in his likes, as well as dislikes, and Mr. Polk was cordial, frank, manly; so between them there was soon established the best of feelings. It was good fortune for Mr. Polk that he found two such friends in the office where he studied for his profession.

Near the close of 1820, Mr. Polk was admitted to the bar.

He was now twenty-five years old; with a very practical business education as a boy; a solid college education, and the acquaintance of scholarly men and class-mates, that comes with it as a youth; a good professional education, and the friendship of Jackson and Grundy, and their associates. This was laying a broad foundation for a strong manhood. It was wisdom in the beginning. It was the initiatory investment for a great and sure fortune. Added to all this, as more and better, were an excellent moral character, good habits, the manners of a gentleman, and the spirit of a generous and high-minded man. Under such a beginning, Mr. Polk's fortune was almost assured.

Mr. Polk entered at once upon the practice of law, and continued for several years, growing more and more efficient and eminent. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes in company with other eminent lawyers, among whom were Anson V. Brown and Gideon J. Pillow, major-general in the Mexican war. In his profession he won a place in the world, a competence, and the mastery of his powers and learning.

MR. POLK A LEGISLATOR.

In 1823 he was elected to the legislature of his state, after an animated canvass, in which he took the leading part. Previous to this he had served as chief clerk in the House of Representatives. He remained two years a member of the legislature. This was during the presidency of Mr. Monroe, with whom Mr. Polk was in full political sympathy. He approved the action of the Tennessee legislature of 1822, in nominating Andrew Jackson for the presidency, and in 1824 assisted in nominating and electing him to the Senate of the United States.

While a member of his state legislature, Mr. Polk procured the passage of a law against dueling, for which he had a great

aversion, as an unmanly and cruel "code of honor," which had come as a relic of barbarism from a brutal past. To take this high moral ground touching an immoral practice, in a community which had approved it, and among leading men like Andrew Jackson, his personal friend, who thought they were honored by its practice, was a fine demonstration of the moral courage and character of the man. Hardly anything in his whole life speaks better for his head and heart, or reveals more clearly the richness of his moral nature.

On the first day of January, 1824, Mr. Polk was married to Miss Sarah Childress, daughter of Joel Childress, a successful merchant of Rutherford county, Tennessee. He was now twenty-nine years old, well established in business, in reputation and in character. Mrs. Polk was a woman for her place, able to adorn and honor exalted station, a helpmeet, indeed, to him in the important public career that was opening to him.

MR. POLK THE CONGRESSMAN.

In 1825 Mr. Polk was elected to the Lower House of Congress, and continued in this position for fourteen years. Into his duties as a national legislator he carried his studious habits, methodical ways and honest sense of duty. He was a working man, and he made a working member of Congress. He was elected to Congress the same year John Quincy Adams was inaugurated president. He served through his term, not in direct opposition to the president, but holding in the main quite different views on partisan subjects.

Mr. Adams' election by the House, defeating Jackson, who had the most electoral votes on the first ballot, caused a warm discussion of the constitutional plan of electing the president. Much was said of amending the constitution. Mr. Polk made his first speech in Congress on this subject, advocating an amendment which should give the choice of the president and vice-president directly to the people, without the intervention of an electoral college.

Mr. Polk was put on important committees, and more and

more, as his talents and fidelity became known, were the working oars of Congress put into his hands.

After General Jackson became president, the question of internal improvements by the general government came up for re-discussion. Mr. Adams, as secretary of state under Mr. Monroe, and Mr. Monroe himself, under the strong teaching of Mr. Adams, had favored judicious and important internal improvements, which single states could not make. For twelve years these ideas and practices had prevailed in the government, and prosperity had attended it and the country. The revenues of the government were strong and increasing. The public debt occasioned by the war of 1812 and the Indian wars, was all paid. There was money in the treasury to be distributed among the states. Business was good, commerce prosperous, immigration active.

The policy of the government for the twelve years of the Adams-Monroe direction gave great prosperity to the country.

