country, and then there is mexico that is having this this ongoing conflict with texas, with the republic of texas. And so there was a good deal there to formulate policy on. And when it comes time for war with mexico, buchanon said in a cabinet meeting, you know, i really need to let the french and british know that in this war with mexico we dont have aims on california. Of course polk had aims on california. It was contrary to everything his administration was going to be about. And he says, do not do that. I dont want to i do not want you to tell them. He said, well, if you dont do that, you may have war with both wn said ill go to war with them and fight until the last man before ill say that we have no designs on california. And so he was silent. Buchanan was silent on the subject, but buchanan was not very consistent as a secretary of state. For example, when it came time to take oregon territory away from the british, buchanan, the issue was at what parallel would we get the territory if we got it. And if we went to war, we would get the 54th, the crying congress. The Tyler Administration left him with a proposal to the british to draw the line at the 49th parallel. And the british turned that flatly down and it infuriated him and he said you go back and tell them we want it all. Im paraphrasing. But thats just what he said. Would the all be up to the Canadian Border . All the way up. When you go beyond washington, up to the 54th. So buchanan says, you know, this will mean war. And he said, i dont care. You tell them. The offer is off the table. We want the 54th parallel and as much as we could get. And he said as always, buchanan had a fallback position. He said, mr. President , you know, were about to have trouble with mexico, why dont we put this off . No, tell them now. And he says, but we you know, weve got were very close to a war with two countries here. He said, well do our duty by mexico and great britain. We must look john bull in the eye, he says. And reluctantly, buchanan goes over and delivers the message and comes back the next meeting and says i did it. It was the wrong thing, but i did it. Right in the president s face, you did the wrong thing making me say that. Believe it or not, pouk salk sa did the right thing. And leaves it at that. It was a constant fight, a constntd war. I question why in my own mind even after talking to cutler, even after knowing that he was controlling him, why he didnt dump him. And then you run across this effort by buchanan to confront the president and say, do you really want me . And there is a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court and buchanan goes over and said, you know, i would like that. Polk has a chance to get rid of him then. And he doesnt take it. I mean, he almost he almost cajoles him back in to the office. . 3j and then buchanan says, there was is young lawyer up there, johnny reed, was for you, for me, he would be a wonderful justice of the Supreme Court, and he leaves there thinking hes made the case for his friend reed, and polk, without saying anything to him im sure buchanan went out and told all his friends in congress, told reed probably, hes going to be the next Supreme Court justice. Polk give it to a state justice, and buchanan comes there almost weeping, saying you cut me to the heart. Its none of your business. I dont have to ask my cabinet for permission. And then he said, you know, i found out that this man was a federalist for 12 years. And i have never found this is how partisan he was, i have never found a federalist older than 30 who ever changed his mind on his politics. Now, thats pretty partisan, you know. And he used federalist and whig interchangeably. If you were a whig, you were a federalist. And buchanan went away licking but was there at the very end. At the very end, there is another terrible dispute right at the end. There is a new president elect Zachary Taylor and said shouldnt this cabinet go over and say hello to the new president and welcome him and o polk said i would consider it a betrayal if you did that. He needs to come call on me. Then you may do what you seek to do. You point out in your book that there were 2. 5 million votes in the 1844 election, all white men. All white men. No women. No women. No blacks. No blac