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Polk and slavery[edit]
Elias Polk depicted later in life was a valet to James Polk, being the only known image of a person domestically enslaved by the Polks.
Polk owned slaves for most of his adult life. His father, Samuel Polk, in 1827 left Polk more than 8,000 acres (32 km2) of land and divided about 53 enslaved people among his widow and children in his will. James inherited twenty slaves, either directly or from deceased brothers. In 1831, he became an absentee cotton planter, sending enslaved people to clear plantation land that his father had left him near Somerville, Tennessee. Four years later Polk sold his Somerville plantation and, together with his brother-in-law, bought 920 acres (3.7 km2) of land, a cotton plantation near Coffeeville, Mississippi, hoping to increase his income. The land in Mississippi was richer than that in Somerville, and Polk transferred slaves there, taking care to conceal from them that they were to be sent south. From the start of 1839, Polk, having bought out his brother-in-law, owned all of the Mississippi plantations, and ran it on a mostly absentee basis for the rest of his life. 