President Polk's Diary

IN the Lenox Library of New York city may lie seen the literary relics of the late George Bancroft, which that institution purchased in 1893 from the executors of his estate, after Congress had delayed action upon their oiler of the whole undivided collection to the United States government at an appraised value of $75,000, under a provision of the historian’s will. The price paid privately was nearly ten thousand dollars more than that asked from the public; the entire collection numbering, in books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, about twenty thousand volumes.

Among the richest treasures of this collection, as well as its latest important accession during Mr. Bancroft’s life, should be reckoned the private papers and correspondence of President James K. Polk ; or rather, we should say, typewritten copies of t he original manuscripts, which were prepared under the venerable author’s immediate supervision, and bound up, after careful verification, in handsome volumes of half turkey morocco with gilt-letter titles. Mr. Bancroft, as the last survivor of a Cabinet and an administration whose policy was in many respects profound and far-reaching, suddenly conceived, at the age of eighty-six, the purpose of making an authentic and complete narrative of that political term ; and accordingly, after writing to Nashville in April, 1887, he visited Mr. Polk’s widow, and obtained full permission to take to bis own home the mass of papers which had remained undisturbed as the ex-President left them at his death, nearly forty years earlier, and to make such use of them as lie might deem fit;.

The scholar pursued his task with ardor, so far as to prepare and arrange the desired materials, a labor most congenial and easy to one of bis long experience; lie felt the first glow of this new literary undertaking, which was sure to bring hidden testimony to light. But. his remarkable intellect and trained habits of industry were not equal, at so late an age, to the creative task of composition ; his health declined, and on the 17th of January, 1891. lie died. This final service of our historical sage in the interest of American past politics was a distinct and valuable one, but it was that of compiler, rather than of historian. He has, however, left on record the impressions made on his own mind by the perusal of the manuscript. •• Polk’s character shines out in these papers,” he writes, “ just exactly as the man was, — prudent, far-sighted, hold, exceeding any Democrat of his day in bis undeviatingly correct exposition of Democratic principles.”

Unquestionably, the chief historical value of the Polk collection consists in the twenty-four volumes of Mr. Polk’s Diary, kept during nearly the whole term of his presidency ; each volume averaging about a hundred type-written pages in the large octavo which Mr. Bancroft used. It must be a surprise to most of our fellow-countrymen to learn that another President besides John Quincy Adams kept an extensive journal while in office ; and especially that an Executive so absorbed in difficult details as Mr. Polk should have found time to record his impressions from day to day at such great length, and with so obvious a determination to be exact and comprehensive. Such an enterprise steadily pursued, and with no full opportunity to change or suppress what at the time was written, reveals not only facts essential to a correct understanding of public actions, but, more unconsciously, the mental cast and political bias of the writer. Like his more erudite predecessor, Polk cherished — and probably with greater zeal — the purpose of vindicating some day his secret political motives and his public relations with other men; but his premature death, very soon after his four years’ term had expired, left the Diary unrevised as its own expositor, an inner fountain of information unadorned. No two Presidents could have been more at the antipodes than were Polk and John Quincy Adams in political affiliations and designs. Yet each, after his peculiar fashion, was honest, inflexible in purpose, and pursuant of the country’s good ; and both have revealed views singularly alike — the one as a scholar, the other as a sage and sensible observer — of the selfish, ignoble, and antagonistic influences which surge about the citadel of national patronage, and beset each supreme occupant of the White House.

President Polk has stated the circumstances under which he commenced his Diary. On the 26th of August, 1845, he held with his Secretary of State, James Buchanan, an important conversation over the Oregon troubles, which he reduced at once to writing; and after reflecting upon this narrative in his own solitude, he determined to open a diary at once and continue the plan. Next day he procured a blank book, with this purpose in view, and began his entries regularly, concluding to make them longer or shorter as convenience and the events worth recording might determine. The conversation of August 26, however, he did not again transcribe, butleft the written sheets separate, beginning his book on the 27th. The journal thus commenced he continued from day to day for the remainder of his remarkable term, which lasted from March 4, 1845, to March 4, 1849. Leaving office, feeble and in failing health, on the latter date, he died in the middle of the following June.

