Sarah Polk

• Born: September 4, 1803
• Birthplace: Rutherford County, Tennessee
• Died: August 14, 1891
• Place of death: Polk Place, Nashville, Tennessee

President:James K. Polk 1845–1849

Overview

Sarah Polk was First Lady of Tennessee when James K. Polk, her husband, served as governor (1839–1841) and First Lady of the United States, when he served as president of the United States (1845–1849). She was well respected for her intelligent political advice, her wit and charm, and her acumen in dealing with political factions. She established a role for herself as her husband’s closest political adviser, serving as his secretary, thus establishing an example of a First Lady of great strength and political influence.

Early Life

Sarah Childress was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, to Joel Childress and Elizabeth Whitsitt Childress. The county seat of Murfreesboro was nearby. Her father, born in Campbell County, Virginia, had moved his family to Sumner County, Tennessee, in the 1790s. Murfreesboro served as the capital of Tennessee from 1819 to 1825, when the capital was transferred to Nashville. Sarah was the middle child, with an older brother, Anderson; an older sister, Susan; and three younger siblings: Benjamin, who died in infancy; John; and Elizabeth, who also died in infancy. From an early age, Sarah learned the arts of mediation and diplomacy. She became a beauty, with long, dark brown curls and brown eyes, and she wore immaculate silk and satin clothes from the finest dressmakers in the area.

Sarah received a genteel education, first with tutors at home, then at the local Bradley Academy, then at Abercrombie’s Boarding School, which was a private school in Nashville. She then attended the Moravian-run Female Academy in Salem, North Carolina. Sarah was educated in Greek and Roman literature, grammar, writing techniques, world history, and home economics. Respectability, manners, and breeding were the watchwords of her family upbringing.

Living in Tennessee’s capital allowed her to mingle with politicians and visiting dignitaries. Her parents were well-to-do land investors and plantation owners, and her father was appointed the first postmaster of Murfreesboro in 1813. The Childress children were close to their cousins, whose uncle Judge John Childress often hosted General Andrew Jackson at their home at Roxeby. Sarah’s family also supported the Jacksonian Democrats in the territory of Tennessee, which became a state in 1796. They supported General Jackson’s military forces during the War of 1812 by providing military uniforms.

Sarah’s father died in 1819 while she was at the Moravian Female Academy, and she returned home to aid her widowed mother while her brother Anderson settled the estate. Each surviving Childress child inherited one-fourth of the family estate when he or she reached the age of twenty-one, and they all continued to provide for their mother. Hence, Sarah became a wealthy young woman in her own right before she was married, and she learned to manage her own resources, a skill she would bring to the governor’s mansion as well as the White House. Her upbringing taught her to be frugal but to enjoy the finer appointments of a household. As First Lady, she always did things elegantly but took care not to be lavish. Simple elegance served her husband’s best interests, and this image later was well appreciated by the public.

Marriage and Family

Sarah’s highbred gentility dictated that she marry for position as well as for love, and she found a perfect match in James K. Polk, born November 2, 1795, near Pineville, North Carolina. His family had moved, like the Jacksons and Childresses, to Tennessee when he was young, and he grew up in Columbia in a prosperous home. James was the eldest of ten children born to Samuel and Jane Knox Polk. James, like other highbred young plantation gentlemen, received the finest education. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1815 and passed the bar examination in 1820, after reading law under the famed Felix Grundy, who then headed the Tennessee bar. In 1821 James became a clerk in the Tennessee state senate when a position there opened just after James had completed his education. The doors continued to open for James throughout his political life.

He was introduced to Sarah by her brother Anderson, who had met James in school. James, at once smitten by her refinement, loveliness, and wit, visited her family, courting her. In a large, country-style wedding at her home, Sarah became Mrs. James K. Polk on January 1, 1824. The couple settled into a big home in Columbia, Tennessee, while James worked as the Tennessee state senate clerk and as a young, bright lawyer who enjoyed politics.

