"It is in fact very much in Clay's power to make the President. If he says Jackson, the nine Western states are united at once for him--If he says Adams, two or three Western states fall off--& Jackson must fail."
--Representative William Plumer, Jr. to his father, December 16, 1824 https://archive.org/details/missouricompromi00plum/page/122
In the past I have tended to dismiss the idea that Clay in 1824 might have supported Jackson and then been named Jackson's Secretary of State. What made me dismissive of this was above all the bitter antipathy that developed between the two after Clay's 1819 attack in the House on Jackson's conduct in Florida. "Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our republic, scarcely yet two score years old, to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors." https://books.google.com/books?id=t1fUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA444 Clay quickly added that of course he was far from "intimating that Gen. Jackson cherished any designs inimical to the liberties of the country" https://books.google.com/books?id=YRBmAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA78 but this did little reassure the furious Jackson.
So did this event make Jackson and Clay enemies forever? So I thought, but a recent reading of Robert Remini's Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union has convinced me that this was not necessarily so. In late 1823 there was an apparent reconciliation between Clay and Jackson, arranged by the Tennessee congressional delegation. Clay told the delegation that there was no need for any "personal hostility" between himself and Jackson, and the delegates gushed that Jackson felt the same way. The delegates later arranged a dinner which both Jackson and Clay attended. Afterwards, Clay wrote a friend, "Genl. Jackson has buried the hatchet and we are again on good terms." As Remini remarks (p. 221):
"What then, of Jackson's supposed temper, the rage, the uncontrolled and undying need to exact revenge against all those who dared to fault him or his military record? Obviously it had limits. There was purpose and guile in his emotional tantrums. When it suited his purposes, he could run hot or cold. At this juncture he seemed as determined as Clay to win the presidency, and if that meant burying the hatchet with the Speaker, so be it. Indeed, during this first session of the Eighteenth Congress Jackson buried several hatchets, including the one involving Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri." https://books.google.com/books?id=f9Hb6i90_mAC&pg=PA221
So perhaps the past enmity was not an insuperable barrier to Clay backing Jackson. And many westerners, including a large number of people in Clay's own state, urged him to do so. Furthermore, Clay personally disliked Adams, and the feeling was mutual. (Adams' diary is full of rancor against Clay, whom Adams believed was behind stories--about the negotiations at Ghent, for example--designed to destroy Adams politically by depicting him as an enemy of the West.) And with all the talk of a "corrupt bargain", the fact is that Clay was the logical choice for Secretary of State for *whichever* candidate became president with Clay's support--Adams, Jackson, or even Crawford --though Crawford might have appointed Martin Van Buren instead, and anyway Clay's backing Crawford was out of the question, not only because of the latter's poor health, but because Crawford's friends had frustrated Clay in New York and Virginia. (Clay had hoped that Virginia would turn to him as its native son, once the extent of Crawford's physical breakdown became clear, but Virginia hung on to Crawford to the bitter end.)
That being said, there were also strong reasons for Clay to back Adams:
(1) Of all the candidates, Adams was most likely to help the "American System" in that he and Clay would form an east-west alliance in favor of that system. OTOH, Jackson was not totally opposed to Clay's economic nationalism. He had not yet arrived at the low-tariff position that was later to be associated with the Democratic party, instead declaring his support for a "judicious" tariff. [1] As a military man, he would have some sympathy with the idea that America had to become more self-sufficient in manufactures for national security reasons, though he was doubtless also aware of the unpopularity in the South of too high a tariff. Likewise, he could see the need for "truly national" internal improvements (as opposed to ones which were just the result of logrolling to help local interests) especially those which might aid the country's defense. The one element of the American System he was really against was the National Bank (tariffs, after all, helped manufacturers, who *produced* things; banks just turned out paper money, and helped nobody except "moneyed capitalists"). So while ideologically Clay and Jackson were not as divergent as they would be in the future, still Clay was closer to Adams. (Crawford's position was in a sense the opposite of Jackson's; he favored a National Bank but little else in the American System.)