Whatever may be thought of Mr. Polk’s official course in despoiling Mexico for the aggrandizement of his own country, one cannot read this Diary carefully without an increased respect for his simple and sturdy traits of character, his inflexible honesty in financial concerns, and the pertinacious zeal and strong sagacity which characterized his whole presidential career. Making all due allowance for any personal selfishness which might color his narrative, we now perceive clearly that he was the framer of that public policy which he carried into so successful execution, and that instead of being led (as many might have imagined) by the more famous statesmen of his administration and party who surrounded him, he in reality led and shaped his own executive course ; disclosing in advance to his familiar Cabinet such part as he thought best to make known, while concealing the rest. Both Bancroft and Buchanan, of his official advisers, have left on record, since his death, incidental tributes to his greatness as an administrator and unifier of executive action ; both admitting in effect his superior force of will and comprehension of the best practical methods for attaining his farreaching ends. On the other hand, while the Diary shows that Mr. Polk held the one Secretary in high esteem, it is plain that he appreciated the many weaknesses of the other, with whom he had frequent differences of opinion, which in these secret pages elicit his own sharp comment. In fact, the Secretary of State, whom he repeatedly overruled, felt, for the first sixteen months, at least, of this executive term, so much dissatisfied with various features of Polk’s policy, and in particular, like others of Pennsylvania, so discontented with the famous low tariff measure which Polk was bent upon carrying, that in the summer of 1846 he arranged definitely to retire from the Cabinet, to accept a Middle State vacancy on the supreme bench, which the President promised him, though with an overruling discretion deferring the appointment until the new tariff act was out of jeopardy at the Capitol, when Buchanan himself at last concluded to remain where he was. Buchanan’s presidential aspirations, notwithstanding a condition exacted by the President from all who entered the administration that they should cease to aspire so long as they sat at his council board, annoyed him much as time went on. “ He is selfish,” says the Diary in March, 1848, “ and controlled so much by wishes for his own advancement that I cannot trust his advice on a public question ; yet it is hazardous to dismiss, and I have borne with him.” And on another occasion Polk records, after repeatedly finding his Secretary timid, over-anxious, and disposed too much to forestall overtures from others which the administration knew were due and were sure to come, “ Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is in small matters without judgment, and sometimes acts like an old maid.”

All hasty diarists are likely to repeat themselves; and no idea does Mr. Polk’s Diary repeat so frequently as that of disgust with the constant pressure for office which our chief magistrate encounters.

It is the same phase of human nature which John Quincy Adams beheld with a like antipathy, though with a more dogged determination not to yield to such importunity. President Polk delineates his tormentors in the shape of callers at the White House as they may still be seen: some to seek office, others to beg money, and others still to pay, or profess to pay, their respects. “ A year gone,” records the Diary, March 4,1846, “ and the pressure for office has not abated. Will this pressure never cease? I most sincerely wish that I had no offices to bestow. If I had not, it would add much to the happiness and comfort of my position. As it is, I have no office to bestow without turning out better men than a large majority of those who seek their places.” Again in September is his loathing expressed at this “ constant stream of persons seeking office and begging money.” “ Almost the whole of my embarrassment in administering the government,” he writes in May, 1847, “grows out of the public patronage which it is my duty to dispense.” But the pressure of these “loafers for office” lasted his whole term ; even “ females ” (as he expresses himself) seeking personal interviews and pleading “ for their worthless relatives.” During the summer of 1848, at a time when there were no existing offices to bestow, the President was besieged by applicants, simply because Congress was going to pass a bill for creating a board of commissioners upon Mexican claims, which might or might not meet the executive approval; and so greatly were the places sought in advance of their creation that one woman pleaded for her husband as a commissioner, shedding tears freely, and distressing the President with a story of their poverty and great need of an office ; while another person — a man with whom Mr. Polk had once served in Congress — occupied more than an hour in soliciting a place upon the board, “ if the bill should pass.” “ I had,” adds the diarist, “ no idea of appointing him, and yet I could not avoid hearing him without rudeness.” Even after the presidential election of 1848, in which Polk’s own party candidate was defeated by the Whigs, the pressure upon this Democratic President continued strong, under the apparent conviction that the incoming Executive, General Taylor, was not likely to make many removals. “The herd of office-seekers,” observes Mr. Polk at this late stage, “ are the most unprincipled persons in the country. As a mass they are governed by no principle.” And professing to be Democrats under him, he expected them to go vice versa under his Whig successor, whom many of them had helped elect. “ The patronage,” he finally adds, shortly before leaving office, “ will, from the day any President enters upon his duties, weaken his administration.”

