James Knox Polk was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He also served as the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives from 1835 to 1839 and the ninth governor of Tennessee from 1839 to 1841. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy. Polk is known for extending the territory of the United States through the Mexican–American War during his presidency, annexing the Republic of Texas, the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican Cession after winning the Mexican–American War.
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.
The 29th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1845, to March 4, 1847, during the first two years of James Polk's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1840 United States census. Both chambers had a Democratic majority.
The 30th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1847, to March 4, 1849, during the last two years of the administration of President James K. Polk. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1840 United States census. The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House had a Whig majority. It was the only Congress in which Abraham Lincoln served.
The Thornton Affair, also known as the Thornton Skirmish, Thornton's Defeat, or Rancho Carricitos, was a battle in 1846 between the military forces of the United States and Mexico 20 miles (32 km) west upriver from Zachary Taylor's camp along the Rio Grande. The much larger Mexican force defeated the Americans in the opening of hostilities, and was the primary justification for U.S. President James K. Polk's call to Congress to declare war.
John Parker Hale was an American politician and lawyer from New Hampshire. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845 and in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1853 and again from 1855 to 1865. He began his congressional career as a Democrat, but helped establish the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and eventually joined the Republican Party.
The Republic of Texas was annexed into the United States and admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
The Mexican Cession is the region in the modern-day western United States that Mexico previously controlled, then ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. This region had not been part of the areas east of the Rio Grande that had been claimed by the Republic of Texas, though the Texas annexation resolution two years earlier had not specified the southern and western boundary of the new state of Texas. At roughly 529,000 square miles (1,370,000 km2), not including any Texas lands, the Mexican Cession was the third-largest acquisition of territory in U.S. history, surpassed only by the 827,000-square-mile (2,140,000 km2) Louisiana Purchase and the 586,000-square-mile (1,520,000 km2) Alaska Purchase.
David Wilmot was an American politician and judge. He served as Representative and a Senator for Pennsylvania and as a judge of the Court of Claims. He is best known for being the prime sponsor and eponym of the Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban the expansion of slavery to western lands gained in the Mexican Cession. A notable member of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, Wilmot later was instrumental in establishing the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording:
[The Congress shall have Power ...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water ...
The 1846–47 United States House of Representatives elections were held on various dates in various states between August 2, 1846, and November 2, 1847. Each state set its own date for its elections to the House of Representatives. 228 elected members representing 29 states took their seats when the first session of the 30th United States Congress convened December 6, 1847. The new states of Iowa and Texas elected their first representatives during this election cycle. These elections were held during President James K. Polk's term.
John Jay Hardin was a U.S. Representative and militia general from Illinois.
Edward Wilson McGaughey was an American politician who served as U.S. Representative from Indiana.
Daniel Gott was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. representative for New York's 24th congressional district from 1847 to 1851.
The presidency of James K. Polk began on March 4, 1845, when James K. Polk was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1849. He was a Democrat, and assumed office after defeating Whig Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election. Polk left office after one term, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 1844, and he was succeeded by Whig Zachary Taylor. A close ally of Andrew Jackson, Polk's presidency reflected his adherence to the ideals of Jacksonian democracy and manifest destiny.
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War, and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States Army from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory because Mexico refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna after he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.
The history of U.S. foreign policy from 1829 to 1861 concerns the foreign policy of the United States during the presidential administrations of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. During this era, the United States annexed the Republic of Texas, acquired the Mexican Cession by defeating Mexico in the Mexican–American War and partitioned Oregon Country with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The period began with the inauguration of Jackson in 1829, while the onset of the American Civil War in 1861 marked the start of the next period in U.S. foreign policy.
The California Statehood Act, officially An Act for the Admission of the State of California into the Union and also known as the California Admission Act, is the federal legislation that admitted California to the United States as the thirty-first state. Passed in 1850 by the 31st United States Congress, the law made California one of only a few states to become a state without first being an organized territory.
The Fourth Legislative Assembly of the Wisconsin Territory convened from December 5, 1842, to April 17, 1843, from December 4, 1843, to January 31, 1844, from January 6, 1845, to February 24, 1845, and from January 5, 1846, to February 3, 1846, in regular session.
