on c-span3. >> the house will be in order. >> for 40 years c-span has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events from washington, d.c., and around the country so you can make up your own mind, created by cable in 1979. c-span is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. c-span, your unfiltered view of governme government. >> next on american history tv, our look at president james polk continues with scholars discussing his ancestry, politics, and policies. this is part of a conference at the university of tennessee that marked the completion of a 60-year project to assemble president polk's papers. the event hosted by east tennessee historical society. it's an hour 20 minutes.

>> okay. i think we're ready to begin. my name is connie lester, associate professor at university of central florida. i have moved forward from polk. i have worked on the papers as a graduate student but i've moved forward from polk. my area of expertise is the end of reconstruction to world war ii and i do agriculture history and economic history. but i'm very happy to be here today. i want to begin the introductions to our panel. we have a very tight time line, so i'm going to try to control our panelists in a good way to make sure we have adequate time for anyone. when you get to five minutes left, i have a five-minute card here and i will lay it up so you can see it and then three minutes and one minute so you

can see where you are. so we have time for everyone. i'm going to introduce each panelist as they come forward because i've found if you introduce them all at once, people forget who they are. so i will begin with our first panelist, who is john f. polk. he received his phd in mathematics from the university of delaware in 1979. he served three years in the army including a tour in vietnam. he is retired from a 45-year career as a scientist and senior adviser of international research collaboration at the u.s. army research laboratory aberdeen proving ground, maryland. he's clan historian for clan pollock and publishes short articles on the clan newsletter. he's published two books on historical topics, polk family

of the chesapeake eastern shore in the colonial era and that was published in 2015 which received sumner a. parker prize from maryland again logical society. his second book somerset records 1692 to 1696, abstracts with transcriptions with archives of maryland. it was volume 535. that was published in 2002. he also published an article in the journal of scott irish history, advent of scotch irish in america and that was public lived in 2008. dr. polk initiated the polk pollock dna project in association with ftdna and serves as volunteer administrat administrator. the title of his presentation is reexamining the ancestry of

president james knox polk. >> thank you. appreciate that introduction. do i need to be near the mitch? if i'm back here, not good? i'll try to stay up nearby. that you very much for that introduction. as you see the title of my talk is "reexamining the ancestry of james k. polk." right up front, i'll say the main point i want to make in my talk is the ancestry of the polk family that arrived in north carolina in 1750s is not as it is stated in the popular polk family history books. i'm referring specifically to polk family and kinsman published 1912 by william harrison polk and polk family -- polks of north carolina,

tennessee, the two most popular books on the polk family. with respect to the early ancestry of the polk family, they are incorrect. i will -- i try to show you where they went astray, where they are incorrect and offer an alternative explanation of where they actually did come from. so if i can figure this out. first thing i show is immediate line of the president. you see at the bottom there's james k. his father is samuel polk who married jane knox will his grandfather ezekiel polk, very colorful and well-known figure who had lots written about him. and then his grandfather, william polk, who is a much more elusive figure, not a lot known about him. he will be the main focus of what i have to say right now, where he came from. we don't know -- what we know

about him is he married a lady by the name of margaret taylor. they lived initially in maryland, then he moved to pennsylvania for a while and on down to north carolina in the early 1750s. they had five sons and three daughters. nobody knows where they actually lived in north carolina. he died and nobody knows where he's buried. like i say, he's not a well-known figure. so the president was fourth generation of the polks in north carolina. by his time the family had lost track of the early history and exactly where they had come from. what they knew about it expressed, i think, in the words of colonel william polk of raleigh, late in his life when he's in his 70s, about 1830, he wrote a short autobiographical

sketch in which he talked about himself. he has had short statement in there about the origin of the family, which you'll see up here on the chart. it says william polk, he's talking about himself, a third person autobiography, is a descendant of a family who emigrated from ireland about the year 1722 and settled on the eastern shore of maryland where they resided until about the year 1740 when they removed to the state of pennsylvania and into the neighborhood of carlyle. this is probably what president polk would have known about his family as far as its early roots. that's about as far back as he would have known. he probably didn't have particular interest in early ancestry, far too busy running for office and pursuing his legal career. when he got to be elected president and went on to washington, of course, like any president, all sorts of people claimed they were related to

him. he got letters, some of which are in the proceedings published, claiming relationships and saying things about his family. so he didn't pay a lot of attention to these. but two people that are important for our purposes in this, i'll mention specifically, there was a colonel william winder, some people say winder but i believe it was winder and josiah both lived in somerset county in maryland. they got in touch with the president and he said my family came from the eastern shore of maryland. do you think we're related? they said, yes. we'll tell you about our family. it goes back to a fellow named robert polk who arrived here in 1687 with his wife madelyn. they had serve sons. the oldest son john had a son

named william. john died in bishop polk, later a general but at that time bishop and they put together a family tree. maybe some of you have seen this family tree. there is a picture of it. this is my own personal copy, come down through my family. beautiful piece of draft work. it shows main part of the tree at the top north carolina and tennessee polks and lower part

are maryland polks. looking at it a little more closely, you can see in here at the bottom robert polk, the immigrant from ireland, the very bottom of the tree. the next main branch up is his son john. john, the main limb off that, going up the middle of the tree, that's william polk as william polk, connection between maryland polks and north carolina and tennessee polks. great grandfather of the president. you can see in there his son, if you're looking to the left, his son ezekiel, his son samuel and samuel's son the president, james k. polk, up at the top on the left in an oval -- yellow oval you see there. off on the left -- excuse me, off on the right, bishop pope, his second cousin. the 2011 them are the ones that put this tree together. it was, by the way, on the last slide past -- it was entered by

