Met His Every Goal?: James K. Polk and the Legends of Manifest Destiny

While examining primary-source materials as editor of the Correspondence of James K. Polk, historian Tom Ghaffin made an astonishing discovery: a central defining anecdote of Polk and his presidency he-learned, hangs by the thinnest of evidentiary threads, Ac- cording to the oft-told story, soon after winning the presidency Polk slapped his thigh and declared that his one-term administration would be dedicated to "four great measures"-acquiring the Oregon Country and California, reducing tariffs, and establishing a permanent independent treasury. In Met Fits Every Goal? Chaffin explores that story's questionable provenance and pinpoints its origin. He also demonstrates how the tale has become a kind of "factoid" an alleged truth repeated so often and so earnestly that it has acquired the area of received wisdom. Along the way Chaffin examines each of the tale's so-called four great measures and demonstrates how the anecdote has obscured the eleventh president's actual deeds, often simplifying a complex legacy. Ironically, by expanding the nation's area by a third, this president, albeit genuinely devoted to national unity, further sectionalized its politics; widening fractures among the states, divisions that soon led to civil war, Engagingly written and lavishly illustrated. Met His Every Goal? offers a primer on arc enigmatic autocrat as well as a case study of how historians use primary sources to explore-and, in some cases, explode-received conceptions of the past.