Young James had successfully managed his family plantation interests, and the newlyweds managed their vast cotton plantations together. Polk was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1825, a year after his marriage, and he and Sarah lived part time in Washington, DC, when Congress was in session. Polk was both friend and adviser to Andrew Jackson during the election of 1828 and planned the celebration trip from Tennessee to Washington for Jackson after his victory. James and Sarah also returned to Tennessee with Jackson at the end of his second term as president, signifying their close and lasting friendship as well as their ability to work well together.

For fourteen years the Polks enjoyed the highest social and political circles of Washington, where Sarah developed a network of valuable political friendships. James Polk was elected Speaker of the House in 1835 and served there until 1839, his last four years in a congressional seat before he returned to Tennessee to serve as its elected governor. His position as Speaker allowed his wife to make political contacts, which would later help him attain the presidency. In 1839 Polk was elected governor of Tennessee, but because the capital shifted over the years (to Knoxville, Kingston, Murfreesboro, and later to Nashville), there was no permanent governor’s mansion. Hence, while serving as governor in Nashville, James and Sarah rented a palatial home on Cherry Street, called Craighead, which served as the official residence. During Polk’s governorship, Sarah began to accept more clerical and advisory duties, and she often forced the governor to rest and not indulge in late hours of overwork.

Because of James’s busy schedule with public affairs, Sarah managed most of the family estates and plantations, traveling to oversee their plantation in Mississippi as well as their Tennessee properties. Polk’s salary as governor was two thousand dollars per year, and their rent was five hundred dollars. Sarah efficiently managed their household expenses. They entertained both Democrats and Whigs, as Tennessee was considered a swing state, and Sarah utilized her grace and charm to convert Whigs to Democratic views. During Polk’s governorship, the state capitol building of Nashville was perched on a high hill in the center of the city, surrounded by a park, and decorated with an equestrian statute of native son President Andrew Jackson. The capitol, with its fine view overlooking the city, served as Nashville’s political center. The Polks fended off barbs from the Nashville Whig newspaper during his administration, but James would lose the gubernatorial elections in 1841 and 1843.

Presidency and First Ladyship

In 1844, Polk received the Democratic nomination for the presidency. His campaign slogan captured the issue of Oregon statehood: “Fifty-four Forty or Fight,” meaning he believed that all of the Oregon territory, from the forty-second parallel north to fifty-four degrees, forty minutes, should be annexed.

Sarah read the newspapers of the day, attended sessions of the legislature, became knowledgeable of significant bills and their process of passage, and discussed politics at very high levels. She was a joiner and a mixer who enjoyed people and was very loyal to her many friends in various factions. In turn, they were loyal to the Polks.

Sarah Polk became First Lady on March 4, 1845, when her husband was inaugurated at the Capitol in Washington, DC. She exercised great power behind the scenes, serving as her husband’s personal assistant, opening mail, answering letters, and writing speeches. She encouraged philanthropic projects such as the construction of the Washington Monument. In her busy and dedicated role as the president’s special assistant and secretary, Sarah acted as a political partner to her husband.

James set her to work, and one of her tasks was to select articles from the newspapers that she thought the president should read immediately or attend to especially; hence, she included articles which benefited her political agenda and philanthropic charities. In this manner she was able to guide part of the president’s attention to needy causes and issues beneficial to women and children. This was especially important during the Mexican War, when the president’s main concern was the direction of successful military activities, but local and domestic issues influenced support for his policies and resources. Washington civic leaders as well as local politicians respected Sarah as a channel to her husband and often sought her political counsel.

Sarah, as First Lady, decided not to redecorate the White House as an economic measure and brought in her own slaves to operate the household, boarding them in the basement of the mansion to further save public funds. This was a period when abolitionists denounced the injustice of slavery, but the Polks were rooted in their old cotton plantation values and ideas from Tennessee, where the “employment” of household slaves was viewed by many as gracious as well as frugal. Slavery existed throughout the South but would be abolished in 1863, when the Polks’ slaves were emancipated.

Sarah was as careful with her husband’s image as she was with household finances. She allowed no hard liquor to be served at White House functions and no dancing parties or balls. Sarah Polk, as First Lady, encouraged serious business of state and diplomatic exchange. The White House, to Sarah, was to be a sacred shrine of the public’s trust, always morally upright, and she never compromised her views. Sarah believed “to dance in these rooms would be undignified, and it would be respectful neither to the house nor the office.”

