The
Presidency of James K. Polk (American Presidency Series)
by Paul H. Bergeron
Hardcover - 310 pages (May 1987)
Univ Pr of Kansas; ISBN: 0700603190
Slavemaster
President: The Double Career of James Polk by William Dusinberre
Book Description: James Polk was President of the United States
from 1845 to 1849, a time when slavery began to dominate American politics.
Polk's presidency coincided with the eruption of the territorial slavery
issue, which within a few years would lead to the catastrophe of the Civil
War. Polk himself owned substantial cotton plantations-- in Tennessee and
later in Mississippi-- and some 50 slaves. Unlike many antebellum planters
who portrayed their involvement with slavery as a historical burden bestowed
onto them by their ancestors, Polk entered the slave business of his own
volition, for reasons principally of financial self-interest. Drawing on
previously unexplored records, Slavemaster President recreates the world
of Polk's plantation and the personal histories of his slaves, in what
is arguably the most careful and vivid account to date of how slavery functioned
on a single cotton plantation. Life at the Polk estate was brutal and often
short. Fewer than one in two slave children lived to the age of fifteen,
a child mortality rate even higher than that on the average plantation.
A steady stream of slaves temporarily fled the plantation throughout Polk's
tenure as absentee slavemaster. Yet Polk was in some respects an enlightened
owner, instituting an unusual incentive plan for his slaves and granting
extensive privileges to his most favored slave. Startlingly, Dusinberre
shows how Polk sought to hide from public knowledge the fact that, while
he was president, he was secretly buying as many slaves as his plantation
revenues permitted. Shortly before his sudden death from cholera, the president
quietly drafted a new will, in which he expressed the hope that his slaves
might be freed--but only after he and his wife were both dead. The very
next day, he authorized the purchase, in strictest secrecy, of six more
very young slaves. By contrast with Senator John C. Calhoun, President
Polk has been seen as a moderate Southern Democratic leader. But Dusinberre
suggests that the president's political stance toward slavery-- influenced
as it was by his deep personal involvement in the plantation system-- may
actually have helped precipitate the Civil War that Polk sought to avoid.
Synopsis: James K. Polk held the office of President from 1845 to 1849,
a period when the expansion of slavery into the territories emerged as
a pressing question in American politics. During his presidency, the slave
period of Texas was annexed and the future of slavery in the Mexican Cession
was debated. Polk also owned a substantial cotton plantation in northern
Mississippi and 54 slaves. He was an absentee master who had a string of
overseers or agents manage his plantation and did not visit his estate
while he was in the White House. In this book, William Dusinberre reconstructs
the world of Polk's estate and the lives of his slaves, and analyzes how
Polk's experience as a slavemaster conditioned his stance towards slavery-related
issues. Dusinberre argues that Polk's policies helped precipitate the civil
war he had sought to avert.
Hardcover: 304 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.89 x
9.48 x 6.44
Publisher: Oxford University Press; (March 2003)
ISBN: 0195157354
Correspondence
of James K. Polk. Vol 1 by James K. Polk, Herbert Weaver (Editor), Wayne Cutler
Hardcover Vol 001 (June 1972)
Univ of Tennessee Pr; ISBN: 0826511465
James
K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse (Library of American Biography)
by Sam W. Haynes, Oscar Handlin (Editor)
Paperback - 214 pages (January 1997)
Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 067399001X
James
K. Polk (Encyclopedia of Presidents)
by Dee Lillegard
A biography of the eleventh American president, whose term in office
saw great expansion of the western frontier.
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Library Binding - 100 pages (April 1988)
Children's Press; ISBN: 0516013513