an act of congress. if you look on the very, very, very small print at the bottom of the tree, it says entered by act of congress 1849. so of course you know it's completely accurate and beyond all question. any rate, this was widely accepted by everybody and became accepted history, lineage from north carolina back to eastern shore of maryland and back to ireland. robert polk of ireland actually came from donegal. this was fine. in 1908 something happened. william harrison polk was in the final throes of finishing his monumental work on polk family and kinsmen and got a letter from earl b. polk in somerset county saying, whoops, there is a problem. william polk that left in 1723,

he only made it up into dorchester county maryland and died three years later. this is not the william polk, great grandfather of the president clearly. so this caused a big problem for polk because he was anxious to finish his book and get it out before he died. he had been working on it for 45 years. this is the situation going back to the sons of robert polk, there were seven of them. he got in correspondence with his long-term colleague in louisville and they wrote letters back and forth and said which son should have been the right one. we should have picked somebody else. they didn't really have new information so all they could do is speculate. in the end for whatever reason william polk decided it must have been william, the second

son. he must have been the guy, the father of the william who ended up out in north carolina. that's the way he wrote the book. he states that as a fact and doesn't make qualifications or caveat on it and that's the way it was. that's the way family histories came down for years. one in his book and her pook because she used what he had put in his. that's down to the present day. the problem is speculation and he had no facts behind it. worse than that, it actually is wrong. that's what i want to mention now. it's definitely wrong. i had a couple of statements where william polk made these as flat statements. i don't need to read through them, i guess. i do want to mention -- find several places in the book where he makes the statement, relates to another fellow, charles polk

indian trader, a well-known trader on the maryland frontier claimed that fellow was the same william of somerset. both of those turned out to be incorrect. how do we know that? two ways. one is traditional way of paper trail, again logical research going to original colonial records. i've spent many, many, many days over the years at maryland state archives digging through every record they have to offer on the polk family in the colonial period. somerset county was very hitch in their colonial records and you find lots of references, robert polk, the immigrant and sons. nowhere amongst this record do you back up the assertion there's somebody that might have ended up going out to north carolina, tennessee. so unfortunately mention tax

list, probably the best piece of evidence. every year they went around collecting the names of the taxables in the county and the taxables were people over 16 years old. any male over 16 years old. so they had the names of the people in everybody's house including william polk's house. he had two sons by the name of james and david, but none of william or charles. that's pretty conclusive, i think, based on colonial records. since nobody wants to accept something that's been believed for 100 years and particularly when it's connecting somebody to a president of the united states, you usually need a little better, more complete evidence. it's hard to prove a negative, as we know. so myself and long-term colleague of mine, bill polk of kansas city, who many of you may know, he did a very excellent polk genealogy researcher, we began a dna project about 10

years ago. go past the records. the dna is definitive. we have a very successful project. we have 250 members who have contributed dna. out of those, 100 of them are polk, pollock surname males who contributed y chrome some dna. y chromosome is what gets passed on from faesh to son without change. whatever robert polk had would have been passed to his descendants. what's come out of the testing, there's dna groups that emerged. descendants of robert polk of the eastern shore belong to one-half of the group known as i-m 223. and the disteescendants of the t grandfather william a different

group, r-379. i have three minutes remaining. they are genetically different. there's no possibility that wm polk, great grandfather of the president could have been a descendant -- did i say robert polk, relative humidity polk, his great grandfather could not have been a descendant of the robert polk of eastern shore. so that shot down. so now the question is where did he actually come from? that's the last part of this if i don't run out of time you can ask me questions and i'll finish in the question period. any rate, since it was somerset, we know what polk from raleigh said he did come from eastern shore of maryland, so we have to look elsewhere. i did and i found if you go up a ways, further north, get into cecil county, maryland. that's the very top of the chesapeake bay, barely considered part of the eastern

shore but on the chesapeake bay. in cecil county, you see there this thing called the new munster plantation, sellinged in 1863. nobody lived there about 25 years. 1708 a group of scotch irish moved into the area, not just new munster but around it. right there in particular you find a whole cluster -- whole contingent of alexander family who came in and settled there in 17 1708. they actually purchased the land in 1714. you can see the various parcells where they settled. any of you who have spent time studying mechanic -- mecklenburg. all were sons and grandsons of these alexanders from cecil county, maryland. they follow this path colonel william polk described how his family moved from eastern shore

first to carlyle area of pennsylvania, cumberland valley and on down into north carolina. that's the way colonel polk described his family, the way alexander did in the next generations. what you find in the middle of the alexanders, pie shaped yellow piece, that's a piece of land purchased by a gentleman known as william pollock, purchased it in 1727. colonel william polk of raleigh said his family arrived in 1722. so that fits pretty well. pollock, of course, is the original scotchish form of the name polk. they are used colonially in documents, everybody spelled names consistently. how long did he live there? one minute remaining. 1736. he left and probably followed

the same path as the alexanders. who was his wife? his wife who signed the deed was margaret. we know william polk, great grandfather of the president's wife name was margaret taylor. you will find taylor's living right here in new munster. one signed a me technician -- petition. this was the great grandfather of william polk. i can tem you from my research all the possible counties in maryland, there's nothing else out there, no other real possible candidate, other than this one. so as far as i'm concerned, hits 100% and i'll have to leave the rest to you if you decide it agree with that. there is no smoking gun of

documents in north carolina saying we came from the county, you won't find anything like that. at least i've never found one. to me all the facts are pointing that way. until somebody comes up with a better theory, i'm sticking with this one. thank you for that. i've written this up in a lengthier paper which i hope will end up in the proceedings, if we have proceedings of this conference. if they are not, i will certainly publish it in the appropriate journal. in the meantime, there are my conclusions. at the bottom you see my e-mail address. if you have questions, you can get in contact at jfpolk @comcast.net. i guess that's it. do we have any questions? >> we'll take questions from everybody. >> at the end. okay. one last plug, my book.

