Visit the Tennessee State Capitol make in Nashville and you ’ll see two towering statues of formerpresidentswho hail from the Volunteer State : Andrew Johnson , leaning into a regal , windswept baffle ; and Andrew Jackson , tipping his gazump hat atop a rearing steed .
Neither are buried there , but both are so prominently display that they ’ve become local landmarks . And they also both overshadow the modest grave of another former president who actuallyisinterred on the grounds : James K. Polk .
Polk was the United States ' eleventh president , and along with his wife Sarah , was laid to rest under a small undetermined - aura structure on the grounds , and surrounded by a short fencing . But the couple may not be there much longer .
There’sa movement afootto exhume the Polks and move them about 50 miles ( 80 km ) off , to the family ’s ancestral abode . Polk was actually bear in North Carolina in 1795 , but when he was about 10 twelvemonth onetime his syndicate move to the Tennessee frontier , and his father Samuel Polk built a two - report home in the town of Columbia in 1816 . The future President of the United States lived there for several twelvemonth as a immature adult , and the stately plate on a residential street now serves as theJames K. Polk Home and Museum .
The matter is , if Polk ’s body is moved , it wo n’t be for the first time . It ’ll be for the third .
A Lesser - known President of the United States
Although Polk had been educated at home , it was n’t until after this surgery — and the betterment of his health — that he attend school . Polk enter at a Presbyterian school outside of Murfreesboro , Tennessee , and graduate in two twelvemonth . Studying law , he pass the legal profession exam in 1820 .
During law school , Polk had clerk for the state senate , and in 1823 , was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives . He was re - elected six times and finally became speaker of the house , a position from which he championed sit down President Andrew Jackson . His stance earned him the soubriquet Young Hickory — an homage to Jackson ’s byname Old Hickory .
Polk run on to serve as Tennessee ’s ninth governor , and in 1844 was elected Chief Executive of the United States . At 49 , he was then theyoungest prexy . Instigating the Mexican - American War , Polk was subservient in the expansion of the United States ' territory by more than 800,000 square mile ( 2,072,000 square kilometre ) , stretching it all the way to the Pacific Ocean . He re - established the Independent Treasury System , a harbinger to today ’s Federal Reserve System . Polk also create the Naval Academy , signed a lawestablishing the Smithsonian Institutionand oversaw the issuance of the very first United States postal stamp .
Polk had crusade to be a one - term president , and on-key to his Logos , after four year in the White House , he generate to Tennessee .
No last Resting
A year later , though , his physical structure was dug up and moved , agree to his will , to Polk Place , where it was placed beneath a memorial on the front lawn . Polk ’s wife Sarah survive at Polk Place for 42 more years until her demise . After both Polks had occur , a house fuss over possession of Polk Place — the president and his wife had no child — sent the former president ’s plans to stay forget in his own yard awry .
" I honestly serve up here 14 years and had never see [ Polk ’s tomb , ] " Hensleytold The New York Timesin March . " It ’s not handicap approachable . It ’s not really spill about much when they do the Capitol turn . Not many people visit it . It ’s just not a very respectable place to honor his legacy . "
Disinterring the corpse of a chairperson also requires the commendation of the governor , the state ’s House of Representatives , a local evaluator and the Tennessee Historical Commission . About a week after the senate bill draw , the Tennessee Historical Commission come out against the plan to disinter the former President of the United States , stating that moving the graves of Polk and his married woman wouldcreate a false mother wit of historyat the James K. Polk Home and Museum in Columbia . Some of Polk ’s current living congeneric also are against the move , while others are in favour of it . There ’s even a Twitter history — Polk Journey Home — fix up in reinforcement of actuate his body to Columbia .
If Polk ’s body is exhume ( again ) and reburied ( again ) , there is precedent . In 1858 , America ’s fifth president , James Monroe , was exhumed and relocate from New York to his nursing home state of Virginia . President Abraham Lincoln ’s bodywas movedat least 17 times : a presidential track record , and all within the confines of Springfield , Illinois . Only sentence , and political relation , will say if Polk is to be buried a fourth time . If nothing else , his retentiveness lives on through call thanks to the quirky soda water group They Might Be Giants :
