we want to get it right. >> watch sunday at 7:30 p.m. eastern and pacific part of american history tv. this weekend on c-span 3. >> each week at this time american history tv features an hour long conversation with c span's sunday night interview series q&a. here's this week's encore q&a on american history tv. >> this week on q&a, a new look at our 11th president, james poke. robert merry has written a new book about him called a country of vast designs. james k. poke, the mexican war and the conquest of the american continent.

>> bob merry, in your book a country of vast ziens about james polk in the first part in the introduction you talk about a senator named benton. >> thomas hart benton. >> why? >> he was a big man and a big giant of his time. thomas benton -- john tyler called him the most raving political maniac i ever knew. but benton was representing missouri in the senate for 30 years. he was a powerful figure. he wrote a massive memoir after that which historians have been using for a century and a half. he was very powerful during that time. >> the story though about the duel and an drew jackson never ceases to amaze me when i read it. what was the story? >> benton has been jackson's aid to camp in the war of 1812 they

were very close. but jackson -- there were a lot of duels in tennessee in those days when jackson was relatively younger. and he consented to be the second of a friend of his who was duelling thomas benton's brother jesse. jesse took a bullet to the buttocks, which proved somewhat embarrassing. as a result of that the bentons were trashing jackson's name all over nashville. jackson didn't like that. he took himself quite seriously. so he went after after the two of them with a riding whip. guns were drawn. bullets flew. benton was wounded. jackson was wounded in the shoulder. he was lying in the street of nashville bleeding profusely almost died. benton sort of realized that given the fact that jackson was the hero of tennessee every loved him, that he'd better get the heck out of dodge. he left nashville and went to missouri and rose up to be missouri's top politician for 30

years. >> is this the incident that resulted in andrew jackson walking around with bullets in his shoulder for the rest of his life? >> that was one of the incidents. that was a bullet in his shoulder he was never able to get ride of. >> i would say jackson and benton became allies in politics when jackson was president and benton in the senate. they saw eye to eye on most things and they were together on most of the big issues of the day. >> another senator you write about, the reason i'm bringing this up is to set is mood of that time period, benton was a democratic. >> he was a democratic. >> polk was a democratic. >> right. >> and mcduffy was a democratic. >> correct from south carolina. >> what was his story? >> mcduffy was a property jay of john c. calhoun. he was a democratic, but a southern democratic.

he had very -- the issue then was nullification which meant to states could nullify federal laws they didn't like. jackson said that's tantamount to succession. jackson said i'll hang the troops down. i'll hang any traders who try to render this hallow union and he tried to quash the nullification union. those southerners especially from south carolina were very weary of the federal government and mcduffy never really came to heal with regard to either jackson or polk. >> so, what's the difference between the democratic party today and the democratic party you're writing about? >> the democratic party of polk's day was much closer really to the republican party of today. i happen to believe that the 20th century president that was most like jackson was ronald

reagan. and that the 20th president who was most like jackson's great rival henry clay, was franklin roosevelt. they were both great patriots, clay and jackson, they hated each other, but they loved america. they had nothing but the greatest designs for america's future. but clay believed in the concentration of power in washington on behalf of all those aims and goals. whereas jackson believed that power should be diffused and spread out among the people as much as possible. so in these days they would talk about strict construction. all the democrats in those days were in favor of strict constructions of the constitution. that's a republican phrase today. or small government. that's a republican phrase. >> so we really should throw out the labels and try to compare them. >> start over. what was the moment that led you

to write a book act james knox polk? >> that gave me an opportunity to note this was not my idea. the idea came from my editor who's legendary in publishing circles as somebody who loves narrative history and has a passion for american history and she asked me during a discussion we were having when i was coming up with some ideas for some books which she was not particularly enamored of. she said, well we'll come up with something, what do you know act the mexican war? i said i'm not a military historian, but i love politics. i do know that was a period of very intense politics. therein probably lies a story. give me a couple weeks to figure out how i would shape it. so i did and sent aeroa memo and that's how i got started. >> i think i've seen alice mayhem on a video in some panel she was discussing. she won't sit for an interview, hasn't so far. what is she like?

never met her. >> oh, alice she's so smart and she's so passionate about these things. she's very opinionated. she's very direct. she's just a wonderful character been in publishing i don't know for how many decades. >> what was her reaction when you went back to her? >> a lot of tough questions. she wanted to make sure i had it shaped right. i went back and rewrote the memo. then she seemed to like it and sent me on my own. for three years we had almost no conversation until she got the full manu script. i was kind of nervous in previous books editors read them along the way to make sure they were on the right track. >> what did she want you to do that you hadn't done before? what was she after compared to what you were after? >> i think it was a question of

making sure that the narrative had enough drive and that the characters were coming in. i don't remember the exact details that she made suggestions on. >> how'd you go about this? >> well, i had a job. i was running congressional quarterly so that was a pretty demanding job. i had to sort of shape my effort kind of carefully. i read a lot of newspapers. in fact, i read the daily globe and the daily gunion. those were the democratic papers one succeeded the other and the wig newspaper. i read those newspapers like i would be reading the washington and "the new york times" today. i read them day-by-day. >> at your computer? >> no. it's not convenient to do it through computer because of the printout requirement. it's very difficult a big broad sheet newspaper. if you print out the whole page you can't read it.