i have several copies and i can part with them at my cost, which is considerably better cost than you would pay. i wrote and published it and it did get a prize from the american geagain lod gene lodgey society. i had so much information to put into the book. thank you. pl pl >> okay. our second print er lucas kelle.

he completed ma in history at virginia tech. he's the maynard adams fellow for public humanities carolina public humanities university of north carolina. he has made numerous presentations at conferences in virginia, louisiana, north carolina, and the united kingdom. he currently has papers accepted for conferences at cardiff university in wales and annual meeting of southern historical association. he has published two articles in the journal of east tennessee history, a divided state in a divided nation, and exploration of east tennessee support of the union in the secession crisis of 1860, 1861 and that was published in 2013. and the noblest sbemp of modern times robert y. haynes 1936 address to the knoxville convention, which was published in 2016. he has also published an article

in the southern historian titled ardent nullifier and gradualer manslaughter pater the paradox of virginia governor john floyd, and that was published in 2016. if mr. kelley seems familiar to any of you, you may remember he was a student assistant at the journal of east tennessee history in the fall of 2014. mr. kelley. >> that you so much for the introduction. i really appreciate it. happy to be here. on a rainy march 4th, 1825, his inauguration day, james k. polk sat on the east portico of the u.s. capital and addressed the nation. outgoing president john tyler signed a congressional resolution three days before to

an ex texas, enorm as victory. his inaugural address polk not only cheered annexation but used it as a vision for the nation. as our population has expanded, the union has been cemented and strengthened. as our boundaries have been enlarged and agriculture population has been spread over a large surface our fettered system has acquired strength and security. as it shall be extended, continued polk, the bonds of our union, so far from being weakened will become stronger. for president polk u.s. strength depended on continental expansion. the connection between polk and american expansion has not gone unnoticed by scholars of american history. an ardent expansionist, fervent conservationist are a few ways they have described him. polk is most often associated with manifest destiny, shared by

antebellum that americans have a right, indigenous sovereignty claims. site his election and administration policies as a victory for advocates of manifest destiny while recognizing nonwhites and how territorial expansion contributed to growing sectional crisis of the 1850s. yet this future perspective overlooks polk's familiarity with expansion. born in north carolina he moved with his family in the final months of 1806 to his grandfather's land in williamson, tennessee soon to be reorganized as maury county. over the next two decades the polks would become most influential and wealthiest slave holding families. as much as the family's

prominence depended on the slavery, wealth was only possible for indigenous people. polk's father, grandfather speculated heavily in cherokee and chickasaw land, west tennessee, gaining while indians lost their national lands. several relatives acted as agents for landowners after the territory had been open for white celticment. they collected rent, surveyed land and sold track to buyers for a nice fee. a complete understanding of polk's expansionist legacy therefore requires not only a focus on his years in executive office but also a recognition-of-how the polk family acquired wealth through the native americans along tennessee frontier. the polks investment in cherokee and chickasaw began in 1780s during what one historians called the great speculation. with debt mounting due to expenses from the revolutionary war north carolina leaders believed the united states western lands across appalachian mountains could generate much

needed revenue. legislature passed a number of laws in the early 1780s to facilitate land sales including 1783 act opening almost all of what has become tennessee. seemingly designed to eliminate the state's debt it was the brainchild of north carolina peck laters. knowing of its impending passage in legislature speculators identified most valuable tracks of western land and in seven months entered over 3 million acres in north carolina land offices. taking little notice of indian sovereignty claims over most of the region. the polks reaped great rewards from the 1783 land law because of their political connections. thomas polk, his great uncle led a party to lay claim to tracks in cherokee and chickasaw nations. before the land office closed in may of 1784, the polks entered over 50,000 acres of land, much of it in duck river valley. this vast acreage served as foundation to polk family wealth

both as permanent plantations and land rented out for annual revenue. it would be decades before they could take place of massive speculation in indian land. you can see on the map the duck river -- you can see columbia right there and the duck river is the line that separates the yellow portion from the pink looking portion. similar to great britain's various attempts to limit settlement west of the appalachian mountains leaders of the early united states worked to prevent americans from emgragt to continental interior of north america. frontier threatened, conflict with indian nations and appeared to shed their american citizenship for allegiance to european kbirs. national leaders therefore used centralized power afforded by constitution in the 1780s and 1790s. federal recognition of indian sovereignty through treaty negotiations proved the most

effective check on why it's access to the east. the polk family, for example, would have been particularly distressed by a series of treaties by cherokee and chickasaw that located duck valley in indian county. u.s. officials enforced survey treaty boundary lines by prohibiting further speculation and forcibly relocating white families found to be over the international border on chickasaw or cherokee land despite the fact that many settlers possessed legitimate land claims to many -- possessed legitimate north carolina land grants. polk family members recognizing the damaging consequences the federal government recognition of native sovereignty could have on their speculation scheme five years after the trip across the mountain to identify tracts, william polk his first cousin lamented to a speculator ally what will become of our western map. is there any probability of coming to maturity and of being any use to us.

the polk's fortune in western lands was on the verge of collapse. yet the polks eventually did benefit from their investment in indigenous territory. throughout 1790s and 1800s investors including william polk repeatedly petitioned congress and national leaders to open territory for white settlement or at least repay them for the cost of locating and claiming land. fn state hood in 1796 gave more power to white speculators and prospective settlers. new states congressional delegates allied with north carolinians in the house and senate to advocate for cherokee and chickasaw. indeed the u.s. federal system provided the vehicle through which white north carolinians could pressure leaders to access to the duck river territory. much of the duck river valley held important cultural and economic significance for cherokees and chickasaws and they resisted pressure to cede it for a number of years. rich supplies of wild game and

indians sold pelts and skins to telco block house and bluffs near present day memphis. hunting was a deeply embedded gender practice within both nations. the opportunity to supply gain to their families indian men would be forced to labor completely in agricultural pursuits. work considered only fit for women. native leaders were aware of how they coveted their duck river land and refused to negotiate with treaty commissioners unless the united states offered a high price. there were three sessions from the nations between 1805 and 18 06 but only after offering relatively large sums to both nations and after special payments as inducements for their cooperation. william polk attended the treaty negotiations with the cherokee nation in person. interested was he in the outcome. you can see these land sessions on the map.

