Act with courage.
2 Chronicles 19:11
James K. Polk was the 11th President of the United States of America. At the time of his election, he was the youngest man to hold the office. He served one term and went home. Three months later he was dead. One historian has called him “history’s most under-appreciated president.” Why? Because he accomplished his campaign promises, enlarged the country by one-third and made the U.S. a “continental nation.”
As a person, Polk was gritty, brave, focused (he said he had no time for leisure) and tough as nails. No doubt these qualities served him well as President. According to Seigenthaler, Polk developed these characteristics on the operation table, providing a meaningful example of Seneca‘s ancient belief: “Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.” At the age of seventeen, he had major surgery for urinary stones without the benefit of sedation. It was a “terrifying experience,” — a “hellish half-hour.” To remove the stones involved the tearing of ducts, tissue, nerves and arteries. The operation left Polk unable to father a child.
In his biography of Polk, John Seigenthaler wrote, “Yet in another sense, the boy became a man on the operating table. Here, for the first time, were the evidences of the courage, grit and unyielding iron will that Whigs, the British Crown and the Mexican army would encounter once he became president.”
