The first president to commit himself to a single term, Polk resolved to govern independently. He also had definite goals for his administration: a reduced tariff, reestablishment of the Independent Treasury System, settlement of the Oregon Question, and the acquisition of California.

Full Name: James Knox Polk

Birth Date & Place: November 2, 1795 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina

Schooling: Home schooled until age of 18. Attended a Presbyterian school near Columbia, Tenn.

Lived: North Carolina
Tennessee frontier
Family plantation in Tennessee
White House — Washington, D.C.

Death: June 15, 1849 in Nashville, Tennessee

1832: Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and chief administration leader in the House under Andrew Jackson; beat back efforts of supporters fighting to revers Jackson's policy and secure recharter of the Second Bank of the United States.

1844: Elected 11th President of the United States of America by the thinnest margin in history at that time.

• Restored an independent Treasury system
• Sharply checked federal appropriations for internal improvements
• Reduced tariffs substantially
• Oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. boundaries.

Nickname: "Young Hickory" because of his support of Andrew Jackson's initiatives.

Campaign slogan: "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" to balance the idea of a new slave state (Texas) with a new free state (Oregon).

"Although... the Chief Magistrate must almost of necessity be chosen by a party and stand pledged to its principles and measures, yet in his official action he should not be the President of aparty only, but of the whole people of the United States."

"There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress... than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S."

"We must ever mandate the principle that the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny."

www.americanpresident.org/presbios/presbios.htm

http://ap.gi.grolier.com

www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jp11.html