again, the yellowish portion above the duck river was ceded in 1805 and the land below it in 1806 treaties. the polk's investment finally paid off. as the family benefitted directly from the land cessions. immigrating to tennessee months after the final treaty, samuel polk settled on land originally entered by his father on the north side of the duck river near richland creek. much of the income during the family's early years in tennessee came as the agent to his first cousin who employed him to sell his ruk river land. in the words of one, the polk's land claims had finally become active property. in the economic and social benefit stemming from his family's come anization at indian territory d polk had personal experience with the economic benefits and

underpinnings of colonizing when he made the case for further u.s. expansion in march 6th of 1845. standing below a statue, polk cheered that the title of numerous indian tribes to vast tracks of country has been extinguished, allowing the form of new states. the president hoped that hissed a min traitive policies would make land similarly accessful to whites in the west. scholars are right. he just as powerfully embodied the nation's past history of native disposition east of the western mississippi river. thank you.

>> thomas cohens is our third presenter. he received his ph.d. from harvard in 20 04 and wrote his dissertation on the formation of the jackson party, 1822 to 18 25. he received a fellowship, a harvard graduate merit fellowship in support of the completion of his graduate work. while an undergraduate at yale universi university, he was inducted into phi alpha kappa and currently -- i'm sorry, phi beta kappa and is currently the associate editor and a research associate professor. he is the author of a book manuscript titled "the forked tongue, andrew jackson the 1830 indian removal act and the

betrayal of native america" which is under contract to johns hop kin's universe press. the tit the. thank you. when james k. polk was elected speaker of the house in 1835 it was widely seen as a reward for services rendered as congressional floor leader in jackson's administration's war against the bank of the united states hereafter simply the bank. in march of 1833 as a member of the house ways and means committee, polk offered an explosive minority report and during the following session as chairman of the same committee, polk outmaneuvered bank supporters and secured passage of a resolution in proving the

removal of government deposits. months later during a visit to tennessee jackson gushed, quote, polk for the hard service done in the cause deserves a medal from the american people. as far as we know polk didn't receive a medal, but tremendous wards he did reap from his bank ward services were more substantial. the house speakership, the lifelong devotion of jackson and the democratic party and ten years later the presidency. that polk would play a prominent role in the bank war was hard to predict beforehand. other than exchanging the occasional letter and social visit, jackson and polk's interactions before 1832 were surprisingly limited. with the exception of a draft polk penned for jackson of the 1830 veto that wasn't used, polk contributed virtually nothing to either the development of administration policy or the passage of legislation.

nor was polk before that particularly interested in the subject of banking. something i was able to confirm by searching volume one of the correspondence of james k. polk. it would be a mistake to see the bank war services as passive or as the result of unthinking slavish devotion to jackson. polk no doubt drew inspiration and direction from jackson, but there's something misleading about the historian of polk you neen mccormick's description in the war against the bank. it implies polk was merely taking orders. in fact, after submitting the title of my paper, i almost immediately began to regret my wording. specifically the young hickory sober k in the reference to the bank's war poke's apprenticeship, both i worried minimized the contribution to the struggle and added to the impression he was nothing more

than a faithful lap dog who defended a policy set by others. in the time that i have left, i'd like to high light two facets that help make that point. during the bank war polk was much more than an obedient party functionary. the first thing is polk's march 18th, '33 ways and means committee report on the bank. jackson's vetoed the bank's charter but the charter had four years left to run. as he explained in december of that year, as far as old hickory was concerned, quote, the hydroof corruption is only scotched, not dead. both before and after july of 1832 veto, jackson was on the hunt for hard evidence that could bring the bank down once and for all. that could confirm what we knew in his heart to be true, that the bank was corrupt, that it lined its own pockets with taxpayer funds. that it interfered in elections

and described congressmen. in short, it placed money making before public service. the house in early 1832 conducted an exhaustive investigation of the bank, but other than evidence that it had made some dsuspicious loans, little was proven. in november of 1832, month after the veto, jackson wrote himself a memorandum about the desirability of a renewed inkwirly, quote, whether the bank has not quited the charter, whether the present situation does not require for the safety of the government that the united states deposits be withdrawn from it. in his annual message delivered the following month, jackson expressed his concerns about the come venn si of the bank and asked congress or told congress the safety of the deposits was, quote, worthy of their serious investigation, end quote. when the task of conducting that inkwirly fell to the committee of ways and means, jackson wrote

polk with tips and possible sources and stressed the importance of writing a report that could kill the bank and the supporters dead. over the next few months polk pursued an unrelenting and unsparing examination into the bank's affairs. grilling bank directors under oath. reviewing reams of internal bank documents and its covrridor spo dense. people insisted on a report for the safety of the government deposits. rather than going along with such a whitewash, polk issued his own findings in a separate minority report that despite only having three signatories was to have a profound effect on the war. at the center of polk's indictment of the bank was a scandal relating to the government's 3% debt in the retirement. a scandal so complicated, to

boring that it's guaranteed to put you right to sleep. unfortunately it's a scandal that we at the jackson papers were up to our eyeballs in in the production of our last volume. the gist of it is in that in 1832 the government told the bank to pay off about 8 $.5 million of 3% revolutionary stock. this is stock of low yield, and the terms were such that the government could pay it off or not whenever it wanted so long as it made interest payments. the jackson administration on the verge of extinguishing the last of the national debt wanted it off its books. the bank, however, had other ideas. and claiming that it didn't want to call in loans to such an extent. it balked at making the payments and instead made arrangements with holders to delay redemption for a year with the bank agreeing to make interest payments in the meantime. there was plenty questionable

