See John S. ]enk1ns, James Knox Polk (Auburn and Buffalo 1850), and L. B. Chase, History of the Polk Administration (New York, 1850), both of which contain some documentary material, but are not discgimigating indthelar metl11{od of trea§ m%t. vgporge Bancroft contri ute a goo s ort: s etc to . . 1 son's Presidents of ihe Umled States (New York, 2nd ed., 1894). He made copies of the Polk manuscripts and was working upon a detailed biograph at the time of his death in 1891. These copies, now deposited, in the Lenox Library, New York City, contain a diary in 24 typewritten volumes, besides some correspondence and other private papers. They have been used by James Schouler 1n his Hzslorzcal Brzgs (New York, 1896), and by E. G. Bourne in an article entitle “The Proposed Absorption of Mexico in 1847-1848, " published in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1899, 1. 157-163 (Washington, 1900). Bourne discusses the part which Polk too in preventing the complete absorption of Mexico. See also the Diary of James K. Polk .... 1845 to 1849 (Chicago, 4 vols., 1910), edited by M. M. Quaife(W R S *)
POLK, LEONIDAS (1806-1864), American soldier, was born at Raleigh, North Carolina, on the ioth of April 1806, and was a
cousin of James Knox Polk, president of the United States. He
was educated at West Point, but afterwards studied theology and
took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1831. In 1838
he became missionary bishop of the South-West, Arkansas,
Indian Territory, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and in
1841 he was consecrated bishop of Louisiana. His work in
the Church Was largely of an educational kind, and he played a
prominent part in movements for the establishment of higher
educational institutions in the South. At the outbreak of the
Civil War in 1861 he resigned his bishopric and, like many other clergymen and ministers of religion, entered the army which was raised to defend the Confederacy. His rank in the hierarchy and the universal respect in which he was held in the South, rather than his early military education, caused him to be appointed to the important rank of major-general. He fortified the post of Columbus, Kentucky, the foremost line of defence on the Mississippi, against which Brigadier-General U. S. Grant directed the offensive reconnaissance of Belmont in the autumn. In the following spring, the first line of defence having fallen, Polk commanded a corps at Shiloh in the field army commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston and Beauregard. In October 1862 he was promoted lieutenant-general, and thenceforward he commanded one of the three corps of the army of Tennessee under Bragg and afterwards was in charge of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana. He was killed in the fighting in front of Marietta, while reconnoitring near Pine Mountain, Georgia, on the 14th of June 1864.
See Life, by his son W. M. Polk, (1893).
POLKA (either from the Czech pnlka, half, with an allusion to the short steps characteristic of the dance, or from the Polish Polka, feminine of Polak, a Pole), a lively dance of Bohemian origin, danced to music written in ¾ time. (See Dance.)