you can't put them together. i'd go to the library of congress or the martin luther king library here and read it there. print out columns and put them in order and then read them again and magic marker them and put them in files and try to figure out how the narrative goes. and then of course, letters. polk -- all polk's letters have been published in multiple volumes, all of which i have and polk kept a diary during his presidency. four volumes 500 pages each. i pretty much had to memorize that diary. he poured his heart into the dreierry. he told his dreierry what he was thinking and feeling. he was feeling beset by his political opponents a lot of the time. i was able to get a little bit of life into it. >> i want to come back to the diary and letters later. paint a picture of him physically as a person. >> not an imposing man. not an unattractive man.

he was medium height about 5'8". he was relatively small compared to the giants of the time. thomas benton was big. anjou jackson was big. henry clay was lanky and tall. polk didn't have that. i describe him as small of stature and drab of temperment. he was a stand offish kind of a guy. didn't like people very much. he was somewhat self-righteous. upon first meeting people didn't really gravitate to him. what he had that led people to underestimate him looking at the other traits was an amazing ironclad will and a determination to bring about whatever goal or aim he set for himself. and he was driven. he was always working. always conniving. always thinking. always figuring out how to move things forward towards the democratic aim. >> he was our 11th president who

was our 10th and then the one after him? >> he succeeded john tyler. john tyler succeeded the presidency upon the death of william henry harrison. he had been a democrat turned whig. the democrats have been very good to him. he was elected to the senate as a democrat at adown age. >> who are you talking about now? >> tyler. then he became a whig. he was elected vice president and succeeded to the presidency. the problem was he wasn't really a whig. and the whigs were very, very upset with him. they did get a tariff bill increase what was a whig platform item. but what he did that was remarkable and big was that he initiated negotiations with texas, independent nation of texas that had declared its independence from mexico to bring texas into the united states in annexuation. that in my view really led to

the kind of explosion of expansionist sentiment in america. >> who was right after james polk? >> zachary taylor who was a general during the mexican war. so polk had been his commander in chief. polk never really liked zachary taylor. didn't think much of it. thought of him as an unimaginative guy. my own view of taylor as a military man was that he strategically was limited. he got himself in a lot of scrapes. he got his armies in unfortunate situations, but technically brilliant, and therefore managed to get his armies out of those scrapes and unfortunate circumstances. >> a whig? >> he was a whig. that was another reason polk didn't like him. he didn't trust whigs. his other great general winfield scott was also a whig. they had terrible relationship throughout the war. >> in those days what would a

whig stand for and where would a whig stand today in what party? >> well, in terms of the big question that reverberates through our politics which is concentration of power in washington or out in the states, the whigs were more in favor of concentration of power in washington. in that sense they would be more along the liberal side. but what was emerging was an increasing consciousness and concern about the slavery issue. the whig party was really at the more of the vanguard of pushing on the slavery issue. there were some democrats in the northeast particularly in new york there were also raising serious questions about slavery. but if you go to massachusetts, which was the hot bed of abolitionism those abligss were largely whigs. >> how many slaves did james polk own? >> that's a good question. i don't know the answer to that.

i didn't get into that. i got scored a bit in a review in ""newsweek"" which was a laudatory review. i was pleased to get it from graham. graham, the chairman of "the washington post." but he notes that i didn't really get into polk as a slave owner. i didn't get into polk's personal life to the extent that he would have liked. i think it's a fair criticism. >> by the way, i remember seeing that and i remember thinking what is donald graham doing a review on a book. >> i've never seen it before. >> do you have any idea why he did it? >> i talked to him subsequently. i wrote a book some years ago on -- we talked about it. and joe alsup was his uncle. his god father and very, very close. he liked that book a lot. he took an interest in the fact that i was writing a book on polk. seemed to like the book a lot. he decided to review it in "newsweek." i was very pleased to have him

do so. >> got a clip from that 1996 interview that you and i had about joseph alsop. let's see it. >> diz bill clinton have a relationship with any news person like joe alsop or stewart did with the presidents like lyndon johnson or jack kennedy? >> i don't know that he does. i don't believe that he does. >> what did you think when you found autothe letter of joe alsoppe write to president kennedy saying you're the greatest thing. lyndon johnson you're on the right track. does that go on today? >> i don't think it does. it shouldn't go on. i think that most people -- most journalists certainly, i think most other people who read this book say there's a lot of transgressions here. this guy is purporting to be a detached analytical news man and he's really snuggling up to a lot of his sources. he was a columnist of course. he wasn't an objective reporter who's simply giving facts.

