State

Polk and Ihe UNC к n joi: iom:s The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is planning to build a skyscraper dormitory named for James Knox Polk. It will be an overdue monu¬ ment to the only UNC alumnus to become President of the United States. A native of Mecklenburg County. President Polk held three UNC de¬ grees. He was graduated in 1818 with an Л.В.. received an A.M. in 1822, and was awarded an honorary l.L.D. (in absentia) soon after his Presiden¬ tial inauguration in 1845 at age 49. When Polk was an undergraduate he and several of his fellow students who didn’t like the food in the campus dining hall took their meals at a board¬ ing house on a farm a mile from Chapel Hill, making the trip there and back on foot. Evidently the time thus spent didn’t cut into Polk's study periods. He made the highest academic record in the class of 1818. which had 14 members. Second to him was William Mercer Green, who became Episcopal Bishop of Mississippi and Chancellor of the University of the South at Sewanee. Tenn. Polk roomed with William Dudley Moseley in a corner room on the third floor of South Building, then a dormi¬ tory and now the university’s admin¬ istration building. Moseley was to be¬ come Governor of Florida, and Polk became Governor of Tennessee be¬ fore he was elected President. One of the most exciting events in the history of Chapel Hill took place in the spring of 1847 when President Polk accepted an invitation to attend UNC's commencement program. It was his first visit to the campus in 29 years. Those with him included his wife, his Secretary of the Navy, John Mason Young, who had been a UNC senior when Polk was a sophomore, and Lt. Matthew P. Maury, then in the be¬ ginning of his distinguished career in the study of the air and ocean. The little village of Chapel Hill over¬ flowed with visitors who had come to sec the President. While the hospitality of the faculty members and other local citizens was stretched to the ut¬ most. Miss Nancy Hilliard, proprietor of Chapel Hill’s only hotel, had erected a special addition to her building for the accommodation of the chief officer of the nation. The President and his party arrived at 5 p.m. Monday. May 31. in car¬ riages from Raleigh, having come there from Washington by train. The faculty and students received them at the ho¬ tel. From there the visitors were con¬ ducted to Gerrard Hall, where they were received with great enthusiasm and where Polk gave a brief talk. A contemporary account said: "President Polk was applauded for his total absence of ostentation and his sincere and unassuming courtesy. The President’s Lady, as his wife was called, was pronounced by all classes to be peculiarly fascinating." In his diary Polk wrote for Tues¬ day. June I. "As soon as I rose this morning I found a large crowd at the hotel desiring to see me." For Thursday. June 3. he wrote: "This was the commencement day. Hundreds from the adjoining country had come in. As soon as I left my room in the morning I was surrounded by them. and. except while at break¬ fast. continued to receive them to shake hands with them until the hour at which the commencement exercises com¬ menced between ten and eleven o'clock. About one o’clock there was a recess of one and a half hours. I re¬ turned to the hotel and took dinner. The crowd in waiting to see me was so great that it was impossible that they could all see me if I remained in the house. Several of my friends who thought the people present, many of whom had come a considerable dis¬ tance. ought to be gratified, insisted that I go out to the grove, and I did so. I was soon surrounded by hun¬ dreds of persons, and for an hour or two was constantly engaged in shaking hands with them." For Saturday. June 5. Polk wrote: "We arrived in Washington at 5 p.m. and thus ended the excursion to the University of North Carolina. It was an exceedingly agreeable one. My re¬ ception at the University, and the at¬ tentions paid me on the route going and returning, was all that I could have desired to be." Archibald Henderson's book. The Campus of the First State University. says: "The greatest tribute to President Polk upon his visit was that paid by the proprietor of the Eagle Hotel. Miss Nancy Scgur Hilliard. She erected an addition to her hotel for the express purpose of entertaining and accom¬ modating President Polk and his cortege. Over the entrance was a metal plate with the following hospi¬ table inscription which upon his arrival greeted the eye of the chief officer of the Republic: ‘Erected to Receive President Polk on the Occasion of His Visit to His Alma Mater.’ This plate remained in place until the hotel burned in 1921. It is jealously pre¬ served in the University archives." Henderson’s book also says: "On ( Continued on page M ) THE STATE. January 1. 1967 9