4. James Knox Polk and cholera
James Knox Polk was 54 when he left the White House after serving just one term as President in 1849. The one-term had been his choice, announced when he ran for the office four years earlier. His single term proved to be momentous, including the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War, and the peaceful resolution of the Oregon border dispute with Great Britain. Polk’s presidency exhibited the idea of Manifest Destiny more than any other American administration. When it was over, the former President planned to return to his recently acquired home in Nashville, following a tour of his native South.
His tour, which began in the March of 1849, coincided with outbreaks of cholera in the Southern states. Polk caught a cold early in the tour, which worsened as he crossed Alabama on his way to New Orleans. Polk heard of the cholera which heavily affected Louisiana, but went to New Orleans anyway, from whence he journeyed by riverboat up the Mississippi. While in New Orleans or on the riverboat (on which several passengers died) Polk contracted cholera. He reached Nashville on April 2, briefly recovered his strength, but became ill again in June. Polk died of cholera in Nashville on June 15, 1849, just three months after leaving the Presidency.