NASHVILLE — It is the latest chapter in one of the more tangled stories of a US presidential corpse — a tale of love and cholera, betrayal and real estate, honor and probate law.
Having been interred in three places since his death in 1849, James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States, faces the prospect of having his sleep disturbed yet again.
A proposal making its way through the Tennessee Legislature calls for digging up the bodies of Polk and his wife, Sarah Childress Polk, both of which have been buried on the grounds of the state Capitol for more than a century. They would then be relocated to a resting place at a Polk family home and museum in the small city of Columbia.
Supporters say the move will properly honor an unjustly overlooked president, a man who expanded US territory by a third, signed a law establishing the Smithsonian Institution, and created the US Naval Academy.
Opponents, including Teresa Elam, 65, a distant relative of Polk’s, are calling it nothing short of macabre and an unsavory effort to promote tourism in Columbia, a city of 37,000 about 50 miles south of Nashville that is otherwise known for a colorful yearly celebration of its mule-breeding industry.
“They’re desecrating a grave,’’ said Elam. “It’s been on the Capitol grounds for about 124 years. It’s dishonor and disrespect.’’
In Nashville, the prospect that the presidential remains could be moved yet again has prompted rare fits of passion on the topic of Polk, a man historians have called “priggish’’ and “colorless,’’ and one whose legacy is often overshadowed by his larger-than-life mentor, Andrew Jackson, who is buried at the Hermitage, his family plantation, a major tourist draw here.
On Monday, the state Senate is expected to vote on a resolution that would be the first step in an approval process for relocating the bodies. Disinterring the remains will also require the approval of the state House of Representatives, the governor, the Tennessee Historical Commission, and a local judge.
The Polks’ grave, which is tucked away on a grassy patch, was designed by William Strickland, the noted Greek Revival architect who designed the state Capitol and George Washington’s sarcophagus at Mount Vernon in Virginia. A handsome monument framed by classical columns notes that Polk “planted the laws of the American union on the shores of the Pacific.’’ The grave is dwarfed by a nearby equestrian statue of Jackson.
State Senator Joey Hensley, a Republican representing Columbia and the sponsor of the bill, said the grave seems overlooked in its current spot. “I honestly served up here 14 years and had never seen the site,’’ he said Thursday. “It’s just not a very good place to honor his legacy.’’
Much drama preceded the grave’s ultimate location.
Polk left the White House in 1849 after serving just one term, as he had promised, and returned that April to Nashville, where he had previously served a two-year term as governor. But the city was in the midst of a cholera outbreak, and Polk contracted the disease and died that June at age 53.
Tom Price, the curator of the President James K. Polk Home and Museum in Columbia, said that by city ordinance, cholera victims at the time had to be buried at the municipal cemetery on the edge of town. By May 1850, however, Polk was moved, with much pomp and ceremony, to Polk Place, a grand home a few blocks from the Capitol that he had bought in 1847, anticipating a long retirement.
His wife, a formidable woman who did much to shape his career, remained in Polk Place, celebrated as one of the nation’s most famous widows, until her death in 1891. Then things got complicated.
In a will he drew up months before his death, Polk, a lawyer, stipulated that both his body and that of his wife should be buried on the premises of Polk Place. He also stipulated that after his death and his wife’s, the property should be held in trust by the state, which must always allow a blood relative to live there.
Upon the death of Polk’s wife, a number of heirs filed a lawsuit arguing that the will was invalid. According to Bill Carey, a local researcher and writer, the court ruled in their favor, on the grounds that the will violated the common-law rule against perpetuities, which limits an owner’s ability to leave property to unborn future generations.
Polk Place was sold and the manse torn down. On Sept. 19, 1893, Polk’s body was moved to the Capitol, where he was buried alongside his wife. “In my mind,’’ Carey wrote in 2015, “the reinterment of President and Mrs. Polk is one of the most disrespectful deeds ever committed by the state of Tennessee.’’
