road bill; and during the same session of congress presented a minority report adverse to the United States bank, which was then under examination. By his course in this matter he incurred the enmity of the friends of the bank, who held a meeting at Nashville to denounce his action and take steps to prevent his reëlection. In this they were unsuccessful, and he was again elected by a majority of more than three thousand. The high handed action of President Jackson in removing the deposits from the United States bank, in September, 1833, he vigorously defended; and as chairman of the committee of ways and means, successfully carried through that committee the resolutions relating to the bank and deposits, sustaining the administration.

In December, 1835, Mr. Polk was elected speaker of the house, and again chosen to the same office at the extra session held in 1837, the first year of Van Buren's administration. During five sessions he presided over the deliberations of the house; in the first session more appeals were taken from his decision than during any similar term in the history of the government; however, he was generally sustained by the house, including many of his opponents. At the close of the session of 1837 he received the unanimous thanks of the house for the able and consistent manner in which he had discharged the duties of speaker. At the close of the session of 1839, in which he had been again elected speaker, the parties were more evenly divided in congress, and when were presented resolutions of thanks to the speaker, objection was made by the Whig members. The resolution was finally passed by a vote of ninety-four in the affirmative, to fiftyseven in the negative, few of the Whigs voting in its favor.

The Presidential canvass of 1836 brought forward several aspirants for the highest honors. The Democratic party nominated Martin Van Buren; the Whigs were not united, and presented the names of Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Hugh L. White of Tennessee, and William Henry Harrison of Ohio; the Anti-Masonic party nominated Francis Granger of New York. When the Tennessee delegation decided in favor of Judge White, Mr. Polk took a decidedly opposite course and openly declared his intention to sustain Martin Van Buren and the principles of the Jacksonian Democrats, even at the loss of his popularity in the state. The vote of Tennessee was given Judge White, who had a popular majority of over nine thousand. Van Buren's majority over all, in the electoral college was forty-six. Mr. Polk declined a reëlection to congress in 1839, having already served his state in that body fourteen years. Although in the Presidential election Tennessee gave a large Whig majority, at the gubernatorial election of 1839, Mr. Polk was the candidate of the administration party for governor. Opposed to him, on the Whig ticket, was Newton Cannon, then governor of the state. An exciting contest followed, at the close of which Mr. Polk was elected over his competitor by more than two

thousand five hundred votes. In 1840 Mr. Van Buren received the nom ination for reëlection as President; and the Tennessee legislature nominated Governor Polk for vice-president; several other states also placed his name on the ticket for vice-president, but in the electoral college he received but one vote, that being cast by a Virginia elector. The people of Tennessee did not sustain the administration of Van Buren, and when, in August, 1841, Governor Polk was a candidate for reëlection, the popular tide was against the party he represented, and James C. Jones, the Whig candidate, was elected by a majority of more than three thousand. Two years later Polk was again a candidate, but was defeated by a still larger majority than before.

From the time of his retirement as governor until 1844, Mr. Polk remained at his home, engaged in no active pursuits, but by no means idle in the pursuit of the goal of his ambition. An intimate friend of Andrew Jackson, of whose administration he had been one of the main supports, he was held in kind remembrance by that part of the Democratic party, and by every means within his grasp sought to strengthen that feeling in the hope of himself becoming the nominee for President at the next gen eral convention. In this he was not disappointed. At the Presidential election of 1840, General Harrison had been elected President. Taking his seat in March, 1841, one brief month closed his career. ceeded by John Tyler, whose administration proved unpopular, both with the party by which he was elected and with the opposition. As a Presidential aspirant he was not available; and near the close of his administration there had arisen several perplexing questions of national import, the principal being that relating to the northwest boundary and the occupation of Oregon, and that regarding the annexation of Texas. The principal point in dispute in the former, was as to the boundary line, the United States claiming it should be 54° 40′ north latitude, while Great Britain insisted on a more southern boundary.

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The Democratic national convention assembled at Baltimore, on the twenty-seventh of May, 1844, nominated James Knox Polk for President, and George M. Dallas for vice-president. The candidates of the Whig party were Henry Clay for President, and Theodore Frelinghuysen for vice-president. The campaign opened with the alliterative battle-cry from the Dem ocratic party, of "54.40 or fight;" their platform demanded "the whole of Oregon or none!" While Mr. Polk had made no public statement of his views on the Texas and Oregon questions, the party which nominated him well knew from his ultra Democratic stand in the past, where the future would find him. However, early in 1844, a circumstance occurred which led to full and definite expression of his opinions. The citizens of Cincinnati had expressed their "settled opposition" to the annexation of Texas, and in a letter invited from Mr. Polk an expression of concurrence

