Part of Series
The story of a pivotal president who watched over our westward expansion and solidified the dream of Jacksonian democracy James K. Polk was a shrewd and decisive commander in chief, the youngest president elected to guide the still-young nation, who served as Speaker of the House and governor of Tennessee before taking office in 1845. Considered a natural successor to Andrew Jackson, "Young Hickory" miraculously revived his floundering political career by riding a wave of public sentiment in favor of annexing the Republic of Texas to the Union. Shortly after his inauguration, he settled the disputed Oregon boundary and by 1846 had declared war on Mexico in hopes of annexing California. The considerably smaller American army never lost a battle. At home, however, Polk suffered a political firestorm of antiwar attacks from many fronts. Despite his tremendous accomplishments, he left office an extremely unpopular man, on whom stress had taken such a physical toll that he died within three months of departing Washington. Fellow Tennessean John Seigenthaler traces the life of this president who, as Truman noted, "said what he intended to do and did it."
Author
John Seigenthaler’s journalistic and political legacy includes four decades as a reporter, editor and publisher at the Nashville Tennessean and a concurrent nine years as the founding editorial director of USA Today. Two times during his newspaper tenure, he took leaves of absence to serve as an aide to Robert F. Kennedy, who was his close friend. Upon retiring from the two newspapers in 1991, Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center, the nation’s foremost institution devoted to education, debate and dialogue about free expression, and remains intimately involved with its programs and forums. In 1960, he took a leave from the Tennessean to work with Robert Kennedy on his brother’s presidential campaign, later becoming Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant in the Kennedy Justice Department. When authorities in the Deep South signaled they were going to put up massive resistance to the civil rights protests of the Freedom Riders, the president and his attorney general sent Seigenthaler to Alabama as their personal representative to try to defuse the situation. On May 20, 1961, Seigenthaler met the Riders’ bus as it reached Montgomery’s bus station. So did hundreds of white rioters who, with police absent from the scene, set upon the Riders. Seigenthaler was beaten as he tried to protect a young Freedom Rider, and he was left unconscious on the pavement for more than 20 minutes before police officers finally took him to the hospital. The late historian David Halberstam, who was a reporter with the Tennessean at the time, wrote that Seigenthaler’s beating was a pivotal moment for Robert Kennedy, for whom politics was personal. The incident marked the beginning of RFK's strong support for civil rights.
