general. After Jackson, no president before Polk undertook to do so.
Polk argued in a vein similar to that which Jackson had made familiar. He, too, wished to increase the duties and responsibilities of the officer, and recommended that he be placed on the same footing as the heads of departments, for "his residence and constant attention at the seat of Government are required. . ."[1] Even then Congress took no action in the matter for several years. Whatever projects of reform there may have been, they were doubtless seriously interfered with by the war with Mexico.
There is a curiously interesting paragraph in this connection occurring in a circular letter addressed by Polk, under date of February 17, 1845, to all the men to whom he extended invitations to become his cabinet associates. He wrote:
{{quote| I disapprove the practice which has sometimes prevailed, of Cabinet officers absenting themselves for long intervals of time from the seat of government, and leaving the management of their Departments to chief clerks, or other less responsible persons than themselves. I expect myself to remain constantly at Washington, unless it may be that no public duty requires my presence, when I may be occasionally absent, but then only for a short time. It is by conforming to this rule that the President and his Cabinet can have any assurance that abuses will be prevented, and that the subordinate executive officers connected with them respectively will faithfully perform their duty. . .[2]
It may be assumed that Polk exacted this significant condition from his first attorney-general, John Y. Mason of Virginia. But the attorney-generalship under Polk had two other occupants, Nathan Clifford of Maine and Isaac Toucey of Connecticut.[3] I am aware of no evidence that would make it possible to say, in respect to this office alone, how far the condition was really fulfilled. So far as Polk could establish the custom of holding his cabinet associates in Washington he doubtless did so.
