It was largely unmerited, for Tyler was a capable man, had seen service in Congress and as governor of his state; but he was dry and uninspiring, and not big enough for the presidency, into which he could never have come except by accident.  His administration was marked by few important events except the annexation of Texas, which will be dealt with more particularly when we come to consider the lives of Sam Houston and the other men who brought the annexation about.  He retired to private life at the close of his term, appearing briefly twenty years later as a member of a “congress” which endeavored to prevent the war between the states, and afterwards as a member of the Confederate Congress, in which he served until his death.

Clay secured the Whig nomination for himself, in the campaign of 1844, and his opponent on the Democratic ticket was James Knox Polk, a native of North Carolina, but afterwards removing to Tennessee.  He had been a member of Congress for fourteen years, and governor of Tennessee for three, and was a consistent exponent of Democratic principles.  Two great questions were before the country:  the annexation of Texas and the right to Oregon.  Polk was for the immediate annexation of Texas and for the acquisition of Oregon up to 54 deg. 40” north latitude, regardless of Great Britain’s claims, and “Fifty-four forty or fight!” became one of the battle-cries of the campaign.  Clay, inveterate trimmer and compromiser that he was, professed to be for the annexation of Texas, provided it could be accomplished without war with Mexico, which was arrant nonsense, since Mexico had given notice that she would consider annexation an act of war.  The result of Clay’s attitude, and of a widespread distrust of his policies, was that Polk was elected by a large majority.

His administration was destined to be a brilliant one, for Texas was at once annexed, and the brief war with Mexico which followed, one of the most successful ever waged by any country, carried the southwestern boundary of the United States to the Rio Grande, and added New Mexico and California to the national domain, while a treaty with England secured for the country the present great state of Oregon, although here Polk receded from his position and accepted a compromise which confined Oregon below the forty-ninth parallel.  But even this was something of a triumph.  With that triumph, the name of Marcus Whitman is most closely associated, through a brilliant but rather useless feat of his, of which we shall speak later on.  Polk seems to have been an able and conscientious man, without any pretensions to genius—­just a good, average man, like any one of ten thousand other Americans.  He refused a renomination because of ill-health, and died soon after retiring from office.

The Democratic party had by this time become hopelessly disrupted over the slavery question, which had become more and more acute.  The great strength of the state rights party had always been in the South, and southern statesmen had always opposed any aggression on the part of the national government.  The North, on the other hand, had always leaned more or less toward a strong centralization of power.  So it followed that while the Democratic party was paramount in the South, its opponents, by whatever name known, found their main strength in the North.