Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Antebellum

  • The Death of John Quincy Adams

    john_quincy_adams_daguerreotype_c1840s
    Daguerrotype of John Quincy Adams.

    One of the most outspoken Representatives in the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams, had opposed the declaration of war on Mexico and fought President James Polk’s policies for the duration of his presidency.

    (more…)

  • Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions

    hd_ldfootracez-preview
    Political Cartoon Depicting Abraham Lincoln.

    At the end of the Mexican-American War, President James Polk proposed taking as much as Mexico’s land as possible. However, he proposed this plan to a majority Whig House of Representatives.

    (more…)

  • America in 1848

    154
    John Calhoun.

    In 1848, when word spread to America that a revolution was breaking out in France, President James Polk wrote: “The great principles of popular sovereignty which were proclaimed in 1776 by the immortal author of our Declaration of Independence, seem now to be in the course of rapid development throughout the world.” James Knox Polk to Richard Rush, April 18, 1848, quoted in Michael Morrison, “American Reactions to European Revolutions, 1848-1852,” Civil War History 49 (June 2003): 117.

    (more…)