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James K. Polk was born November 2, 1795 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and died June 15, 1849 in Nashville, Tennessee. He married Sarah Childress Polk. They had no children.

James K. Polk is mostly known for expanding the territory of the United States. He added Texas and Wisconsin as states and secured land to the west that would one day make up the entire 48 contiguous states of the United States.

He grew up in a big family. He was the oldest of 10 children.

He graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina in 1818, and became a successful lawyer.

He soon decided to enter politics. He was elected to the Tennessee state legislature, then became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He served in the House for 14 years. He was a respected member and was eventually elected to Speaker of the House. In 1839 he became governor of Tennessee.

In 1844, Polk entered the presidential race hoping to be nominated for vice president, but ended up being nominated by the Democrats for president. He became president in 1845.

When Polk became president, his main goal was to expand the borders of the United States all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He also wanted to settle border disputes with Great Britain regarding the Oregon Territory.

Polk threatened Great Britain with war over the northern boundary to the west. He said that the U.S. wanted the territory all the way to the 54-40 line, just south of Alaska. A popular slogan of the day was “54-40 or fight”. Britain later agreed to a border at the 49th parallel, which is today the border between the U.S. and Canada.

One of the first things Polk did when he became president was to grant Texas statehood. As a result, the Mexican-American War broke out. The Americans dominated the war and eventually took over much of the land that became the Southwest of the United States including New Mexico, Arizona, and California. He added 1.2 million square miles of land to the United States.

He decided not to run for a second term as president. He felt that he had accomplished his goal of expanding the territory of the U.S. to the Pacific Ocean and there was no need for another term. Just three months after leaving office, he died of cholera. He is considered by many historians to be one of the more important U.S. presidents in history.

(This is an edited article from Ducksters.com).

John Tyler was born March 29, 1790 in Charles City County, Virginia, and died January 18, 1862 in Richmond, Virginia. His wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, died and he married Julia Gardiner Tyler. He fathered 15 children.

John Tyler is known for being the first president to serve without being elected to office. He served nearly an entire term of four years after President William Henry Harrison died just 32 days after taking office.

John grew up in a large family on a plantation in Virginia. His father was a famous Virginian politician who was governor of Virginia and, later, became a judge. His mother died when he was just seven years old, but John was close to his father. As a boy he enjoyed playing the violin and hunting.

John graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1807. After graduation he studied law and began to practice law after passing the bar in 1809.

Tyler entered politics at the young age of 21 when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. His political career continued to rise over the years as he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Governor of Virginia, and the U.S. Senator from Virginia.

John had long been a member of the Democrat Party, but split with them over some of President Andrew Jackson’s policies. He joined the Whig Party which was for strong states rights.

In 1840, Tyler was selected by the Whigs to run as Vice President with William Henry Harrison in order to get the southern vote. Harrison’s nickname was Tippecanoe and the campaign slogan was “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”. They won the election over incumbent Martin Van Buren.

President Harrison got a terrible cold during his long inauguration speech. His cold turned into Pneumonia and he died 32 days later. This caused some confusion as the U.S. Constitution was unclear as to exactly what should happen when the president died. Tyler, however, took control and became president. He assumed all the powers of president as well as the title. Later, the 25th Amendment would describe the succession to the presidency so there would be no confusion.

When Tyler became president, he did not fall in line with the Whig party politics. He disagreed with them on several issues. As a result, they kicked him out of the party and all but one of the cabinet members resigned. They even tried to impeach him saying that he misused his veto power. The impeachment failed, however.

Tyler was a strong proponent of states’ rights. He promoted the “Log Cabin Bill,” which gave settlers the right to claim land. He was instrumental in the annexation of Texas. He signed a tariff bill that helped to protect northern manufacturers. He helped to end a border dispute with the Canadian colonies along the Maine border.

After leaving the presidency, Tyler retired to Virginia. He began to think that the South should secede from the United States. When the Civil War began and the south formed the Confederate States, Tyler became a member of the Confederate Congress. Because he was part of the Confederacy, his death was not recognized by Washington. He had tried to help negotiate a compromise between the southern states and the northern states so there would not be war.

