Murchison on James Polk

There are few art forms that are more enjoyable than reading a good book review. It is a sort of a cheap thrill (quite literally,) since one gets much of the benefit of a book without having actually to purchase and read it. Thus, for many of us who are addicted to reading book reviews, we are condemned to lives of having read many more reviews than books -- and of having the sum total of our knowledge of a given book filtered through the eyes of a reviewer.

So be it.

Wiliam Murchison (long-time columnist for the Dallas Morning News,) writing in the American Spectator, recently reviewed what sounds like a fascinating biography of President James Polk. Walter R. Borneman's book makes the case that Polk's was a transformative Presidency, and when you read the summary, it's hard to argue otherwise:

Polk got it done. He had promised that inside one term of office -- that was all he wanted and all he said he would accept -- he would assert American title to Oregon; he would bring Texas finally into the Union; he would acquire California; he would reduce the tariff; and he would provide for an independent treasury. Wondrous to say, he did it all. There was some howling: not enough to deflect the president from his chosen course.

Murchison lightly notes that Boston newspapers didn't much care for "Polk's war" (known today as the Mexican-American War.) In fact, we would go further and note that the war spawned the first serious secessionist movement since the founding of the Constitution. One of John Calhoun's later biographers (we can't recall whom,) noted that the South Carolina statesman received much of his education in New England under schoolmasters who were secessionists. While Calhoun's arguments for the right of a state to secede are today considered to be part and parcel of his Southern mindset, they were actually forged in the fires of New England's anti-war sentiment.

But back to the review. Murchison is a descendant of Polk, so admits to not being completely unbiased in his admiration for Polk's accomplishment. He notes that modern political biographies of more distant figures are invariably laden with outright or thinly-veiled parallels to current events (guess which ones in this case.) But one passage sticks out at the end, as Murchison doubtless intends, one that reminds us of what a uniquely golden time the early 19th century was in the life our our country (if you were lucky enough not to be a slave, of course):

An unfamiliar flavor can fill the mouth of an American reader of Borneman -- the flavor of success. We win! Goals, during the Polk administration, get set and met. The United States, in pursuit of objectives that to many moderns would seem prideful or arrogant, strides onto the stage, ready for action. It expands its borders, opens new lands to exploration and development. A United States shorn of its western portion due to political timidity would be a different place from the nation that took shape under James K. Polk.

"Shorn of its western portion" -- enough to make a chill run down the spine, isn't it?