DEATH OF EX-PRESIDENT POLK.
He died at Nashville, Tennessee, soon after he returned home, and
within three months after his retirement from the presidency. He
was an exemplary man in private life, moral in all his deportment,
and patriotic in his public life, aiming at the good of his
country always. It was his misfortune to have been brought into
the presidency by an intrigue, not of his own, but of others, and
the evils of which became an inheritance of his position, and the
sole cause of all that was objectionable in his administration. He
was the first President put upon the people without their previous
indication--the first instance in which a convention assumed the
right of disposing of the presidency according to their own will,
and of course with a view to their own advantage. The scheme of
these intriguers required the exclusion of all independent and
disinterested men from his councils and confidence--a thing easily
effected by representing all such men as his enemies, and themselves
as his exclusive friends. Hence the ejection of the Globe newspaper
from the organship of the administration, and the formation of a
cabinet too much dominated by intrigue and selfishness. All the
faults of his administration were the faults of his cabinet: all
its merits were his own, in defiance of them. Even the arrangement
with the Calhoun and Tyler interest by which the Globe was set aside
before the cabinet was formed, was the work of men who were to be
of the cabinet. His own will was not strong enough for his position,
yet he became firm and absolute where his judgment was convinced
and patriotism required decision. Of this he gave signal proof in
overruling his whole cabinet in their resolve for the sedentary line
in Mexico, and forcing the adoption of the vigorous policy which
carried the American arms to the city of Mexico, and conquered a
peace in the capital of the country. He also gave a proof of it in
falling back upon the line of 49° for the settlement of the Oregon
boundary with Great Britain, while his cabinet, intimidated by their
own newspapers, and alarmed at the storm which themselves had got
up, were publicly adhering to the line of 54° 40', with the secret
hope that others would extricate them from the perils of that
forlorn position. The Mexican war, under the impulse of speculators,
and upon an intrigue with Santa Anna, was the great blot upon his
administration; and that was wholly the work of the intriguing part
of his cabinet, into which he entered with a full belief that the
intrigue was to be successful, and the war finished in "ninety or
one hundred and twenty days;" and without firing another gun after
it should be declared. He was sincerely a friend to the Union, and
against whatever would endanger it, especially that absorption of
the whole of Mexico which had advocates in those who stood near
him; and also against the provisional line which was to cover
Monterey and Guaymas, when he began to suspect the ultimate object
of that line. The acquisition of New Mexico and California were
the distinguishing events of his administration--fruits of the war
with Mexico; but which would have come to the United States without
that war if the President had been surrounded by a cabinet free
from intrigue and selfishness, and wholly intent upon the honor and
interest of the country.