Polk Administration - Polk and Congress
Polk and Congress
Polk presided over the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth sessions of Congress with the forcefulness and savvy that allowed him to enact one of the most wide-ranging legislative agendas of a president in the nineteenth century. Yet while he was very successful in getting Congress to support his administration's goals on matters of domestic economic policy, Polk was less able to influence the legislative branch in foreign affairs. Democrats enjoyed a majority over the opposition Whigs in both the House and the Senate during the Twenty-ninth session, but this superiority in numbers did not assure easy acceptance of Polk's legislative agenda. Democratic control, for instance, was undermined by superior Whig leadership. This was especially the case in the Senate, where powerful Whig fixtures such as Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, William S. Archer of Virginia, and John M. Clayton of Delaware returned to their seats in...
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