FWIW, Clay claimed to have remembered only one conversation with Jackson during this period--at a birthday party given by the Russian minister on December 24. The two men were standing in a group discussing internal improvements, and Clay told Jackson, "if you should be elected President, I hope the cause will flourish under your administration." Jackson replied that it was a matter of how much money was available for appropriations. Now this is obviously different from saying that federal support for internal improvements was unconstitutional (as some Crawfordites argued) but it was not terribly enthusiastic, either. Perhaps it was ambiguous--did Jackson mean "we can't spend much on public works because there is so little money available" or "we can't spend much on public works unless we can raise more money by raising the tariff, so maybe we should do that"? Perhaps a more enthusiastic reply by Jackson would have made it a little less likely Clay would have supported Adams--but it is doubtful that anything that Jackson would have said could have matched Adams' promises. Jackson, even at this time, was already a fairly strict constructionist, at least compared to Adams and Clay.
(2) The decision to back Adams also seemed to make sense in terms of Clay's future political career. A Secretary of State Clay might seem the logical candidate to succeed either Adams or Jackson after eight years (most prior presidents had been re-elected so it seemed logical to assume that the next one would also be). But in the case of Adams and Clay, that would mean eight years of an Easterner followed by eight years of a Westerner, which would seem fair to people of both sections. In the case of Jackson, to be succeeded by Clay would mean sixteen years in a row of southwestern presidents, and there was reason to think that other parts of the country might resent that. Hence Clay's chances of succession looked better with Adams.
(3) Finally, Clay seems to have genuinely believed that Jackson as a "military chieftain" was not the right man to be president. As Clay put it, "I cannot believe that killing 2500 Englishmen at N. Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy." https://books.google.com/books?id=FFNLg6B8RcAC&pg=PA47 And there was what Clay's friend Peter B. Porter called Jackson's tendency "to consider the law & his own notions of justice" as "synonimous." https://books.google.com/books?id=3bceBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA18
So all in all, it is just possible for Clay to have backed Jackson, but not very likely. Had he done so and been appointed Secretary of State it would of course have been Adams' followers who would have cried "corrupt bargain" but it is doubtful they could have been as successful in destroying the Jackson administration as the Jacksonians (soon to be joined by Van Buren) were with Adams. They would after all have a hard time matching Jackson's populist appeal.
Of course there would be disagreements between the President and the Secretary of State, as there were even under Adams. One should not forget that sometimes Adams' nationalism went too far even for Clay. When Adams gave his famous message to the Nineteenth Congress urging a national university, an astronomical observatory (Adams argued that just as Congress could appropriate money for lighthouses it could appropriate money for "light-houses of the skies," a phrase which became the target of much ridicule), and a broad program of internal improvements, and urged Congress not to proclaim itself "palsied by the will of our constituents," (a phrase Adams' opponents quickly seized on as showing the aristocratic and undemocratic nature of the administration) even Clay had reservations. He did not like the idea of including a national university in the message because he did not consider it to have the same constitutional justification as internal improvements or a national bank. Otherwise he approved of the substance of the message, but warned against recommending measures not likely to pass.
Still, the differences between Adams and Clay here were basically tactical--Adams advocating things that Clay also wanted, but which he thought might be unattainable. OTOH, as Secretary of State for Jackson, Clay would no doubt lament that the president did not go far enough in supporting internal improvements. And there would doubtless soon be clashes between Clay and Vice President Calhoun, who was rapidly abandoning his earlier nationalism and would be a strong force in trying to persuade Jackson to oppose most internal improvements, any further increases in the tariff, and sending delegates to the Panama Congress. (This Congress, a predecessor to the Pan American movement, was controversial for many reasons, some of them having to do with "entangling alliances". But one objection about which the South was very sensitive, was the possibility that the issue of Haiti would come up at the Congress.)
All in all I do not think Clay would have lasted too long in a Jackson cabinet. Eventually there would be a falling out between these two strong-willed men. (And when the two parted company, one wonders whether Clay's natural ideological allies, the Adams supporters, would be willing to forgive his "betrayal" of 1824.) But if I am wrong about this, Clay might have a chance of succeeding Jackson in 1832, with the General's support (though as I noted some people would not be happy about two Southwesterners in a row in the White House).