October 1, 2019 (Tuesday)
The material in this blog has come from the web site, “Biography.” Much of it is copied “word for word.”

Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. President, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. His father, Benjamin, was an American Revolutionary War hero who held some political prowess in the family’s rural town. His mother, Anna Kendrick Pierce, had eight children, whose education she made her top priority.

At the age of 12, Pierce left the public schools system to attend private academies. When he turned 15, he enrolled at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he excelled at public speaking. In 1824, Pierce graduated fifth in his class.

In 1829, when Pierce was 24 years old, he was elected to the New Hampshire State Legislature. Within two years, he was selected as its Speaker of the House, with the aid of his father, who had by then been elected governor.

In the 1830s, Pierce was sent to Washington as a state representative. Despite his rapid ascent in the world of politics, Pierce soon found his life in Washington both tedious and lonesome. After developing a dependency on alcohol, he decided it was time to settle down. In 1834, he married a shy religious woman named Jane Means Appleton, who supported the temperance movement. Jane disliked the Washington lifestyle even more than her husband did. Nevertheless, a year after the couple’s first of three sons were born, Pierce was elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1841, under his wife’s persistent urging, Pierce finally agreed to resign from the Senate. Afterward, he joined the temperance movement and started working as an attorney.

When the Mexican-American War began, Pierce became a private, helping to recruit men for the New Hampshire Volunteers. In 1847, Pierce, by then a brigadier general, led an expedition to invade the Mexican shores of Veracruz under General Winfield Scott.

When the Mexican government was still unwilling to accept America’s demands, Pierce and Scott headed to Mexico City. Although they scored two victories there, Pierce injured his leg when he was thrown from his horse. While still recovering, he missed the Army’s final victory at the Battle of Chapultepec, in 1847. After the war, Pierce went home to his family in New Hampshire.

Back in New Hampshire, Pierce became the leader of the state’s Democratic Party. As the presidential election of 1852 approached, the Democratic Party sought a candidate who was a pro-slavery Northerner–to attract voters on both sides of the slavery issue. Based on that agenda, Pierce made the ideal candidate, even if it meant that he had to run against his former commander, General Winfield Scott of the Whig Party. After a deadlock, Pierce was elected president, but the joy of his victory was soon eclipsed by the death of one of his sons, caused by a train accident.

Once in office, Pierce faced the question of Kansas’ and Nebraska’s slavery status. When he agreed to sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act * in 1854, it turned Kansas into a battleground for the country’s conflict over slavery. Pierce’s handling of the affair caused his democratic supporters to abandon him during the 1856 presidential election, in favor of his successor, James Buchanan.

Following his term as president, Pierce retired to Concord, New Hampshire. During the Civil War, he was once again vocal about his point-of-view as a Northerner, with a more typically Southern view of slavery. He was also outspoken in his opposition to the nation’s new president, Abraham Lincoln. Pierce’s unpopular view garnered him several enemies among his fellow Northerners.

Nearing the end of his life and fading quickly into obscurity, Pierce took up drinking again. He died on October 8, 1869, in Concord, New Hampshire. He was buried there, in the Old North Cemetery.

Franklin Pierce – President 1853-1857

* The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement. In the pro-slavery South it was strongly supported.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed in to settle Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election held there after the law went into effect. Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud by anti-slavery settlers, and the results were not accepted by them.
The anti-slavery settlers held another election, however pro-slavery settlers refused to vote. This resulted in the establishment of two opposing legislatures within the Kansas territory.
Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown. The territory earned the nickname “bleeding Kansas” as the death toll rose.
President Franklin Pierce, in support of the pro-slavery settlers, sent in Federal troops to stop the violence and disperse the anti-slavery legislature. Another election was called. Once again pro-slavery supporters won and once again they were charged with election fraud.
As a result, Congress did not recognize the constitution adopted by the pro-slavery settlers and Kansas was not allowed to become a state.
Eventually, however, anti-slavery settlers outnumbered pro-slavery settlers and a new constitution was drawn up. On January 29, 1861, just before the start of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. (Footnotes from “The History Place”).