Because of her moral stands, Sarah was called the Spanish Madonna, or the Prim Madonna. “How indecorous it would seem for dancing to be going on in one apartment, while in another we were conversing with dignitaries of the republic or ministers of the gospel. This unseemly juxtaposition would be likely to occur at any time, were such amusement permitted,” she said. Her “Puritanism” was reflected in her attendance at the Presbyterian Church, which her husband also attended. The Polks had no children, but Sarah engaged in many philanthropic projects to support children and the needy, such as her fund-raisers for the Washington Orphans’ Asylum. Her maternal instincts also manifested themselves in the special attention she paid to the children of her siblings.

Sarah loved to dress up, displaying her special gowns, luxurious velvets, long trains, turbans, and hats with ostrich feathers and always displayed perfect taste, whether at a White House reception or at church. She often patterned herself after former First Lady Dolley Madison, who was her close friend, with whom she worked on projects such as raising funds to erect the Washington Monument. The ladies would later accompany President Polk as he laid the cornerstone for the Washington Monument in 1848. Dolley was approaching eighty and Sarah was forty-one as she entered the White House. Their relationship was similar to a mother-daughter relationship, as Sarah’s own mother resided in Tennessee.

Dolley was in Washington to lobby for the US government’s purchase of her husband’s presidential papers, which she would accomplish in May 1848, during the Polk administration. Hence, the partnership and friendship was mutually beneficial. The two First Ladies enjoyed riding around Washington, DC, in a carriage, pointing out projects and discussing plans to improve the city. It was more becoming for ladies to travel together in public rather than to be out alone on the streets, and they believed the fresh air improved their health. Sarah considered Dolley’s advice invaluable, as Dolley was an icon, famed for saving the portrait of George Washington as the British marched on the capital during the War of 1812.

Careful of her own image and decorous behavior, Sarah was careful not to attend too many receptions alone as First Lady. Her judgment proved flawless in matters of decorum. She found it rewarding to attend functions such as teas and daytime parties with her respected friend Dolley when the president could not escort her. On one occasion Sarah had refused to attend a party without her husband where two bachelors, James Buchanan and William Rufus King, would be present. She refused to attend horse races or card parties because her appearance there, she felt, would lower the stature of the First Lady.

Sarah was a very humble person, in addition to being dignified. She believed that God had destined her for greatness, and she never shirked her responsibilities. Sarah did not allow her husband to work on the Sabbath, and on one occasion an Austrian diplomat was not received when he called on a Sunday; it was recommended to him that he return the next day. Piety was popular and widely respected in these times, even though Sarah was sometimes called “Sahara Sarah” for her anti-hard liquor policies. Closely guarding her place in history, she stood firmly by her moral choices, to the pride of her husband.

She had also learned the lessons of history: just as the Jacksonian reception had admitted everyone, the Polk inaugural reception had been open to all. The Nashville Union often attested to her virtue, stating, “The example of Mrs. Polk can hardly fail of exerting a salutary influence,” praising her for shunning “the follies and the amusements of the world.” Congressman Franklin Pierce relished discussing politics with her more than he did with other men, he bragged, and Sarah took pleasure in discussing the issues of state with men. It was a compliment to her that they admitted her to their circles and confidences—both Democrats and Whigs.

She had only one issue on which she departed from her husband’s viewpoint: She supported the National Bank, favoring paper money during the Jackson presidency. Her husband supported Jackson, calling the Bank a “hydra of corruption,” and sought to encourage the use of only hard currency. “The separation of the moneys of the Government from banking institutions is indispensable,” Polk said, “for the safety of the funds of the Government and the rights of the people.” Sarah traveled the campaign trails with her husband and was feted everywhere, always publicly supporting his viewpoint and prefacing her comments with, “Mr. Polk believes . . . ”

James K. Polk’s administration and the tenure of Sarah Polk as First Lady are credited with significant accomplishments. First, Polk concluded the settlement of the Oregon boundary along the forty-ninth parallel. This settlement with Great Britain allowed the region of the Oregon Country to eventually become states of the Union, and it allowed for the border between the United States and Canada to remain a peaceful and unfortified one, rooted in goodwill and political friendship. Polk related that he had desired an amicable settlement of the question of joint occupancy of the Oregon Country “in the spirit of moderation which had given birth to new discussion. . . . ” Polk protected migrants to the Oregon Country with a series of frontier blockhouses and forts to protect the settlers from Indian raids. He also arranged for armed guards of mounted riflemen to protect them along the Oregon Trail to settle the newly acquired lands.

