Posted on 06/30/2025 9:47:47 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
James K. Polk was our most underrated president. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, Polk, a Democrat, won an improbable victory when he beat the Whig candidate Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election. During his single, tumultuous term, he expanded U.S. territory across vast expanses of the West and Southwest, from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Coast up to the 49th parallel. He lowered the heavy tariffs supported by the industrial north, stripped public tax funds from unaccountable private banks and created an independent Treasury that survived for more than 60 years. By the time he left office in March 1849, he was played out physically and politically. He would be dead within four months, at the age of 53.
Robert W. Merry wrote a masterful biography of James Polk titled A Country of Vast Designs, wherein he lays out the nuanced and complex history of this era. For example:
Mexico established its independence from Spain in 1821 and set about to address a problem that had plagued the Spanish overlords for generations -- the dearth of settlement in Texas and California and a consequent inability to establish dominion over those lands. Unlike the robust Anglo-Saxon migrations to the New World, the Spanish influx had not encompassed large numbers of families seeking land for cultivation and settlement. The Spanish migrants had been more bent on establishing themselves as a societal elite superimposed over the established Indian societies. This worked in the New Spain heartland, where the populous Indians had established a high degree of civilization. But in areas such as Texas, where the landscape was forbidding and Apache and Comanche Indians posed a brutal threat, it faltered. To address this problem, Spain had granted large tracts of Texas land to an American group headed by Moses Austin.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
What I found very interesting when I read this AT article this morning was:
In the 1820s, the non-Indian population of Alta California, which included California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, stood at barely 3,000 people. Similarly, only about 5,000 Mexicans lived in Texas in 1830. For comparison, Mexico as a whole had a population of somewhere between 6 and 8 million people in 1830. A tiny fraction of the total population living in an area does not denote a “homeland” by any stretch of the term.
Repeating is good!
A tiny fraction of the total population living in an area does not denote a “homeland” by any stretch of the term.
If you don't believe it, ask King George III what happened to his American Colonies.
I think current Mexican thinking runs more along the lines of creating a dominant hispanic majority in the U.S. and then moving to create a North American union.
Where to locate the capitol is a very secondary question.
The culture would be hispanic. The language would be Spanish. The political system would be a corrupt one party state systematically looting the productive classes to support the political class and its clients.
It’s good to see more of these articles.
Then it’s not just me posting the points like I did here 25 years ago.
What needs to happen is a nice presentation is put on in the Senate of the United States and required everyone to be present...including Alex Padilla and Rueben Gallego, both of whom claim to be “American” and have the right to make laws for those of us without hyphens in front of our ethnic checkboxes.
Mexico never controlled anything California. It was a rump attempt to control land that the Pope said belonged to the Spanish King in 1495, back when they both thought they owned the planet. A few thousand opportunists who engaged in subsistence farming and ranching in a space that was still almost empty with 300,000 natives does not a nation make. Spain and Mexico did not have the population nor the technology to populate and maintain control over the land they claimed...and still do.
But affirmative action for their entire nation and welfare to birth and raise their children while telling us to abort ours certainly can help them make a good go at a re-try.
“The culture would be hispanic. The language would be Spanish. The political system would be a corrupt one party state systematically looting the productive classes to support the political class and its clients”
That’s the plan.
They came to take, not make.
The Caudillos who concocted the Encomienda system still think it can work...as long as they can get credulous gringos to grovel to them.
”The political system would be a corrupt one party state systematically looting the productive classes to support the political class and its clients”
We were heading deeper into that territory even beyond last November 5th for a few months more. It all changed for the better of the country on Jan 20. The big fight for our survival began that day.
Bookmark
Sounds a lot like Mexico.
There are ten Polk Counties in the US named after James K. Polk (another two are named after someone else). That has to be close to the top of counties named after a President.
That sounds like a fascinating history book. I never pondered why Spain didn’t send forth large numbers of emigrants seeking land and wanting to settle in their New World empire.
Author is John M. Contino. Maybe you can fix that?
I would argue that has been the U.S. Ruling Class all along, and it started wayyy before Biden, Bush JR put the plan on the fast track (i.e acceptance of Matricular Cards as legal ID for banking, etc started with him), and it was only slowed down because of 9/11.
Starting in the 2000's you started to see widespread use of English/Spanish consumer packaging, along with the standardization of Spanish language only elementary school classrooms.
This is also when the Bush JR administration pushed back the use of "technology" instead of physical barriers when a rash of serious border incursions occured, along with charging and convicting Border Agents Compean and Ramos for shooting two people illegally crossing the border.
Polk did die just a few months after leaving office, but I think he died of cholera, so he could have survived longer otherwise. The 1844 election was very close and I think a third party anti-slavery candidate drew enough votes away from Henry Clay to cost him the election.
The rest of it was CONQUERED. Taken BY FORCE. You want it back? Come take it back, bitches!
This is right. A handful of Mexicans present in California and Texas when Mexico lost the territory by war but were paid for it anyway means exactly zero today. The Spanish and then Mexicans had many years/decades to build something north of Mexico but couldn’t because their people wouldn’t come here. They don’t want to come now because the land is “Mexican” - they just want to free-ride off what the gringos have built
Bkmk
Exactly right. Spain and later Mexico did NOTHING with their outposts in what is now the USA. When news of the 1848 gold discovery spread via sailing ships, there was a huge influx of people from Hawaii, China, and other Pacific locations to Alta California. A few thousand Oregonians and others from the Pacific Northwest began migrating south along the Siskiyou Trail. People from Chile, Peru, and Mexico arrived by ship and overland. In 1849, the Forty-Niners, primarily Americans, arrived in California after President James K. Polk confirmed the gold discovery and the US Mint declared it genuine. A significant number of Europeans, including those from France, Germany, and Great Britain, also made their way to California in search of gold. People from Australia and various other parts of the world also joined the gold rush.
James K Polk has been my favorite President for some time. Accomplished every single goal he said he would do and more. Said he would only serve one term and then left.
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