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Title details for A Country of Vast Designs by Robert W. Merry - Available

A Country of Vast Designs

James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent

by Robert W. Merry
Michael Prichard
Audiobook
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When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas—what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado—belonged to Mexico. When Polk relinquished office four years later, the country had grown by more than a third as all these lands were added. The continental United States as we know it today was established—facing two oceans and positioned to dominate both.


In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny—extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive.


Robert W. Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures—the outgoing President John Tyler and Polk's great mentor, Andrew Jackson; his defeated Whig opponent, Henry Clay; two famous generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; Secretary of State James Buchanan (who would precede Lincoln as president); Senate giants Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis Cass; Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun; and ex-president Martin Van Buren, like Polk a Jackson protégé but now a Polk rival.


This was a time of tremendous clashing forces. A surging antislavery sentiment was at the center of the territorial fight. The struggle between a slave-owning South and an opposing North was leading inexorably to Civil War. In a gripping narrative, Merry illuminates a crucial epoch in U.S. history.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 8, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400194957
      • File size: 546758 KB
      • Duration: 18:59:04

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Robert Merry sheds light on that often-overlooked four years of American history during which the country doubled in size, Andrew Jackson's world came to an abrupt end, and the seeds of the Civil War were sown. Merry seeks to help us understand the enigmatic, socially inept, and almost impossibly successful one-term president who presided over it all. Michael Prichard's authoritative baritone presents James Polk's complex story with extraordinary clarity. This is not a history of frontiers, mountain men, and soldiers, but a history of politicians, generals, and political journalists--a link between John Meacham's AMERICAN LION and Doris Kearns Goodwin's TEAM OF RIVALS. As delivered by Prichard, the accounts are personal, without any tone of gossip, and the characters are vivid enough for a listener to remember. F.C. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 7, 2009
      Merry, president and editor-in-chief of Congressional Quarterly Inc., offers a wide-ranging, provocative analysis of the controversial presidency of James K. Polk. Using a broad spectrum of published and archival sources, Merry depicts Polk as an unabashed expansionist. His political career was devoted to extending American power across the continent. Polk saw the fulfillment of manifest destiny as transcending even the festering issue of slavery. Elected president in 1844, he pursued confrontational diplomacy with Britain, structured a war with Mexico and enlarged the U.S. by over a third, essentially to its present boundaries, in a single term of office. Polk's achievements were correspondingly controversial across the political spectrum. Merry uses congressional debates and newspaper quotations to depict the genesis of a fundamental, enduring debate on America's nature and role. Conceding Polk's “personal lapses and his least impressive traits.” Merry makes a strong case that Polk's America embraced a sweeping vision of national destiny that he fulfilled. Merry's conclusion that history turns not on morality but on power, energy and will may be uncomfortable, but he successfully illustrates it. 16 pages of b&w photos; 1 map.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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