James K. Polk (1845-1849) 3

If anything in the history of the U. S. A. is hard to estimate it is the foreign policy of James K. Polk. One point is whether he was entitled to use all the power he could legally draw from his office to start a war. One must even ask whether he did not overstretch some paragraphs in the laws he meant to observe. Though rather scrupulous about sticking to rules on one hand, Polk had some talent for intellectual hair-splitting. He might have used it to bend rules by construing their meanings in a way which suited his purposes, and it is hard to decide in which cases he might have done unjustly so.

While people with different views on the question "Do the aims justify the means" might agree on being content with the results of his efforts, they would have to agree to disagree about being content with the means he used to arrive at them.

As I am used to argue within myself I find some disagreement within myself. While in my overall review of Polk I gave him five stars, because something within me cannot help finding him overall great in spite of his faults, I would not do so while considering single features of his conducts.

The three stars would be the acknowledgement of the difficulties in judging Polk's choice of war as a means of politics.