he was a columnist. that would be part of his defense no doubt. but from almost the very beginning joe got very close to his sources and probably most people would say too close. >> now here we are many years later donald graham runs "the washington post." is there any way to relate a donald graham back to the days of james polk and what the journalistic atmosphere was back then? >> well, that's fascinating. those were the days of the partisan press. and james polk or any president had to have a newspaper that was his spokesman. that was his mouthpiece. and polk had a real problem when he became president because the daily globe, which had been the main democratic newspaper since jackson didn't really like polk very much. and it was run by francis blair of the famous blair family. >> that is blair house family?

>> blair house and lincoln had in his cabinet a blair and blairs from missouri. polk was afraid that if he kept blair in there at the globe that blair really was more in favor of thomas benton and martin van buren than polk and that was going to be a disaster for him. he had to maneuver to get the globe out of there so he could create the daily union. the problem was that his great mentor, the man that he revered andrew jackson loved blair. and jackson just could not understand why his two great proteges and friends and people that he loves so much couldn't get along. polk pulled it off and government blair out of there and created his own newspaper the daily union. >> so what's the difference between donald graham then and the blairs? >> i think that today's journalism is very, very different because there's at least a significant pretense and

a desire to reach for objectivity in our newspapers. we don't always live up to that successfully, but that is the rule that we try to follow. and don graham is of that tradition not of the partisan press tradition. >> you're raising from the state of washington and went to the university of washington and also columbia have a master's degree. you wrote for something called the national observer a dow jones publication and then "the wall street journal." how long were you with the national observer? >> i got in in the last two years of the observer. dow jones started in 1962. never made a dime for dow jones. they had great hopes for it. it was a weekly newspaper. it was journalistically a great success. most people thought the writing was particularly sparkling. i loved working for it. but on the last day of june, 1977 warren phillips, the chairman of dow jones took the

helicopter down from new york to tell us that they were closing it down. at that point i went into the washington bureau of "the wall street journal" where i had ten glorious years covering politics and white house. >> what'd you do after that? >> after that i ended up at congressional quarterly as managing editor. i spent two and a half years in that job after and then seven years as executive editor and then 12 years as ceo, president and editor in chief of congressional quarterly. >> and it was owned by a newspaper, the st. petersburg times and it was sold recently to what organization? >> fs sold to the economist group of london, which also owns roll call a washington publishing company focuses on congress as did congressional quarterly primarily. so the economist emerged the roll call and cq at which point they had that ceos for one news organization. i was the one standing when the music stopped. on august 4 at 4:15 at the

moment that the final papers were signed my job came to an end and at 6:00 the next morning i was on an airplane to seattle to sort of decompress. >> polk promised somewhere he'd be a one termer. when was that? >> as soon as he got the nomination. he wrote a letter in accepting the nomination vaing that he would if elected serve only one term. >> why? >> two reasons. i think one was frivolous, the other more serious. he believed in diffused powers. he didn't believe in entrenched power. power that remains in place becomes entrenched. the one term fit into that philosophy. i think that's frivolous after all andrew jackson served two terms and nobody raised any questions about that. more significantly, he emerged in a party, and as i said fs he was not an imposing figure.

he was not a giant of his time. and yet he emerged as a nominee at a time when the party was populated by big figures, very ambitious figures, thomas benton, martin van buren had been president, lost the presidency largely buzz after the panic of 1837, a real depression, wanted it back. a guy by the name of sigh louse wright of new york who died young. therefore we don't know much about him. he was a real giant of his time. john c. calhoun wanted the democratic nomination. polk's fear was that if these guys all thought that he was going to be in the presidency for eight years there was no way in the world they were going to get behind him in the election of 1844 and he needed them. he knew he was going to have a very close election against henry clay, which he did. >> how many political jobs did he have before he became president? >> elected to congress at age 25. he spent 14 years in the congress. he rose up to be chairman of the ways and means committee which

interested me, of course, because during my "the wall street journal" days i covered tax policy and ways and means. spent a lot of time hanging out there. never thought about james polk during those years. served as speaker for two terms. then he was importuned to go back to tennessee and run for governor. didn't really want to do it. the democrats were losing power. they were losing force in tennessee. largely again because of this panic of 1837. so he goes back. becomes governor. two years later he's running for re-election. he runs up against a young 30-year-old upstart from a backwoods of tennessee by the name of james jones. he went by the name of lean jimmy jones. lean jimmy was a joeser. he was a jester who didn't take things very seriously. we've tried polk as a man who took things very seriously included himself. pride himself on his mastery of all the air cana of all the