Judge Mason, of the Cabinet, told the President in April, 1848, of one officeseeker whose papers were filed at his department without specifying any particular office. The Secretary asked him what office he wanted. “ I am a good hand at making treaties,” he replied, “ and as some are to be made soon, I should like to serve as a minister abroad.”

The constant interference of members of Congress in these matters of patronage was another source of annoyance upon which Mr. Polk made frequent comment. “ Members of Congress,” he writes, “ attach great importance to petty offices, and assume their right to make the appointments in their own States, thereby joining issue with heads of the departments in such matters.” He was much annoyed when a prominent member of the House, who had already declined the mission to Russia, pursued him for an appointment to the court of France, not only in writing, but in person at the White House, and face to face, most persistently ; and when, after much urging, the President yielded to his wishes, and the Senate rejected the appointment, this person grew angry because Polk promptly sent in another name, and he soon drifted into a semihostile position towards the administration. Two other members of the House, at the time the Mexican war was declared, desired appointments as military paymasters, under a new bill which they had done much to frame and push through Congress; but appointments trenching so closely upon the prohibition of the Constitution the President refused to make. Again and again did legislators at the Capitol oppose the Executive’s wishes, or treat the highest incumbent with personal incivility over some quarrel of patronage. “ Patronage is injurious to a President,” was Polk’s decided opinion, as he secretly expressed himself, and this partly because legislators did not stand by the consequences of their own recommendations. “ Members of Congress,” writes the President, December 16,1846, “ and others high in society make representations for friends on which I cannot rely, and lead me constantly into error. When I act upon the information which they give me, and make a mistake, they leave me to bear the responsibility, and never have the manliness to assume it for themselves.” And yet few American Executives had seen greater experience than Polk in congressional life, or proved more capable, while at the other end of the avenue, of managing our national legislature so as to achieve their most cherished plans.

John Quincy Adams, while detesting Polk’s political principles and his narrow conceptions of party infallibility, does justice to his unquestionable capacity for toilsome work and indefatigable industry. The same habits which made this son of Tennessee so conspicuous in dispatching legislative business while chairman of the Ways and Means committee or Speaker of the House insured his successful career as President. Failing though he was in health during these four consummate years, he did not hesitate to put his shoulder to the wheel whenever the work of the departments got into deep mire. This was partly because he distrusted others, and felt constantly disposed to keep all executive details, foreign or domestic, great or small, under his personal control. With the unexpected burdens thrown upon his administration by the Mexican war, he soon found his Secretary of the Treasury quite overworked, and in danger of death; and the President, sending him away for recuperation, took an active hand in the financial guidance of the government, at the same time aiding his Secretary of War, who also was taken sick. General Scott he disliked greatly, as the ranking military officer, and found his presence at Washington so embarrassing that he resolved to send him off ; and he strongly suspected that the detailed chiefs of the quartermaster and commissary divisions were hostile to his Mexican policy. Some of these subordinates (so he writes) “ appear to be indifferent to our contest, and merely go through their ordinary routine.”On general principle, too, he felt disposed to check such lesser chiefs. “ Bureau officers,” he writes in November, 1848, “ whose duty it is to prepare estimates, are always in favor of large appropriations. They are not responsible to the public, but to the Executive, and must be watched and controlled in these respects.” After the adjournment of the long session of Congress, in August of the same year, Polk, who had not been three miles away from the White House (as he relates) for more than thirteen months, took a brief vacation trip for his health to the mineral springs of Pennsylvania, and was back again in ten days ; attending to his duties at the capital in the hottest summer weather, receiving important secret dispatches from abroad, and in fact conducting the government for a whole month without the aid of his Cabinet, who were mostly away. “ So familiar am I,” he records at this time, "with all the principles and details of the administration that I have no difficulty in doing so ; ” and he declared that he found himself better acquainted with the work than his subordinates themselves. But he confessed to himself, while thus engaged, that he found the presidency no bed of roses. “ No President,” he writes at the close of this year, "who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates, constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself, rather than entrust the public business to subordinates ; and this makes my duties very great.”