A second important foreign-policy issue was the successful conclusion of the Mexican War (1846–1848) and the settlement of the boundaries of the United States in the southwestern regions of the United States. During the war, Sarah was praised for her patriotic sentiments, and she entertained gallant diplomats and military officers at her dinner table, lobbying for military support. President Polk successfully ended the war with Mexico by signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848. By this treaty, the United States greatly enlarged its area, incorporating regions of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah. Throughout the Mexican War, James commented on his wife’s sagacity and hard decision making. Sarah contributed her own views in political speeches that she edited for the president and exerted her diplomacy in issues of patronage and appointments to political offices.

In 1848 Polk also formally recognized the overthrow of the French monarchy and the establishment of the French Republic based on “republican” principles close to the American model. Earlier, in February of 1847, Polk had concluded an important treaty of “peace, amity, navigation and commerce” with the Latin American state of New Granada, ensuring the safe passage of U. ships across the Isthmus of Panama. In return, the United States guaranteed New Granada independence and sovereignty. This treaty laid the foundation for future US involvement in Central and South America, especially in planning a canal later under Theodore Roosevelt. Hence, the Polks were enthusiastic builders and expansionists for the United States’ interests abroad and domestically.

After leaving the White House, the Polks returned to Nashville to Polk Place, a mansion they had purchased for their retirement. However, James died three months later, on June 15, 1849, and Sarah was to remain a widow for forty-two years. She invited her great-niece Sarah Polk Jetton, her husband, and their daughter Saidee to live with her at Polk Place. Sarah enjoyed her golden years surrounded by family and became a southern icon. During the Civil War, as battles raged through the South, military commanders of both sides, Union and Confederate, paid their respects and never harmed her home or her family. In her later years following the Civil War’s end, the representatives of the Tennessee legislature made an annual visit to Polk Place. The widowed Sarah was granted a pension of five thousand dollars per year after Congress passed a bill in 1882 authorizing similar payments to all living widows of former presidents.

Sarah enjoyed many accolades in her later life. She was named an honorary vice president of the Daughters of the American Revolution and participated in the July 4, 1888, opening of the Cincinnati Centennial Exposition through a special telegraph sent to her in Nashville. After a fulfilling life of leadership, Sarah Polk died at eighty-eight. James had been buried at Polk Place, and upon her death she was also interred there. Later, both were reburied at the state capitol in Nashville.

Legacy

Sarah’s legacy was in laying the foundation for a wife to be her husband’s key adviser and political confidante, something Edith Wilson would later carry further. Sarah established a basis for a woman to participate fully in political debates, exchange views, and contribute her own agenda and style, though hers was carefully couched in her husband’s best interests. A southern woman of considerable energy, style, grace, wit, and charm, she could gently cajole a gentleman friend to support her husband’s policies and politics. She positioned herself and her husband, as governor or president, as a couple working for worthy causes, especially the public interest.

She supported and encouraged the work of Frances Willard and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, entertaining Willard in her home and offering political words of advice in the 1880s. Beauty and brains was an apt description of Sarah Polk. Her social breeding was a tremendous aid to her husband, as a gracious handshake or word of warm welcome to the White House was a prelude to political agreement and personal friendship. She understood image and its uses long before modernists became interested in the concept. Frugality was another of her significant traits, especially with the public’s money, and she was personally generous with her own money for charities she supported, such as orphanages or the construction of public monuments. Shrewd and astute, she was well educated, well versed on current issues, and extremely dedicated to seeing her own and her husband’s job done well in public office.

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