He has also been criticized for leading the country into a war with Mexico that exacerbated sectional divides. A property owner who used slave labor, he kept a plantation in Mississippi and increased his slave ownership during his presidency. Polk's policy of territorial expansion saw the nation reach the Pacific coast and reach almost all its contiguous borders. He made the United States a nation poised to become a world power, but with divisions between free and slave states gravely exacerbated, setting the stage for the Civil War.

Early life[edit]
Further information: President James K. Polk Historic Site
Reconstruction of the log cabin in Pineville, North Carolina where Polk was born
James Knox Polk was born on November 2, 1795, in a log cabin in Pineville, North Carolina.[1] He was the first of 10 children born into a family of farmers.[2] His mother Jane named him after her father, James Knox.[1] His father Samuel Polk was a farmer, slaveholder, and surveyor of Scots-Irish descent. The Polks had immigrated to America in the late 17th century, settling initially on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but later moving to south-central Pennsylvania and then to the Carolina hill country.