James K. Polk-The Best President that you rarely ever heard of.

Following his list of the 7 Worst Presidents of the Last 100 Years, John Hawkins has now come out with his list of the The Seven Greatest Presidents in American History which we can discuss. Here is the list as proposed by Hawkins for the greatest presidents...

#7. Sarah Palin [2012], quote "In the spirit of giving Barack Obama a Nobel Prize for what he was going to do as President, Sarah Palin is getting the number seven slot for what she will surely do when she defeats Hillary Clinton in 2012, after Hill crushes Obama in a brutal primary." Hawkins adds that he was just kidding and now we can get down to the real 7.



#7. Dwight D. Eisenhower



#6. James Monroe



#5. Ronald Reagan



#4. James K. Polk



#3. Thomas Jefferson



#2. George Washington, and



#1. Abraham Lincoln



Some might find the above list to be a bit contraversial. The choice of Lincoln at #1 would merit it's own thread. However I thought we might take a moment to examine the presidency of one of the least known presidents on the above list, that of James K. (Knox) Polk (pictured above). According to Hawkins, ...

"Polk accomplished so much in his lone term as POTUS that he called it a career without bothering to serve to a second term. While he was President, Texas joined the union. Polk signed the Oregon Treaty with Britain, which brought Oregon, Washington, and Idaho under our control. He won the Mexican-American War, which added California, Nevada, Utah, and a large portion of Arizona -- among other states, into the Union. Add it all up and Polk expanded the territory of the United States more than any other President."

According to whitehouse.gov, James K. Polk is...

"[O]ften referred to as the first "dark horse" President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War.

He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795. Studious and industrious, Polk was graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina. As a young lawyer he entered politics, served in the Tennessee legislature, and became a friend of Andrew Jackson.

In the House of Representatives, Polk was a chief lieutenant of Jackson in his Bank war. He served as Speaker between 1835 and 1839, leaving to become Governor of Tennessee.

Until circumstances raised Polk's ambitions, he was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for Vice President in 1844. Both Martin Van Buren, who had been expected to win the Democratic nomination for President, and Henry Clay, who was to be the Whig nominee, tried to take the expansionist issue out of the campaign by declaring themselves opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk, however, publicly asserted that Texas should be "re-annexed" and all of Oregon "re-occupied."

The aged Jackson, correctly sensing that the people favored expansion, urged the choice of a candidate committed to the Nation's "Manifest Destiny." This view prevailed at the Democratic Convention, where Polk was nominated on the ninth ballot.

"Who is James K. Polk?" Whigs jeered. Democrats replied Polk was the candidate who stood for expansion. He linked the Texas issue, popular in the South, with the Oregon question, attractive to the North. Polk also favored acquiring California."

So we see, not only did achieve quite a bit in only one term of office before his health began to fail, he quite literally came out of nowhere to accomplish it. Insofar as his religious beliefs according to adherents.com...

"Although Polk was a religious man, his faith seldom equaled the stern beliefs of Sarah's outspoken devotion. Raised a Presbyterian, Polk had never been baptized due to an early family argument with the local Presbyterian minister in rural North Carolina. At age thirty-eight, Polk had a religious conversion to Methodism at a camp meeting, and thereafter he thought of himself as a Methodist. Out of respect for his mother and wife, however, he continued to attend Presbyterian services. But whenever his wife was out of town, or too ill to attend church, Polk worshiped at the local Methodist chapel. On his deathbed, he summoned the man who had converted him years before, the Reverend John B. McFerrin, who at last baptized Polk as a Methodist."

I hope you enjoyed reading up on Polk as much I did. Tune in tomorrow and we'll discuss the interesting choice of Hawkins to elevate Abraham Lincoln to the number 1 position on his list.