President James K. Polk’s Official Acknowledgment of Receiving Notification of His Nomination for President by the Democratic National Convention in 1844

This is the first time that we have carried the official acknowledgment of notification of nomination by a candidate elected pursuant to that notice as President of the United States

In 1844 the annexation of Texas was the chief political issue of the day. Former President Martin Van Buren was considered the leading Democratic candidate going into the convention, but he opposed immediate annexation of Texas because it might lead to a sectional crisis over the status of slavery in the West. This position cost Van Buren the support of Southern and expansionist Democrats, for whom annexation of Texas was crucial and not negotiable. In fact, Southern delegates opposed Van Buren 75 to 3, depriving northern anti-annexationists the votes needed for victory. As a result, Van Buren came up short and could not win the nomination. Other candidates included James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, and John C. Calhoun, but Van Burenites blocked their nominations, as Calhoun was from the Deep South, Cass was a known expansionist, and Buchanan had positioned himself as a potential alternative to Van Buren, earning the enmity of Van Buren’s supporters. If the Democratic Party was to avoid dissolution at a national level, an acceptable nominee, fully committed to immediate annexation would be required, yet capable of unifying the party in the general election.

James K. Polk, a former Speaker of the House and Governor of Tennessee, had entered the convention in hopes of becoming the vice presidential nominee. He was a favorite of President Andrew Jackson, who remained very popular in the party, and whose support for Polk could be counted on for the top office.

On the eighth ballot, the historian George Bancroft, a delegate from Massachusetts, proposed Polk as a compromise candidate and an acceptable alternative for all Democratic factions at odds over the Texas annexation crisis. Despite Polk’s advocacy for Texas annexation and expansion in the disputed Oregon Territory, he had remained loyal to Van Buren throughout the Texas controversy, and had never enunciated a slavery expansionist position with respect to Texas annexation. So anti-annexationist Van Burenites were willing to accept Polk, with reservations, having already recognized him as a suitable vice-presidential choice to have complimented a Van Buren ticket. Southern Democrats were happy with Polk’s pro-annexation stances. On May 29, 1844, on the ninth ballot, Van Buren instructed his delegates to support Polk, beginning a stampede to Polk that ended with him winning the nomination unanimously. Polk was the first dark horse to win a major party nomination.

Robert Rantoul, Jr. was a Boston attorney and Democratic politician who earned a reputation as a champion of political justice and an eloquent advocate of the rights of man. In the famous Journeymen Boot-Makers’ Case, that involved the yet unsettled question of whether labor unions were legal in the United States, Rantoul argued on behalf of the organized labor movement. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ultimately determined that labor organizations were lawful provided they were organized for legal purposes and used legal means to achieve their goals. Rantoul thus succeeded in obtaining one of the most significant victories in American jurisprudence. President James K. Polk would appoint him Unites States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts in 1846, and he later served in both the House and Senate representing his home state. In 1844 Rantoul was Secretary to the Convention Committee of the Democratic National Convention that nominated Polk.

On May 29, 1844, the day of his nomination, the Convention Committee sent Polk a letter officially notifying him of his nomination as the Democratic Party’s standard bearer. “At a Democratic National Convention of delegates from the several States of this Union, convened on the 27th inst., and now sitting in the city of Baltimore, for the purpose of nominating candidates to be supported for the Presidency and Vice Presidency of the United States at the ensuing election, the Hon. James K. Polk, of Tennessee, having been designated by the whole number of votes given, to be the candidate of the Democratic party for President of the United States, was declared to be unanimously nominated for that office. The undersigned were appointed by the Convention a committee to request your acceptance of the nomination thus unanimously tendered to you; and they cannot forbear to express the high gratification which they experience in the performance of this duty, and the hope which they confidently entertain, in common with their colleagues of the Convention, that the devotion to the cause of Democratic principles which has always characterized your conduct, will not suffer you to turn a deaf ear to the call of your country, when, in a manner so honorable to yourself, she demands your distinguished services. With the utmost respect and esteem, We have the honor to be vour ob’t Serv’ts., Henry Hubbard, William H. Roane, Benj. H. Brewster, Romulus M. Saunders, Robert Rantoul, Jr., Committee of the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore.”

This is Polk’s acknowledgment of receiving the official notification of his nomination. Autograph letter signed, Columbia, Tennessee, June 12, 1844, addressed to “Hon. Robert Rantoul jr, Boston” as Secretary of the Committee. “Dear Sir, Your letter dated at Baltimore on the 29th ulti. enclosing to me an official notification of my nomination to the Presidency, was received on yesterday. I herewith transmit to you my answer, addressed to Boston as you request. It is of course intended for public use. I have the honor to be with high respect your ob’t servant, James K. Polk”.

Polk enclosed with this letter his answer, which was in fact a press release that was printed in newspapers throughout the country. In read: “Gentlemen: I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 29th ultimo, informing me that the Democratic National Convention, then assembled at Baltimore, had designated me to be the candidate of the Democratic party for President of the United States, and that I had been unanimously nominated for that office. It has been well observed that the office of President of the United States should neither be sought nor declined. I have never sought it, nor shall I feel at liberty to decline it, if conferred upon me by the voluntary suffrages of my fellow citizens. In accepting the nomination, I am deeply impressed with the distinguished honor which has been conferred upon me by my republican friends, and am duly sensible of the great and mighty responsibilities which must ever devolve upon any citizen who may be called to fill the high station of President of the United States. I deem the present to be a proper occasion to declare, that if the nomination made by the Convention shall be confirmed by the people, and result in my election, I shall enter upon the discharge of the high and solemn duties of the office with the settled purpose of not being a candidate for re-election. In the event of my election it shall be my constant aim, by a strict adherence to the old republican landmarks, to maintain and preserve prosperity, and at the end of four years I am resolved to retire to private life….Your ob’t servant, James K. Polk.”

This is the first time in all our decades in this field that we have carried an official acknowledgment of notification of nomination by a candidate elected pursuant to that notice as President of the United States.