The Most Important Election of Their Lifetimes

Claiming that the coming presidential contest is “the most important election of our lifetime” is a quadrennial ritual in American politics. It’s almost never true.

But it was true in 1844. The race between Henry Clay and James K. Polk proved to be even more than that. It was one of the most significant elections in American history because its outcome set the country on an inexorable course toward civil war.

Mark Cheathem’s Who is James K. Polk: The Presidential Election of 1844 is the latest installment in the University Press of Kansas’ Presidential Election Series. It lives up to its predecessors, offering a highly detailed examination of the political context in which the race developed, blow-by-blow accounts of the party conventions, and an encyclopedic rundown of the presidential and vice-presidential contenders in each party.