On this day in 1849, James K. Polk died at just 53 years old, only 103 days after leaving the White House. That is the shortest retirement of any president in history. Here is why it stings. Polk was a dark horse nobody expected to win, and he announced he would serve a single term and accomplish exactly four enormous goals. Lower the tariff. Restore an independent treasury. Settle the Oregon border. Acquire California and the Southwest. He did all four. Then he worked himself into the ground doing it, left office exhausted, and was dead within months. He may be the most ruthlessly efficient president America ever had, and almost nobody remembers his name.
The moral of the story is lowering tariffs is bad for your health.