about this decision. for one thing the bank was prohibited from buying government stock which is what it was trying to do, and to make matters worse, the bank's president tried to keep the sub tri fuj hidden from the bank's directors and from the government. it only fezzed up when he was caught and the news leaked to the press. why did the bank do this? well, to be remembered, economics 101, interest is essentially the price of money and it makes no sense to voluntarily redeem it par stock that only pays 3% interest when you can lend the money out at 5% or 6%. it's the equivalent of burning money. you're better off continuing to pay holders and pocket the difference you can make and invest the money elsewhere. polk and the opponents tried to make it look like the bank failed to redeem the 3% because it didn't have the money. the transaction was shady even if you concede that the bank was

solvent. the government's banker was told to do something. it refused to do it. rather than own up, it contributed in evasion. jackson could not have been more pleased with the minority report issued on march 1st, '18 33 near session's send. the washington globe, the administration's newspaper organization sang the prizes of polk's powerful document. quote, it exposes the self-contradicted testimony under which that corrupt and corrupting institution sheltered itself. in a manner so clear and convincing that it must satisfy every honest man who reads it. by the time you order the removal in september of 33, jackson marshalled additional malfeasance revealing extravagant bank expenditures on pro bank propaganda during the election. i don't think it's an exaggeration to say the charges

compiled by polk in his minority report really for the first time made deposit removal a politically viable move for jackson. as mentioned earlier jackson had been pining for charges against the bank that could stick and i would argue that with polk's minority report in hand, he had them. both the timing and the specific arguments jackson and his aides would later make in favor of the deposit removal bear out this contention. two weeks after the report, there was a query about the desirability of deposit removal. and by may jackson was starting to sketch out rationales for doing so. in a number of early drafts, opinions and letters on deposit removal from march, april, may and june, the influence of polk's report is impossible to miss. employing as they do facts, figures and arguments drawn directly from polk's investigation. in jackson's final september 16th paper ordering deposit removal we find old

hickory paraphrasing the minority report, quote, the bank's effort to twhard the government and the payment of the public debt that it might retain the public money to be used for private interest, he was denouncing this, calling it a misdeed palliated by pretenses unfounded and insincere. i said i had two points about polk and the bank war. my second and final point is that when you look at polk's decisions within the context of politics in tennessee, when you look at the behavior of many of polk's colleagues and the congressional delegation, many of whom bolted the jackson policy. when you look at polk's decisions within that context, what you see is there was nothing inevitable about polk's embrace of jackson's war on the bank. in mid april of 18 32 while the vote on recharter was pending

before congress, a meeting attended by 100 people was held in tennessee that had resolutions strukting -- a grand jury resolved that a national bank is of the upmost yutility o the government and the people. polk's friends tried to assure him it emanating from dependent debtors of the bank, but these were troubling times. polk was receiving letters and instructions telling him to vote against the bank. these were troubling signs that gave him pause if not second thaukts before he voted in july to recharter. more controversial than his vote against recharter was polk's 1830 ways and means report indicting the bank. among the charges that polk and his colleagues levelled against the bank was it had overextended the liabilities in the west

where it was lending to debtors of questionable solvency. many tennesseans less than thrilled to hear it so described worried the aspersions would further worsen western credit. on march 28th, 1833, an indignation meeting was held at the national courthouse by merchants convinced that tennessee as well as other parts of the west has been misrepresented if not gross -- by the committee. two weeks later polk had to address the constituents at colombia personally to rebuff the unparalleled efforts of the bank's friends to produce an excitement to my prejudice, not only to my immediate constituents but the people with the state and the public generally. in the end polk's gamble that these resolutions and meetings opposing him were sound and fury and the good sense of the common

people was district and the state would support him paid off. whatever his motives or what's most likely a combination, polk's decision in 1832 to throw in his lot with jackson's crew said proved to be the right one measured by the short and long-term political gains reaped by polk. in august of '33 polk won reelection to his congressional seat. in the words of others, polk literally demolishes hid opponents. the following year polk was elected speaker and as they say, the rest is history.

>> our last speaker is mr. kens low. he expects to get his degree in history in may in clarkesville. he is a lecturer, exhibits fabricator and museum educator at the president james k. polk home and museum in tennessee. he has also served as a summer intern with the president martin van buren project and published two articles,en slaved and entrenched in the white house historical association, also in the theta delta journal of history. he has an essay forthcoming from the university of tennessee

press. finally he contributed research and writing to amy s. greenberg's book, first lady, the world of -- first lady sara polk. the title of his presentation today is enslaved and entrenched, the complex life of polk. all right. in a 1952 novel invisible man, it opens with an unnamed narrator proclaiming i am an invisible man. a man of substance, flesh and bone, fiber and liquids. i am invisible. because people refuse to see me. when they approach me, they see only their surroundings.

indeed, everything and anything except me. now, for all intents and purposes, mr. polk is an invisible man. which struck me as kind of odd. he was a man enslaved by james polk. now, it's not as if he's some hidden figure that no one has ever talked about. in fact, almost every single biography of james polk features alliance at some point. whether it's just passing information. but to truly understand who polk was and what he did and his impact not just in the state but nationally, we have to understand two facets of american history. nurl one, we have to understand the impact of the myth of the lost cause, and the impact of the dunning school on reconstruction. so prior to emancipation,

alliance polk, there's not much known. what is actually written in primary sources regarding him only comes in passing from friends of james polk, from james polk himself. there is nothing at all about alias polk, and he shows up in the correspondence. the reason we have to understand the lost cause is because what people have written about him prior to emancipation is for the most part a fabrication beginning around 1949 with the book young hickory by martha mcbride. she's upfront. she says it is fiction and not to be taken literally. it's based on the life of james polk, but unfortunately vanity presses, popular historians did not really catch that in the introduction and repeated fiction as fact.