Mr. Polk had much of Old Hickory’s dislike of financial monopolists. While looking after the Treasury during Secretary Walker’s absence, at the time of the Mexican war, he was greatly worried over what seemed to him a criminal abuse of official power, whereby a draft for two million dollars for prospective disbursements in the quartermaster-general’s bureau had been lodged with private bankers, to be checked out as might become needful. To one of his own simple integrity in money matters, defalcation appeared imminent; but the Secretary exculpated himself from misconduct, and assured the President that the banking credit behind the draft was strong and adequate. Still probing into the transaction, the President found that confidential favors in the way of a special deposit were part of the consideration upon which our war loans had been negotiated ; and others of the Cabinet coming to the rescue of their associate, and declaring such an arrangement legal in their opinion, the matter appears to have finally rested.

In various other respects our eleventh President bore strong resemblance to his immortal fellow-townsman, as the disciple to the master, the less to the greater. With the qualities of civilian and legislator, instead of warrior or forceful leader of the mass, he had nevertheless a corresponding tenacity of purpose within the circumscription of strict party lines. Andrew Jackson was his great patron and exemplar, and from that idolized Democrat of the Democracy came doubtless the chief inspiration of his own foreign policy ; though Jackson died too soon after this new administration came into power to influence it greatly in particulars. Polk’s affection and veneration for the general appear, however, in various letters copied among these papers ; and Jackson wrote frequently from the Hermitage in confidence, being overrun with applications for office, not a few of which he pressed upon the new Executive with characteristic comment. We here see injected into the tale of his own bodily ailments some sensible political counsel as against the "Whiggs ” and those “ who run with the hare and cry with the hounds; ” and Polk took strongly to heart the language of one letter which he sometimes quoted afterwards, — to take principle for his guide and make the public good his end, “ stearing clear of the intrigues and machinations of political clikes.” Indeed, the new President of the Democracy valued so greatly the good will of his early predecessor, though not always free to follow his advice, that upon Jackson’s death, in June, 1845, he sought eagerly a last letter written him, to show to incipient enemies that their cordial relation had continued to the close. This letter appears to have been mislaid, in the midst of household confusion at Nashville, and political treachery was suspected, until, after much anxious inquiry, it reached Washington with a suitable explanation. To Polk’s dismay, however, the hero’s dying communication proved unsuitable for publication, since the burden of it was, in all friendly confidence, to denounce Polk’s chosen Secretary of the Treasury, whom Jackson much disliked, and to guide the chief Executive into a train of inquiry regarding this man and a former government official, also stigmatized by the writer as dishonest, which might elicit certain facts and blow them both “ sky-high.” Some interesting accounts of Jackson’s last hours and funeral are contained among the Polk papers ; and it appears that in the last simple service at the Hermitage the hymn given out (most inappropriate to the exit of such a character) began, —

