According to history, the cruel practice of owning slaves was common among presidents during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Enslaved laborers even assisted in the construction of the White House.
Many of the commanders-in-chief were enslavers while in office, as the majority of them came from enslaving families and societies. While in office, James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, owned approximately 19 slaves. While in power, he purchased enslaved people and separated children aged 10 to 17 from their families. While he was in the White House, he sent these enslaved children or young adults to work on his Mississippi cotton plantation.
According to The White House Historical Association, he concealed his purchase of enslaved children and young adults from the public and pretended to be a “benevolent and paternalistic slave owner” who kept slaves because they were inherited from family members.
Indeed, Polk’s father, James Knox Polk, who helped establish the counties of Maury and Columbia in Tennessee, was not only a well-known community member and county judge, but also a slave owner with a plantation. When he died in 1827, he left his wife and ten children 8,000 acres of land and 53 enslaved people.
When Polk was in power from 1845 to 1849, 13 of his 19 slaves were children, with the youngest being a 10-year-old boy named Jerry. However, he secretly purchased these enslaved children via surrogates. According to historian Lina Mann, he would ask surrogates to buy enslaved children on his behalf and then secretly transfer them to him.
Congress had passed the Indian Removal Act at the time, and President Andrew Jackson had forcibly removed the Choctaw Nation from their land in northern Mississippi. People rushed to buy the vacant land, and Polk followed suit by establishing a plantation there. And it was there that his enslaved children were employed.
Why did Polk purchase enslaved children in secret?
As previously stated, many U.S. presidents owned slaves, so it would not be surprising if Polk did as well. But he kept the fact that he kept enslaved children hidden because white northerners at the time despised the severing of enslaved families. In an 1846 letter, he reportedly stated that if the public learned of his purchases of enslaved children and young adults, “it would unnecessarily subject me to assaults from the abolition newspapers.”
The White House Historical Association writes: “If the public had known the extent of his activities as president, there likely would have been a violent outcry. During the 1840s, tensions over the spread of slavery into newly acquired western territories exacerbated sectional divisions between the North and the South, while the abolitionist movement fueled criticisms of slave owners. Several national events occurring during this time period likely encouraged Polk to keep his transactions private.”
Polk had also campaigned on the fact that he wanted to keep families together. In reality, he was severing families for profit. Despite the fact that many enslaved children died as a result of the harsh treatment associated with slavery and diseases, Polk continued to choose the young because it was cheaper to buy them. He also thought they were effective.
“He wanted them, younger ones, because…they’d be around for a long time so he’d get his money’s worth out of them. And also in the case of girls, they would have a lifetime over which they could give birth to additional slaves because any child born to someone he owned was considered his property as well,” a research professor, Michael David Cohen, was quoted by History.com.
Polk, in effect, desired a profitable retirement from his purchase of young adults as slaves, but it was his wife, Sarah, who benefited greatly because Polk died only four months after his presidency ended. His wife carried on his slave trade.