Web Site Is a Net Gain for Polk

It doesn’t matter who comes out ahead in this year’s drawn-out presidential election, as the winner was relegated to second-class status before he ever took office, according to one Web site.

The title on the page says it all: “James K. Polk: The Greatest President, Period.”

“When you think of great presidents, you automatically think Lincoln, Jackson and FDR,” said Tom DeRosa, 19, a Rutgers University sophomore who created the site when he was in high school in New Jersey. “Yeah, they all have their merits. But James K. Polk, he’s one of the forgotten ones.”

DeRosa’s page at https://www.users.nac.net/tderosa/polk.html advocates a commemorative $49 bill in Polk’s honor, and also posts the lyrics to a song about him by alternative rockers They Might Be Giants.

Austere, severe, he held few people dear

His oratory filled his foes with fear . . .

But precious few have mourned the passing of

Mr. James K. Polk, our 11th president

Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump.

“The [Web site’s] title is kind of tongue-in-cheek. But I do really believe what I wrote here. He’s my favorite, from what I’ve studied,” DeRosa said.

During Polk’s tenure from 1845 to 1849--he promised to serve only one term--the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean and established its current northern and southern borders, adding 800,000 square miles to the nation. And though he was a slave owner from Tennessee, he blocked the spread of slavery in the country.

DeRosa learned all this and more while writing an American history term paper at West Milford (N.J.) High School in 1996. Polk was his teacher’s favorite president, and DeRosa decided to prove him wrong.

“As I went out and did the research, it was all basically positive,” DeRosa said. “From the things I read, I thought he did a pretty good job, obviously.”

During Polk’s administration the United States annexed the Republic of Texas and won the war with Mexico, which ceded land that includes present-day Arizona, California, part of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The Union gained Florida, Texas, Iowa and Wisconsin as the 27th through 30th states. Polk also annexed the Oregon Territory, which includes present-day Washington state, and negotiated with Great Britain to set the U.S.-Canadian border at the 49th parallel. Thus the commemorative $49 note.

DeRosa said he gets about one e-mail a month from visitors to his Web site, including one from the presidential candidate of the Expansionist Party of the United States, which advocates a modern-day manifest destiny that would increase U.S. territory even more than Polk did.

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Steve Carney is a freelance writer.