Within the horizon of his mental vision President Polk was singularly clearsighted and sensible ; but he was hemmed in by partisan and religious prejudices which limited the range of his comprehension. His private and public writings alike afford full proof of this. In his Diary, the Whigs he persisted in styling “ Federalists,” until the political strength of that party with the people, and the genial influence of Henry Clay, who paid him a notable visit on returning to the Senate, won his fair respect as the canvass of 1848 approached. He records his disbelief in judges of opposition tendency who might become “ Federalists ” upon the bench in their construction of the law. Office -holders under Tyler’s administration who claimed that they had been conservative Democrats found no favor with him ; and when the Mexican war broke out, though he candidly admitted that Whigs must have some of the military appointments, his repugnance for Winfield Scott as the majorgeneral commanding proved inveterate, and he began disparaging Zachary Taylor as soon as the latter’s renown attracted those opposed to the party in power. More and more did he convince himself, as Taylor’s star rose, that this favorite of the Whigs was without soldierly qualities except as a fighter; and he refused to allow a salute to be fired, on the news of Buena Vista. While trying earnestly, moreover, to assuage the factional quarrels of his party in New York State, he pressed constantly the idea that principle and public good were bound up in the continuous success of the Democracy. In religion he showed, as a Presbyterian, the same rigid and inflexible adherence to his faith ; being devout and devoted to public worship, decent not to fail in attendance upon the congressional funerals at Washington, of which there were many ; and so much of a rigid Sabbatarian withal that he repeatedly recorded his regrets when forced to transact public business on Sunday, though some of the most crafty work of his whole term was dispatched on that day. With something, perhaps, of religious fervor, he seemed imbued with the idea that he led God’s chosen people; whatever possessions his fellow-countrymen might appear to covet he was ready to go for, and fetch, with little scruple for the ownership of others. Like the great Jackson, he felt that "might makes right ” in national policy, and was ready to despoil our Spanish-American neighbors, who were trying, in their own poor way, to emulate our example of self-government.

Polk’s deficient ideality blinded him to some of the inevitable results of such a spoliation in debasing American character and engendering strife ; and the gradual alienation of Democratic leaders from hbs support during the Mexican war he ascribed, possibly too closely, to personal grievances. In the sectional struggle for partitioning our conquered domains between slavery and freedom he could see nothing but "a wicked and senseless agitation,” of which selfish statesmen were seeking to make a hobby. His lost political friendships he imputed unhesitatingly and altogether to political disappointments. Calhoun, he recalled, had been dissatisfied "ever since I did not retain him in the Cabinet.” Benton, whom he certainly tried most assiduously to please, was uncivil to him, and threatening "from the day I appointed a courtmartial on Frémont,” his son-in-law; and he says, not untruly, that Benton "is apt to think that nothing is properly done that he is not previously consulted about.” Van Buren took early offense, be thought, because the new President would not let him make the selection of a Cabinet. "I have preserved,” he writes, “ his most extraordinary letter to me on that subject, making no reply to it; and I have since had no direct correspondence except to frank him two annual messages, and to receive his acknowledgment.”Van Buren’s acceptance of the Free-Soil nomination for President in 1848 against the regular Democratic candidate moved Polk greatly. "He is the most fallen man I have ever known,” records the chief magistrate in his Diary; and he promptly removed Van Buren’s personal friend from the district attorneyship in New York, appointing another in his place.

Mr. Polk’s wife, who was a devout religious worshiper like himself, and whose decided views of social decorum strongly impressed the White House entertainments of her day, seems to have shared in some of her husband’s personal dislikes, with that redoubled intensity to which many good wives incline. Her antipathy to the Van Buren family was shown in her bearing towards the exPresident’s son, familiarly styled “ Prince John.” Her husband relates his amusement at finding that she had on two or three occasions countermanded his own order directing this schismatic Democrat to be invited to a White House dinner, and that on one occasion she burned a dinner ticket which the President had requested his private secretary to send him. The reason she assigned was that John Van Buren had not called on her ; but we may question whether this was the only one.

In the presidential canvass of 1848, when for the first time our national elections were held on the same day throughout the Union, under an act of Congress, Mr. Polk felt strongly interested on behalf of the regular Democratic ticket.