But internal improvement by the general government was contrary to General Jackson's theory. There was danger of national monopoly in too great national prosperity. The power of the general government was to be dreaded and guarded against by the states. And so he with a strong hand instituted a new order of things. The public works, like the Cumberland national road and the Maysville road, he stopped by vetoing the bills for appropriations to continue them. There was money in the treasury and no way to use it; and these roads were vastly important improvements, running through several states and benefiting the whole country; yet they must stop.

Mr. Polk, the warm personal friend, almost the protege of Jackson, took his view, and became the ardent and strong defender of the Jacksonian theory and policy. He had held different views, like most of the rising young men of that time. In Mr. Monroe's time, he saw the need of public improvements -roads, river and harbor improvements, and gave his adherence to the policy that prevailed. A pity he had not held on to his patriotic and statesmanlike views, so honorable to his young mind and consonant with his noble nature. But power

ful forces were in the executive, and he yielded to them, after the Van Buren style. The veto of the national improvements, the veto of the national bank and the removal of the national deposits from that bank to the state banks were all a part of President Jackson's general theory that the states are in danger from the monopolies and oppressions of the general government. Mr. Polk fell so much under the influence of Jackson and his party as to go completely over to their views.

In 1835 Mr. Polk was made speaker of the Twenty-fourth Congress. At the next Congress he was re-elected speaker. He filled this responsible position with great credit to himself and satisfaction to Congress and the country.

At the close of the session, March 4, 1839, Mr. Polk gave a farewell address to the house, in which he had served with signal ability through fourteen years. His deliberative mind, enriched with learning, reading and experience, his considerate respect for men, and courteous manners fitted him well for this trying place.

MR. POLK THE GOVERNOR.

The next August Mr. Polk was made the democratic candidate for governor of Tennessee, and after an unusually warm contest, in which he was the leading speaker in his own behalf, he was elected. He entered upon the discharge of the governor's duties on the fourteenth of October, 1839. He gave an address on this occasion, which was regarded as one of the ablest and best of his life.

Though opposed to internal improvements by the United States, Mr. Polk was in favor of improvements by the states; so in his opening address to the legislature, he advised the "vigorous prosecution of a judicious system of internal improvements." He also advised "a board of public works, to be composed of two or more competent and scientific men, who should be authorized and their duties established by law." He was a man of progress, had much state pride, and would commit his state to all improvements it could prosecute with vigor. He did not seem to see that every argument for improvement by the

state was equally good for improvement by the United States, and that state pride in the true patriot is but the root of a more vigorous pride of country. His political theory fanned the flame of a state pride to the injury of national sentimentsmade the state an object of more personal interest and affection than the country. This was an evil he did not see, though thousands of his countrymen fully apprehended it.

In the same message he recommended the passage of a law "prohibiting betting on elections," and gave many reasons for it which were alike creditable to his head and heart. His moral nature was quick and strong, and he believed legislation had moral interests to subserve. He would put law to the service of conscience as well as property.

Mr. Polk's administration as governor through his term of two years, was so satisfactory as to make him the acknowledged head of his party in his state. Mr. Grundy, his old law teacher and life-long friend had died. He was now forty-six years old, in the full day of early manhood; had lived a discreet and wellpreserved life; had a national experience in public life, as well as a wide knowledge in state affairs. He was a candidate for another term; but the Harrison canvass for the presidency had swept Tennessee with a heavy majority of the states, into the ranks of the whigs. The strong anti-bank, anti-tariff, antiinternal improvement, and pro-state doctrines and practices of the democratic party had produced a heavy reaction against it. The practical affairs of the country were disastrously deranged, and a new administration of public affairs was demanded by the people. Mr. Polk, therefore, was defeated, on purely political grounds, and his opponent James C. Jones, was elected.

Mr. Polk was again candidate for governor in 1843, but was again defeated. He had now a brief respite from public affairs, which he spent in home enjoyments and hospitalities.

But the political life and issues of the rapidly growing nation were rapidly changing. The death of President Harrison and the defection of President Tyler to the democratic party from which he had come, had lost to the whigs the fruits of their victory. The new question of the annexation of Texas to