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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPlan to dig up U.S. president's body deemed "mortifying" by family
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- President James K. Polk did big things for America, dramatically expanding its borders by annexing Texas and seizing California and the Southwest in a war with Mexico. Achieving undisturbed eternal rest has proved more difficult.
In a proposal that has riled some folks in Tennessee, including a very distant relative of the nations 11th president, some state lawmakers want to move Polks body to what would be its fourth resting place in the nearly 170 years since he died of cholera.
The plan is to exhume Polks remains and those of his wife, Sarah, from their white-columned tomb on the grounds of the state Capitol in Nashville and take them about 50 miles to his fathers home, now known as the James K. Polk Home and Museum, in Columbia. A vote on the resolution could come as early as Monday.
Teresa Elam, who says she is a seventh-generation great-niece of the childless Polk, called the whole idea mortifying.
I got so upset about it because theyre going to take these bodies of these fine, wonderful people and bring them down to Columbia and put them on display to make money, she said.
Backers of the resolution, including Sen. Joey Hensley, a Republican whose district includes the museum, have argued that Polks tomb is in an out-of-the-way spot on the Capitol grounds and that he deserves better.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-james-polk-plan-to-move-his-body-stirs-trouble/
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)One's gonna have a long queue to it, full of people needing to piss.
dhol82
(9,353 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)They're doing it for money