made even worse by 88 years with sara polk who uses the writer as a source. we see it repeated quite often. one of the most prevalent stories of him prior to the civil war comes right after james polk was elected president in 1845. it says that james polk and alice were in virginia in the wyoming valley. they were alone and while kind of touring the area, they stopped for the night at a local hotel. the next morning they are readying horses, and a group of men walk up to him and say you're in a free state. you can leave if you want. and alliance polk is written as saying i'm not going to go back on the president like that and chooses to say. according to myth, james polk offers him his freedom and

alliance turns it down. well, sorry. that never happened. when we look at james polk's -- what he's doing as president, reading his diary, we understand he's not in this part of pennsylvania at this time. and when he does go to pennsylvania later on in his presidency, alliance polk is not there. you see, alliance polk was a slave that james polk would rent out from time to time. economic benefit for himself. so what we do see is alliance polk is in colombia while james polk is in the white house. there's no way this story would have happened but it's one of the most repeated stories when we deal with the figure of alliance polk. what we do know what he's doing during preemancipation years is he's working as james polk's valley. he was born enslaved to james' father in 1806.

they moved between spring hill and colombia in that same year. alliance is raised on that farm, and there he begins to understand the practice and the power of deference. for instance, when the polk family moves to tennessee, they're not the wealthiest people in their area by any means but very quickly samuel polk rises through the social hire can i and becomes a wealthy individual. he's one of the first in the area to own a cotton gin. if you need that done, you go to samuel polk and you're deferring to him. alliance polk is watching this and picking things up. now, like i said, it becomes more clear what he's doing after emancipation than anything else. so the civil war ends in 1865. and alliance polk is living in polk place in nashville with sara. james polk died more than 11 years earlier. he died in the 1849. alliance is living with sara at polk place in nashville.

well, he quickly begins a political career. he becomes a very prominent southern black conservative who aligns himself with the democratic party in the post emancipation period and reconstruction. now, what alliance polk is going to do is promote the reenfl reenfranchisement of exconfederates and basically -- well, he's going to tell them what they want to hear so they'll give him something. he's going to learn the idea of deference he learned. he's 60 years old at this point. he's born in 1806. he's around 60 years old. what option does he really have? he's 60 years old. he's african american. and he's ill literal --

illiterate. the republican company can argue he cannot do the labor, so what are his options? he decides to take on a political route. he's going to deliver addresses and one, he goes onto say my heart beats with the law when i contemplate the dangers of the country, enslaving white people and driving them from the ballot box. so alliance polk is going to push a very strong narrative forward. these exconfederates loved to hear it, and they give him things for it. in the 1870s he's appointed as a porter to the state senate. basically he's a janitor there, but they're paying him well, and in 1872 the governor of tennessee, governor brown specifically asked. what happened is there's extra funds left over at the end of the year. they're trying to decide what to do with the money. they decide they're going to give everyone kind of like a

raise in the government. and specifically the governor brown asked alliance polk to be given 40$40. that's a lot of money. brown is not a likable guy in history. he was one of the six original founding members of the klu klux klan. why does he do this? it's the family ties. i realized everyone in the south is relate the in research. somehow everyone is related. john calvin brown is married to elizabeth childress brown. they knew each other going into this. alliance left the state senate working for them in the 1880s when he is appointed to the same position in the united states congress. he's doing the exact same job for the house of representatives. he gets to go to congress. he gets to say, hey, i was appointed to congress as a janitor, but appointed to

congress nonetheless, and all these democrats in washington get to pull him out and say hey, look, we're not so bad in the south. we're not as racist as you think. we've got a black guy here. so in reality, he is going to be brought out by the democrats in order to push a narrative that they want to hear. and alliance polk is going to give it to them. they're the one paying at this time. now, he would lose his position at the capital building in 1881 when the republican party retook the house of representatives. he returns home to tennessee. he moves into polk place for a while. by the time he comes back, it's 1880. he is going to visit the state convention for the democratic party. there's a split in the party over what to do over the mounting state debt. half the party says he need to raise taxes, the other half we need to lower taxes, but there's what do we do with sara polk's

debt? she owns a significant number of bonds, not as many as she thinks. but it's significance. it's a segregated convention. someone notices alliance in the hall. they bring him up and let him speak. in a speech he chastises the group telling them look what you're doing. if you split the party, they're going to win. and you've got to pay mrs. polk. newspapers say that right after he delivered the address the party came together. two accounts dropped out. they nominated a guy, and ultimately what happens a@convention is not what always happens in the general election. the party still is split over the issue. the republicans take the state of tennessee. well, alliance polk cannot find work if there's a republican government. think about who he is deferring to. there was a push and pull between the republicans and the democrats. who gets the votes here? who gets alliance polk? the republicans feel they should get alliance polk because

they're the party of emancipation, the freedom, the party offering him new rights. the democrats feel we've always gotten him. we should have him still. alliance polk, there is a push and pull between them. he's criticized quite a lot for that. in fact, one paper even asked what president polk, the dead president polk would think of an african american stumping for democracy. i'll read you one, only part of it. it was delivered by t morris chester, a prominent african american globally. he was the first african american to receive a law degree in the united kingdom. and he's in kentucky at this time. he delivered the address and says i have understood in this state, kentucky which clings more to slavery than any other and which has not recognized the manhood of the negro, and there is a black man of tennessee

canvassing the state in the interest of the white man's party. may he enjoy the contempt he merits and the brand of a traitor who all good men and women scorn him where he appears. may his church dispel him as being unworthy to associate with the christian people. he goes onto compare him to a lonesome today. he is not generally liked by the majority of the african american community or the republican party because of how he's going to try to manipulate the system to his own benefit. now, it wasn't all deference to the democratic party. in the 1870s he served as vice president of the tennessee mechanical association which promoted vocational training and built schools throughout the state of tennessee. in 1873 he was on the fair committee, and what he's going to do there is help plan that

year's exposition. it was so big that two years later frederick douglas was the keynote speaker at these events. so it is a bipartisan issue at times for alliance polk. he always seems to come back to the democratic party. he always seems to come back to the idea of deference. now, in 1886 alliance polk is going to make one final trip. he's married at this point. his wife is 41 years younger than he is. he is in his late 70s, early 80s depending on what year we put his birth at. his wife is 41 years younger than he is. they make a trip to washington d.c. they visit the local sites. they visit the white house where alliance polk met the president. he boasted he met and shook hands with every single president. he would meet everyone as long as he was alive. he ends up dying before any other president.