.with their views. In his reply, he said: "Let Texas be re-annexed, and the authority and laws of the United States be established and maintained within her limits, as also in the Oregon territory, and let the fixed policy of our government be, not to permit Great Britain to plant a colony or hold dominion over any portion of the people or territory of either. These are my opinions; and without deeming it necessary to extend this letter, by assigning the many reasons which influence me in the conclusions to which I come, I regret to be compelled to differ so widely from the views expressed by yourselves and the meeting of citizens of Cincinnati, whom you represent." Party spirit ran high in the campaign of 1844. Clay was the idol of the Whig party, and received a strong support; but on some points he was weak. He lost much of the abolition vote by his vacillating course regarding the question of slavery, which had before that time become prominent in politics; besides, he had many enemies. in his own party-men who were jealous of the hold he had upon the masses, and who used every underhanded means to compass his defeat. The Whig party had lost strength through the weak administration of Tyler, and when in the autumn of 1844 the contending hosts met at the ballotbox, Democracy was triumphant. In the electoral college Polk and Dallas received one hundred and seventy votes, while Clay and Frelinghuysen received but one hundred and five. Mr. Polk was already in Washington when the electoral certificates were opened, and when informed by the joint committee of the two houses of the result, expressed to the people of the country, through them, the gratitude he felt for the confidence reposed in him.

James K. Polk was inaugurated President of the United States March 4, 1845. Notwithstanding rain fell during the greater part of the day, an immense assemblage was present to witness the ceremonies attending his induction into office. President Tyler, with his cabinet, officers of the army and navy, members of the diplomatic corps, and justices of the supreme court, occupied prominent places on the platform erected for the occasion. Following the delivery of the inaugural, the oath of office was administered by Chief-justice Taney, immediately after which the President. entered a carriage and was rapidly conveyed to the White House, where, during the afternoon he received the congratulations of his friends. The senate being in session, on the fifth he sent to it the names of his cabinet, as follows: James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, secretary of state; Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, secretary of the treasury; William L. Marcy of New York, secretary of the navy; George Bancroft of Massachusetts, secretary of the navy; Cave Johnson of Tennessee, postmaster-general; John Y. Mason of Virginia, attorney-general.

First in importance in the beginning of the administration of President Polk was the subject of foreign relations. The legacy left by President

Tyler was to be appreciated only for the evil it might produce. There was prospect of trouble with Great Britain respecting the occupation of Oregon and the northwest boundary. That nation insisted the boundary should be established permitting them to occupy the Columbia river to its mouth. By the terms of their grant to the Hudson Bay company, they claimed this as the correct boundary. The United States government held that the boundary should be 54° 40′ north latitude, and on this platform the presidential canvass was conducted. By the treaty of 1815, the northern boundary of the United States was established through the chain of great lakes, from a point on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior to the lower point of Lake of the Woods, thence on the forty-ninth parallel to the Pacific Ocean. Eventually the forty-ninth parallel was adopted as the northwestern boundary. But more important than the controversy with Great Britain, was the immediate prospect of war with Mexico, through the greed of southerners in an effort to extend the "peculiar institution" of the south. A proposition had been made in congress to annex Texas, -then a revolted Mexican province-to the United States, and admit her as one of the states of the Union; and President Tyler, with the assistance of John C. Calhoun, then secretary of state, had concluded a treaty of annexation with representatives of the republic of Texas. This congress refused to ratify. A short time after resolutions for annexing Texas to the United States passed both houses of congress, and were approved by President Tyler among the last acts of his administration, on the first of March, 1845. Before the adoption of these resolutions in the senate, in order to quiet the objections of two opposing senators an amendment was added, giving the President discretion to treat with Texas as a foreign power, and afterward annex the republic to the United States. On the third of March, President Tyler dispatched a messenger to the Texan authorities, with a copy of the joint resolutions of congress for the admission of Texas into the Union, and informing them that he waived the proposition of treaty and instead proposed immediate annexation. Judging from the erratic course he had pursued during the previous years of his administration, this was no more than might have been expected, but it greatly inflained the ire of friends of Mr. Polk, who desired to see the annexation accomplished by him. However, the greater condemnation should be visited upon the congress, which authorized the annexation of a province belonging to a power at peace with the United States. In the late autumn of 1835 initial steps were taken toward declaring the independence of Texas, and in the following March a constitution was adopted and government established. A desultory warfare had been continued with Mexico for nine years, and at the time Texas was admitted as a state, the republic was treating with Mexico for its independence. Mexico, through her minister to the United States-Almonte-notified the government that annex