Sarah Childress Polk was a First Lady in the tradition of Abigail Adams — confident, outspoken, and politically involved. Her parents were wealthy Tennessee Presbyterians who sent Sarah to the best girls’ school in the South. At 20, Sarah married 28-year-old James Polk, a Tennessee legislator and Andrew Jackson protege who had prospered in real estate. The two had no children but shared a love of politics, participating jointly in James’ career and in the management of his distant cotton plantations.

During Polk’s 14 years in Congress, Sarah developed friendships with influential politicians. Behind the scenes, she gave her husband advice, reviewed his speeches, copied his correspondence, and highlighted newspaper articles for him to read. She continued this practice as First Lady. A believer in America’s God-given “destiny” to expand across the continent, Sarah shunned dancing, drinking, and card-playing on religious grounds. Even so, she enjoyed entertaining — albeit sedately — at the White House, but worried constantly about James’ frail health. Widowed just three months after James left office, Sarah lived on for another 42 years in the couple’s Nashville home and devoted herself to preserving her husband’s memory.

Eleventh President
James Knox Polk

James Polk was a Tennessee lawyer, Governor and U.S. Speaker of the House before he emerged as the Democrats’ compromise Presidential candidate in 1845, defeating the Whig leader Henry Clay. The “dark horse” President claimed America had a “manifest destiny” to expand across the continent. The public agreed, but his own party was divided on the issue, knowing that Polk’s vision could well result in war with Mexico or Britain.

The Mexican War began in 1846 after Texas joined the Union. Triumphant American forces entered Mexico City in 1847. The Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty of 1848 established the Texas border at the Rio Grande and provided for America’s purchase of a huge tract of land encompassing what is now California and Nevada and parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. War with Britain in the Northwest was averted by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which fixed most of that territory’s boundary at the 49th parallel.

Polk fulfilled all his campaign pledges, including lowering the national tariff and establishing an independent Treasury. The Presidency took a toll on his health, however, and he died three months after leaving office.

Eleventh President
Democrat