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Zacharie W. Kinslow

A native of Maury County, Tennessee, Zacharie W. Kinslow holds a master’s degree from Austin Peay State University. For five years he worked at the President James K. Polk Home & Museum in Columbia, Tennessee as a docent and educator. Since 2020, he has served as the executive director of the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum in Dickson, TN. Zacharie’s research interests primarily involve slavery and the America presidency as well as Jacksonian America.

  • Scholarship

    Enslaved and Entrenched

    Elias Polk was born into slavery in 1806 on a farm owned by Samuel Polk, father of the future president of the United States, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Later that year, Elias moved with the Polk family west to Tennessee, where they settled on land near Spring Hill (about 40 miles south of Nashville).1 In 1824, newlyweds James and Sarah Polk were

  • Scholarship

    Plantations & Politics

    Speaking before the United States House of Representatives in 1825, congressman James K. Polk described American slavery as “a matter which required the utmost caution.”1 He viewed slavery as a fundamental part of southern culture and economics, while at the same time regretting that this “common evil” had been “entailed upon us by our ancestors.”2 While publicly conflicted over the morality of owning en