issues that the state faced. here's jimmy just prancing around him in the debates. at one opponent polk thinks he's going to puncture this upstart and he suggested his brand of politics is more suited to a circus than a political campaign whereupon lean jimmy says we both belong in the circus, i'd be the clown and you'd be the little guy in the red suit riding around on a pony. and lean jimmy knocks him out. so now his career is really stunned. he'd been on the side of history and on the side of andrew jackson and he couldn't believe what happened to him. two years later he ran again against lean jimmy hoping to goat the governorship back. and lean jimmy ran again. at which point polk looks finished. his only hope to resurrect his career was to get the vice presidential nomination. in those days people ran for the vice presidency it wasn't just annoited by the presidential

candidate. he tries to get the vice presidential nomination. things aren't going very well. then i note that tyler began the annexuation of texas. and two things happened. three things really. the country really galvanized behind that idea and the idea of onward expansion to the pacific. number one. number two, martin van buren came out against it and said the time's not right. number three, henry clay came out against it. it really destroyed the presidential prospects of both van buren and clay and polk became the compromise candidate at the democratic convention in baltimore in 1844. >> what ballot did he win on? >> ninth. >> and van buren had been president what years? >> he was elected after jackson so that would have been -- he was elected in '36 and defeated in '40. >> he was trying to run again. >> he wanted to get the

presidency back. >> he was a democrat. >> he was a democrat. >> but wasn't for the annexuation of texas. >> he was against it. >> you mentioned tariffs earlier. any part today want to put tariffs into the mix? >> not so much. tariffs are a big issue today. a free trade position versus people who are called protectionists. they don't like that term. that continues with us today. but bear in mind that was the primary source of revenue for our country in those days. we didn't have an income tax. in some ways the tariff issue is like our income tax issue today with regard to rates. the republicans are always in favor of reducing the rates. democrats are less in favor of that. in those days the whigs largely wanted higher tariff rates and democrats not so much. but like a lot of these issues there was a geographicical component.

so pennsylvania, for example, where there was a lot of industrialization they wanted high tariffs to protect themselves against imports. in the south doesn't matter whether you were a whig or democrat in the south you wanted low tariffs you didn't want the complications in trade regarding sending agriculture goods overseas. >> it's interesting a lot of people you talk about in their book today you can see their names everywhere including his vice president. >> dallas. >> they named dallas, texas, after him. did he do anything in history worth naming a city after? >> he was elected vice president. that's about the only thing he ever did. >> how did he get to be vice president? >> he's from the north and polk was from the south. in those days you had to have both. he had not antagonized anybody. and he wasn't used much by polk. he was kind of a nonentity as vice president.

he hadn't had a -- he had a serious career, but not a hugely distinguished career prior to that. i have no idea what happened to him afterwards. >> you point out he was the youngest president in history up until that time. but the most interesting thing at the very end it just drops out, he's out of the white house and three months later he's dead. >> polk as i say was a very serious minded guy. he worked very, very hard. he was micro manager. he worked himself very, very hard. and i believe that he worked himself to death literally. and the war, the mexican war which he maneuvered the country into in which he presided over for two years he thought it would be a brief war. it was a long war. it zapped his political standing. it brought huge concerns and grief to him. and as a result of that i think he just lost his resistance and he was not a particularly healthy man anyway. so he died most likely of

cholera. >> and those days he left march 4th or 5th. >> on march 4th. actually it ended up being march 5th because march 4th was a sunday. >> what did he do right after the presidency? >> he was on his way back to tennessee. he was going to buy a beautiful home. he did buy a beautiful home in nashville. it previously had been owned by a guy by the name of felix groundy, a prominent lawyer and legislator. he was looking forward to his retirement. he was sickly towards the end of his presidency and all the way on his journey back to tennessee. which began the day after the inauguration. and then he began to revive a little bit. he was refurbishing this house and then he took a turn for the worse. and very quickly he died. >> where did -- where was he born? >> born in north carolina. moved at age 11 to tennessee with his family.

that was a real pioneering frontier period, place in those days. it was dangerous. a lot of indian attack. when jacksonville went to tennessee a man, woman or child of the caucasian race was killed by indian attack every ten days or so. it was very dangerous. even when polk was a boy. but his family had become quite prominent in land. they speculated in land in north carolina. made a fair amount of money. went to tennessee with what they earned there. and did it again on a bigger scale. so they were quite prominent. very friendly with andrew jackson and all of his codery. and all of that sort of high end society of nashville and tennessee during that period. >> how did he meet sarah? >> sarah childress her brother had been a classmate of polk's. she was quite a bit younger. he had actually known her when