[274]

Legacy and historical view[edit]
A statue of Polk at the North Carolina State Capitol
After his death, Polk's historic reputation was initially formed by the attacks made on him in his own time. Whig politicians claimed that he was drawn from well-deserved obscurity. Sam Houston is said to have observed that Polk, a teetotaler, was "a victim of the use of water as a beverage".[275] Little was published about him but two biographies released in the wake of his death. Polk was not again the subject of a major biography until 1922 when Eugene I. McCormac published James K. Polk: A Political Biography. McCormac relied heavily on Polk's presidential diary, first published in 1909.[276] When historians began ranking the presidents in 1948, Polk ranked tenth in Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.'s poll, and has subsequently ranked eighth in Schlesinger's 1962 poll, 11th in the Riders-McIver Poll (1996),[277] and 14th in the 2017 survey by C-SPAN.[278]
James Polk is today widely seen as a successful president; he is regarded as a man of destiny and a political chess master, who, through extraordinary diligence, worked to promote American democracy.