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JAMES K. POLK’S PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN
EXCEPTIONALISM
Howard J. Countryman
HST 325
Dr. Malcom Magee
December 16, 2015
Countryman 1
In 1845, staunch Jacksonian Democrat James K. Polk took o)ce as the eleventh
president of the United States. Within a year of swearing the oath of o)ce, Polk made good on
his campaign promise of annexing the Republic of Texas into the United States. President Polk
spoke of the pending annexa1on in his inaugural address, sta1ng “The Republic of Texas has
made known her desire to come into our Union, to form a part of our Confederacy and enjoy
with us the blessings of liberty secured and guaranteed by our constitution … I regard the
question of annexa1on as belonging exclusively to the United States and Texas … Foreign
powers should therefore look on the annexa1on of Texas to the United States not as the
conquest of a nation seeking to extend her dominions by arms and violence, but as the peaceful
acquisition of a territory once her own.”1 The issue of Texas’s annexa1on caused great discord
between the United States and Mexico, and ultimately slid the two nations to war with each
other in 1846. Polk saw America’s annexation of Texas as a benevolent restoration of American
territory and that Mexico’s aggression constituted a breach of the American domain, this is what
he saw as exceptional of American foreign policy. However, Polk’s contemporary par1san
opponents, the Whig’s, held a dras1cally different perspec1ve. As Joshua Reed Giddings stated,
“In the murder of Mexicans upon their own soil, or in robbing them of their country, I can take
no part either now or herea<er.”2 The Whig’s asserted that Polk’s true intentions were to
conquer Mexican land for American expansion, and that the annexation of Texas and the
subsequent Mexican-American War was an o#ensive intrusion of Mexico’s territorial realm.
1 Inaugural Address of James K. Polk. Washington, D.C. March 4th, 1845. Found in Leonard, Thomas M. James K.
Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny. Wilmington, DE: S.R., 2001. Page 53 Print.
2 Giddings,Joshua Reed, Speeches in Congress [1841–1852], J.P. Jewe@ and Company, 1853, p.17
Countryman 2
Thomas Leonard writes that “when the United States purchased Louisiana from France
in 1803, the western boundary of the newly acquired territory was not clearly deBned. At the
1me, the governments in Madrid and Washington laid claim to much of what is contemporary
Texas.”3 In 1819, the Adams-Onis Treaty was signed by the two governments in an effort to