he hears he's going to be reappointed to his position at the united states capital. and that night he died. most likely tuberculosis was the cause. he's broke. he had so much debt that his wife had to mortgage air house and carriage to pay off debt. she's going to ask saying he deferred to you. you're going to pay up. same thing alliance polk was preaching. slavery ruined my body. i worked for you. you're going to now help pay me. his body was brought back to nashville, buried february of 1887. there was a funeral. his corpse was two months old. i'm assuming it did not smell great. he was buried in nashville city cemetery where he's been since. now, he really just stayed there unnoticed until 2017. i was in a project with city

cemetery to give him and his wife and another polk enslaved person all headstones and at that little event, dr. herbert lester who was a minister at clark memorial chapel said something that stuck with me. he said the reason we're here today is because these people, their lives mattered. they were more than property. more than property is what stuck with me above everything else. frederick douglas said in his address in 1873 to the organization that alliance polk was a member of, we are no long property but persons. just as dr. lester said at the grave 144 years later. douglas understood deference and how it was to evolve in an america that abdicated white supremacy and wanted african americans who remain in a station as objects and not people. this whole thing i'm doing here

is to try to reclaim alliance polk's humanity. his life was the life of deference, as an enslaved person, he deferred to james and sara polk. as a citizen he deferred to james polk's associates for a means to live in the south. freedom came with a new servitude, but that was alliance polk's choice to make. thank you. >> i want to start by thanking our presenters for keeping to the time allotted for each of them. it will leave us with time to be able to ask questions as we go on. i'm going to offer some comments on the papers. they are not extensive comments. they're just kind of of the way i saw the papers as i read them, and the kind of thing that pulls

them together and maybe some hints about questions you might want to ask as well. the session title young polk and other polks is not inaccurate, but it does not suggest the deep research or the potential for discussion and future research that these papers have provided. the first and land papers raise interesting questions about what it means to be a polk and who qualifies. family and the use of family names is both limited and expansive. as our first presenter demonstrated, uncovering the family tree of the 11th president of the united states proved a daunting task. lost records or no records. conflicting memory and inaccurate reporting combined to obscure the names and origins of even the most closely connected of the president's relatives.

the dna project was developed for the purpose of bringing clarity to the search and to the historical record. as i read this paper, i wondered about james k. polk and his search for his family's past. what was his motivation in undertaking a lengthy correspondence to fill in the blanks of what was his most productive period? had political opponents raised questions he wanted to answer, friend and kinship secured network and political power. did he hope to expand the polk network? was he curious or did a delineation of kinship hold a special meaning? at this period of time, i've come across several diaries where people are suddenly seeming to be interested in

understanding their family origins. and i'm wondering if this was a national kind of interest at the moment, and what that says about things as people began to try to find their lineage. many of them, i would add, are looking for ancestors who participated in the american revolution. throughout this symposium, we've had illusions to the networks of political and social power. and the kinship friendship networks is kind of an old trope, but it works. it works in lots of things. i think in some ways this is what we're seeing here. so we can ask the question in what ways was the polk family tree a symbol of power and in what ways did it simply satisfy curiosity? mr. kinslow's research raises new questions.

alliance enslaved from the moment of his birth assumed the sir name polk along emancipation. the taking of the name followed a lifelong pattern of ak wessing to the -- alliance seemingly understood that presenting himself as alliance polk would open doors that might otherwise be closed to him as a free man. as we are shown, he was able to leverage modest positions for himself in a period of uncertainty. others also saw advantage to recognize him as alliance polk. proponents of the lost cause ideology and white supremacy used the continued aassociation with the polks and his evident conservatism as living evidence that slavery was not the brutal system that abolitionists claimed it to be.

were there other advantages for men and women in power to provide alliance polk with patronage positions? we generally consider patronage something that in specifically in terms of high level offices, and lofty positions but alliance obtained a rather low position that others seem very interested in offering to him. and so we need to ask questions about what that patronage meant. and what attention has been given to low level positions in the patronage system. lucas kelly's paper reminds us that manifest's destiny infused american actions if not american thought, long before the mid 19th century and provides us with a family history of collinization and power. as the first presentation showed the movement west and south allowed the family to acquire wealth and consolidate power.

the acquisition of slaves in north carolina facilitated the expansion of wealth in ways that land did not. movement into tennessee and mississippi highlighted the economic reach of the family and enabled the rise of the political power of james k. polk. i would encourage mr. kelly to look book ward to the various migrations to understand the role moving to the various frontiers in both the colonial and early national periods. what that played in consolidating the power of the family and shaping familial ideas about nation and manifest destiny. tom cohen's presentation of james k. polk in the bank war at first seems to have less in common with the previous papers. however, the issues surrounding the bank war and the westward expansion place it well within the discussion here.

