Correspondence of James K. Polk, and: Correspondence of James K. Polk (review)

book reviews277 author within each year. Each entry contains a full bibliographical citation for the publication in which the diary or journal appears, and editors are credited, later editions and reprints are mentioned, and informative annotations are provided. The annotations are especially full, vivid, and helpful. Matthews, in explaining his cut-off date of 1860 for his 1945 publication , wrote as follows: "So numerous are the diaries of Americans who took part in the Civil War that when I was making my bibliography of American diaries, my courage failed me and I called a halt at 1860." We are assured that Arksey, Pries, and Reed will cover the Civil War thoroughly in their second volume, but in the meantime readers of Civil War History will find much to interest them in volume one. Simply by browsing through the annotations from about 1820 on reveals a substantial amount of material on such subjects as slavery and antislavery, abolitionists, and plantation life, and there are eighteen entries on the Civil War itself. American Diaries is an exceptionally accurate, useful, and revealing reference source. With the publication of volume two it will take its place as the standard work in the field. Dean H. Keller Kent State University Correspondence of James K. Polk. Volume V, 1839-1841. Edited by Wayne Cutler. Earl J. Smith and Carese M. Parker, Associate Editors. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1980. Pp. xlii, 836. $20.00.) Correspondence of James K. Polk. Volume VI, 1842-1843. Edited by Wayne Cutler. Carese M. Parker, Associate Editor. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1983. Pp. xxxvi, 726. $25.00.) This presidential summer of 1984, when, at present writing, the Democrats will imminently descend on San Francisco with the only suspense being the gender of their vice-presidential choice, seems greatly remote from the electoral summers of antebellum Tennessee. What James K. Polk couldn't have done with a Honda bike, a bullhorn, a satchel of cough syrup, and a xerox machine! Instead, he crisscrossed the state on horseback or sulky, shouting at hometown crowds who already had their minds made up but loved areaffirming oration, staving off fatigue, the flu, and an "affection of the bowels," and hurriedly scribbling to Sarah for important clippings and speeches from his trunks at home. "I think it is blotted with ink," he described one needful document, in hopes Sarah could find it among its motley bundlemates (V, 136). These volumes in the continuing series of Polk correspondence display the tangled skein, and of course the delightful texture, ofpolitics on the eve of Polk's presidency. Custodian of the Jacksonian heritage in 278civil war history Tennessee, Polk faced the dilemma of keeping those principles alive and well in a state not at all favorable to Jackson's hand-picked successor. Polk chose to fight statewide elections with national issues, and the result was a litany of defeat. After ending his second term as House speaker, Polk won the governorship in 1839, quested unsuccessfully for the vice-presidential slot in 1840, directed Van Buren's losing campaign in Tennessee, lost the statehouse in 1841, and failed to regain it in 1843. The frenetic campaigning of volume V leads to the involuntary retirement in volume VI. But Polk, even out of office, is never quiescent, and by the end of the volume he is workinghard to convince everyone he should be first choice for second place in 1844. Both volumes show Polk to be dogmatic in his views and devoted in his sense of role. He remarked to Jackson in 1839 about a certain candidate 's benefit to the party, "there are times when every citizen owes a duty to his country which he is not at liberty to disregard" (V, 53). That Polk was a party leader rather than the engineer of a legislative or executive program is evident; the editors see him as a "zealous partisan with an unbounded thirst for political action" (V, xvi). While emphasizing correspondence of a directly political nature, the editors have not ignored other dimensions. There is humor: the newly elected Alabama congressman who wanted the ex-Speaker to annotate a roster of House members and indicate their "grades of intellect—No. 1...