Lewis Cass, the party candidate, was a personal friend, considerate enough to show his letter of acceptance, and modify it upon President Polk’s advice ; particularly on the point of announcing that if elected he would carry out his policy according to the convention platform, a pledge which Mr. Polk thought inexpedient as a rule. Over the successorship itself Polk had maintained a strict neutrality ; inflexibly refusing to run for a second term, or to allow the use of his name before the convention, though many urged him to do so. He passed many sick days during this campaign, and had much apart from the political contest to worry him. But disastrously as the election turned out for his party, he gained in composure and spirit when all was over, and his own public work was substantially done. He felt proud to think that, after all, he had finished the Mexican war successfully before his retirement, and had commenced reducing the public debt besides ; that he would leave office with foreign relations everywhere at peace, and no troubles to transmit. Towards the New York "Barnburners, or Free-Soil Democrats, his resentment was implacable ; and when his Secretary of State, always bent on conciliating the doubtful elements, selected a Rochester newspaper of that party, soon after election day, to publish the laws of the United States for a year, he sternly countermanded the choice, refusing to allow the patronage of public printing to any press which had not approved his administration. Buchanan, unable to satisfy him by alleging that this newspaper had been moderate in its opposition, put upon the President the whole responsibility of revoking this appointment, and Polk accepted it; the Secretary drew up a letter stating that this revocation was at the President’s special request, and the President permitted it to be sent.

Mr. Polk has recorded with evident relish and good nature whatever signs of civility and popular respect he observed during the last few weeks that he occupied the White House. Hundreds of callers greeted him in the East Room at a January reception, and he walked through the parlors, delighted, with the famous Mrs. Madison on his arm. He thought it worth while to write out in his Diary a recipe for presidential handshaking, which he gave to some of his friends orally about this time : “ If a man surrendered his arm to be shaken by one horizontally, by another perpendicularly, and by another with a strong grip, he could not fail to suffer severely from it; but if he would shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as the adversary squeezed him, he would suffer no inconvenience from it. I can generally anticipate a strong grip from a strong man; and I then take advantage of him by being quicker than he, and seizing him by the tip of his fingers.”“I stated this playfully,” he adds, "but it is all true.”

When his chosen successor reached Washington, in February, 1849, the administration naturally felt some embarrassment, for the President’s treatment of Zachary Taylor during the Mexican war had given the latter great offense. The two had never met in person, and Buchanan, over-anxious as usual, would have strained official etiquette in the endeavor to reconcile them. But Polk stood properly upon his executive dignity, which was far better, and waited for what was due him. Nor did he lose by doing so ; for Taylor, bred to military habits, considerate and kind-hearted, paid his ceremonial visit to the White House in company with political friends ; and Polk, reciprocating the courtesy, gave his fellow-Southerner an elaborate dinner party, which was attended by all the Cabinet officers with their wives, and many eminent men of both parties. "All went off in the best style,” says the Diary, "and not the slightest allusion was made to political subjects.”

Finally, on the 3d of March, our Democratic President closed his work by visiting the Capitol to sign bills during the last night session of Congress. He carried with him a carefully written veto message on internal improvements, to use if needful; but no bill of that character passed, —possibly, one might surmise, to his own regret, for he made record that he considered that unused message one of the ablest papers he had ever prepared.

Vice - President Dallas, who served through this whole four years’ term, eulogizes Mr. Polk as plain, unaffected, affable, and kind in his personal deportment, with a consistent simplicity of life and purity of manners : as temperate but not unsocial, industrious but accessible. Concerning Polk’s secretive disposition and quiet persistency in his plans, more might have been added. Put Dallas says very justly, “ He left nothing unfinished ; what he attempted he did.” That Polk desired to be well remembered by posterity appears from his will; for, being childless, he devised his estate in successive interests to the worthiest who should bear the name of Polk. But this singular provision was lately set aside in the Tennessee courts, soon after the widow’s death, as void for perpetuity, and the property passed absolutely to his legal heirs, — a new instance, among the many which our present age supplies, of the vanity of testamentary wishes.

In another article I shall consider President Polk’s public policy and achievements, as illustrated and made clear by his private papers.

James Schouler.