that polk was so centrally involved and that he would be so dogged in his pursuit of the banks affairs should not surprise us given what we know now about his family and the ongoing migration for land. and i will not go into the bank wars. many the person who has been lost in that morass, and i don't think -- it's raining outside. we don't want to invite anything more. we won't go into the details about the bank war. but i think a fruitful avenue for us to think about today is how that ties to the other papers. and how to explore polk's resistance to the report among his neighbors demanding that he vote for the bank and his perception of them. he calls them dependent debtors of the bank, and that begs the question of who they are. how did they fit into the west

ward movement in the consolidation of power? were they like the polks, families that had arrived early and then fell on hard times? or were they newcomers who found the opportunities for advancement closed? or perhaps they had a different perception of what settlement and consolidation of power entailed. and what networks they were a part of at that moment in time. the migration path of the polk family, the role of the family in consolidating political and economic power, the action of james k. polk and the recognition of the power of the name polk bean e vance -- there's networks in advancing

economic and political power. what we will do, i will call on people. move to the microphone when you have a question and direct it to any of our participants. we have about 10 minutes to take questio questions. >> i'm just wondering, did alliance polk have children? and does -- >> not -- >> was there a legacy that's continued? >> not that i've seen. in fact, one obituary said he had no children whatsoever. so i don't believe that there are descendents of he himself much like james polk. >> i'm gary freeze, i teach in north carolina. i am a connoisseur of the knoxs,

but i have a question about the first polks. you indicated that the records are not really clear about the first one. could you clarify a little more about what you know or don't know about that? >> well, to tell you the truth, i have not spent a lot of time going into that county history and the polks beyond there. i lived in maryland and had access to the original colonial records. i sort of specialized in what i call the earlier colonial history, and my colleague who i mentioned, bill polk of kansas city who is an excellent genealogy person of the polk family can answer it better than i can. having said that, the -- i know that the five sons of william polk who i talked about, the great grandfather and the president, didn't all come at the same time down into north

carolina. in particular, his son, john, who married the daughter of who is a patriot. evan shelby, married eleanor shelby. they stayed longer up in pennsylvania and came down later. but i think certainly my own ancestor, thomas polk, came down quite early and was down there about 1754. i think the other brothers about that time too. william polk, we don't know exactly where he settled. and we don't know where he died. we don't know the exact date of his death. but it was probably around 1758. >> okay. >> so that's about all i can offer for that for now. >> alliance, was he genetically a polk? i didn't catch anything about his parents. >> i personally don't think he is. of course, there's never been anything to confirm or deny anything.

so we know that when samuel polk is married his father gifts him attractiveland in pineville, and when his wife's father, so james knox, when he dies, in his will two enslaved women named violet and looucy are transferred to h daughters. samuel polk gets those women. around late 1805, early 1806, we see -- those are the only two enslaved people on that property at that time. but about 1805, two enslaved men come on to the property. and around 1806 alliance polk was born. so we're not even 100% sure who his parents are, but -- >> so you could say alliance is

possibly a north carolina nate snif. >> yeah. he would say he was and he would say his major and death certificates say he was from charlottesville. pineville would have been the greater charlotte area. he considered himself a north carolina native. >> okay. >> tennessean as well. >> thank you. >> is it fair to say or is it oversimplification to say that the coverup was worse than the scandal and that kind of caused the -- >> it certainly didn't make the bank look good. if he had fezzed up to the government, yeah, i think essentially the answer is right. i think that was -- much like with water vaping and third degree burglary. the real crime is what happened after. if he had openly said to the

government i prefer doing this with our money rather than -- i think it would have -- there was still some griping that could have been done about the decision. i don't think he would have gotten away scot-free, but he surely made matters worse. >> the little i know about his controversy with andrew jackson about the bank, is it your opinion -- it's shocking to think the bank -- person in charge of the bank would think he could disregard the direction of his primary customer just to make a little money. >> yeah. and that was essentially the scandal. yeah. bittle never did himself -- he was an interesting guy. he was recluse about optics in the way his behavior came off to other people, and just from an optics and public relations perspective. he was constantly kind of doing things like that.

it made the bank seem a lot more kind of arbitrary and tyrannical and heavy handed. it wasn't to a certain extent, but there was just kind of clumsiness to the way he kind of played his hands. it made his position harder and harder to kind of sustain. >> thank you. >> other questions? okay. then thank you very much for your attention. let's give a round of applause. all week we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. lectures in history. american artifacts. real america. the civil war. oral histories. the presidency. and special event coverage about

our nation's history. enjoy american history tv now and every weekend on c-span3. >> weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight the life and career of general dwight d. eisenhower who was america's 34th president in is the 53. we begin with david mills on how the world war ii partnership between george marshal and general eisenhower helped win the war. mr. mills is a military history professor with the u.s. army command and general staff college. watch american history tv tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span3.

sunday, a american history tv live special call in program looking back at wood stock. david farber, author, joins us to take your calls. >> drugs mattered, but who takes those drugs and why the drugs from v they did in the 60s and 70s is something we're wrestling with as slcholars to understand. the technology of drugs is imperative as an understanding i think not just of the 60s but of the production of history. what drugs we use at a given period and place have an incredible ability to change the direction. >> call in to talk about the social movements of the 60s, leading up to wood stock and the lega legacy. wood stock, 50 years. sunday at 9:00 a.m. eastern on

c-span's washington journal. >> watch book tv. starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern our coverage includes author interviews with justice ruth bader ginsburg on her book. traifd tre -- david treyer. rick atkinson, and thomas malone, founding director of the myth director of intelligence discusses superminds. the national book festival live saturday august 31st at 10:00 a.m. eastern on book tv on c-span2. the united states declared war on mexico on may 13th, 1846. what became known as mr. polk's

war resulted in more than 500,000 square miles of new u.s. territory. right now on american history tv author joseph wheelan talks about "invading mexico" america's continental dream and the mexican war" where he chronicles the desire to obtain california through war. >> good evening. on behalf of the staff and the owners of quail ridge books and music, i welcome you. tonight we are honored to have joseph wheelan to discuss his new book. a graduate of the university of wyoming and the university of colorado denver, he began his early stent in writing as a state editor of the casper wyomingr