James "Just Call Me Jimmy" KaNox Polk was the 11^th President of the United States.  Sandwiched between Johnny Tyler and Zachary "Not Zachariah" Taylor, he served only one term, from 1845 to 1849, and is best known for a massive land grab, adding more territory to the United States than any other president with the exception of Mort Humgartner, but you don't know about him yet.

Polk was born in November of 1795 to a privileged North Carolina family.  After college, which is what privileged children do, he went into politics, where he became buddies with fellow North Carolinian-who-also-became-a-Tennessean Andy Jackson.  And if you don't remember our 7^th President, Andrew Jackson, he was so polarizing he caused the creation of the modern two party system, and we all know how well that's working.  He even claimed a Presidential election in which he lost was rigged (never mind that it probably was).  Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.  Jackson was especially nasty when it came to anybody who wasn't white.  He waged wars on the Native Americans, stole their land, and was responsible for the Trail of Tears – a forced death march if ever there was one.  And let's not forget the black folk.  Jackson grew up with slavery.  He bought and sold slaves (as did Polk).  He supported the westward expansion of slavery and opposed anyone trying to end it.  His argument for not ending slavery was that it would cause a war.  Never mind the money he was making off of slavery.  You know, there just isn't a whole lot to like about this guy.  And he was Polk's buddy.  In fact, Polk, who served in the House of Representatives during Jackson's presidency, was known as one of Jackson's Chief Lieutenants. 

Back to Polk.  After serving as Speaker of the House, Polk became the Governor of Tennessee, his adopted home state.  In 1848 he quite successfully stumbled back into national politics.  Polk was originally being groomed as the vice-presidential candidate running with Martin Van Buren, who apparently wasn't content with already having been the 8^th President.  But then Polk's buddy Andrew Jackson got involved, and he convinced Polk that doing what the public wants is what wins elections, and the public was wanting a land grab.  Since Van Buren wasn't for annexing Texas, the party dropped him at the convention and made Polk their candidate, and Polk won.  And that's the definition of a dark horse – a little known candidate, opponent, or whatever who rises from seeming obscurity and unexpectantly wins. 

And win he did, because Polk was willing to give the people what they wanted.  And what they wanted was Manifest Destiny – the belief that American expansion over… well… everything, was the Will of God; therefore, it was both justified and inevitable.  God says it's OK.  You can take all you want. 

And Polk got most of what the people wanted.  In fact, the only place he didn't get everything was in Canada.  Originally Polk had wanted everything south of Alaska (54-40 or Fight!) and west of the Continental Divide, which is all of western Canada – all of British Columbia, the Yukon, and a good hunk of the Northwest Territories and Alberta.  Britain, who was running Canada at the time, said, "What the bloody hell?"  Fortunately, we avoided a war, and eventually we signed a treaty that gave us everything  south of the 49^th Parallel, except for Vancouver Island, and Canada got all of that.  So stop asking.  

Shortly thereafter, in 1845 we annexed Texas.  Promises made, promises kept.  As you know from your Lone Star history, after winning its independence from Mexico in 1836 Texas was its very own Republic, capital "R" and everything.  President Van Buren wanted to make that territory part of the United States from the start, but Mexico was still a bit pissy about having lost all that land, and was still deluding themselves that they would ever get it back, so they were threatening war if the US actually did annex it.  They'd put up with Texas as their neighbor, but not the entire United States.  I mean, seriously, can you blame them?  The threat of war with Mexico was enough to keep Van Buren (both times), Harrison (that's Henry William), and Tyler from annexing Texas, but not Polk.  Surprisingly, though, Mexico did not go to war… not then.

Polk then tried to buy everything else he wanted from Mexico, but Mexico said, "Gracias, pero, no."  So we just took it anyway in 1848, in the Mexican-American war.  We ended up getting over half of the entire land mass of the entire country of Mexico.  Any way you look at it, that's a lot of land.  No wonder they didn't want us as neighbors.  We got all of present day California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, along with a good hunk of Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana.  Although we may have gotten those parts of Wyoming and Montana in the Canada deal.  It gets confusing.  Thing is, we got it all. 

In all, Polk added the entire West Coast to America, hell, pretty much the entire West, including all of the Southwest.  And the people loved him for it.  But, yeah, that's pretty much it.  That's pretty much all he's known for.  God wanted us to have all that land, and Polk took it.  Amen.

Of course, with all that new real estate came the quandary of expanding slavery, which would become one of the deciding issues in the Civil War, but that wasn't Polk's problem.  He was through with it all.  Polk had promised to serve only one term, and that's all he served.  He returned home to Tennessee and died just three months after he left office.  Talk about upstaging the new president.