NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former President James K. Polk did big things for America, dramatically expanding its borders by annexing Texas and seizing California and the Southwest in a war with Mexico. Achieving undisturbed eternal rest has proved more difficult.
In a proposal that has riled some folks in Tennessee, including a very distant relative of the nation’s 11th president, some state lawmakers want to move Polk’s body to what would be its fourth resting place in the nearly 170 years since he died of cholera.
The plan is to exhume Polk’s remains and those of his wife, Sarah, from their white-columned tomb on the grounds of the state Capitol in Nashville and take them about 50 miles to his father’s home, now known as the James K. Polk Home and Museum, in Columbia. A vote on the resolution could come as early as Monday.
Teresa Elam, who said she is a seventh-generation great-niece of the childless Polk, called the whole idea “mortifying.”