[1] Jackson wrote: "You ask my opinion on the Tariff. I answer, that I am in favor of a judicious examination and revision of it; and so far as the Tariff before us embraces the design of fostering, protecting and preserving within ourselves the means of national defense and independence, particularly in a state of war, I would advocate and support it. The experience of the late war ought to teach us a lesson; and one never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, procured for us by our revolutionary fathers, are worth the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it is surely our duty to protect and defend them...
"This Tariff--I mean a judicious one--possesses more fanciful than real dangers. I will ask what is the real situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus products? Except for cotton he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture? and that the channels for labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out at once the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor, employ it in mechanism and manufactures, thereby creating a home market for your breadstuffs, and distributing labor to a most profitable account, and benefits to the country will result. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will at once give a home market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time, that we should become a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England, feed our own, or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we should be rendered paupers ourselves."
http://books.google.com/books?id=yNkRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA35
Critics of Jackson poked fun of his use of the word "judicious"--Clay supposedly remarked, "Well, by ___, I am in favor of an injudicious tariff!"--but as Robert Remini points out, the letter was not really ambiguous: "Jackson called for a revision of the tariff in terms of strengthening the country from foreign danger, protecting labor, and reducing the debt." Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom 1822-1832, p. 70. https://books.google.com/books?id=kbM-AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 James Parton was to ask rhetorically in his 1860 biography of Jackson, "Did Henry Clay ever deliver a speech, or Horace Greeley write an editorial article, more completely pervaded with the spirit of the protective policy, than this letter of General Jackson? The General really exhausted the subject. Not an argument escaped him." http://books.google.com/books?id=yNkRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA36
It is of course possible that southern pressure would move him in a less protectionist direction as president in 1824-8 as it would eventually do in OTL after 1828. Yet there would be countervailing pressures from states like Pennsylvania, one of his strongholds in 1824... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824
--Representative William Plumer, Jr. to his father, December 16, 1824 https://archive.org/details/missouricompromi00plum/page/122
In the past I have tended to dismiss the idea that Clay in 1824 might have supported Jackson and then been named Jackson's Secretary of State. What made me dismissive of this was above all the bitter antipathy that developed between the two after Clay's 1819 attack in the House on Jackson's conduct in Florida. "Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our republic, scarcely yet two score years old, to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors." https://books.google.com/books?id=t1fUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA444 Clay quickly added that of course he was far from "intimating that Gen. Jackson cherished any designs inimical to the liberties of the country" https://books.google.com/books?id=YRBmAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA78 but this did little reassure the furious Jackson.
So did this event make Jackson and Clay enemies forever? So I thought, but a recent reading of Robert Remini's Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union has convinced me that this was not necessarily so. In late 1823 there was an apparent reconciliation between Clay and Jackson, arranged by the Tennessee congressional delegation. Clay told the delegation that there was no need for any "personal hostility" between himself and Jackson, and the delegates gushed that Jackson felt the same way. The delegates later arranged a dinner which both Jackson and Clay attended. Afterwards, Clay wrote a friend, "Genl. Jackson has buried the hatchet and we are again on good terms." As Remini remarks (p. 221):
"What then, of Jackson's supposed temper, the rage, the uncontrolled and undying need to exact revenge against all those who dared to fault him or his military record? Obviously it had limits. There was purpose and guile in his emotional tantrums. When it suited his purposes, he could run hot or cold. At this juncture he seemed as determined as Clay to win the presidency, and if that meant burying the hatchet with the Speaker, so be it. Indeed, during this first session of the Eighteenth Congress Jackson buried several hatchets, including the one involving Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri." https://books.google.com/books?id=f9Hb6i90_mAC&pg=PA221
So perhaps the past enmity was not an insuperable barrier to Clay backing Jackson. And many westerners, including a large number of people in Clay's own state, urged him to do so. Furthermore, Clay personally disliked Adams, and the feeling was mutual. (Adams' diary is full of rancor against Clay, whom Adams believed was behind stories--about the negotiations at Ghent, for example--designed to destroy Adams politically by depicting him as an enemy of the West.) And with all the talk of a "corrupt bargain", the fact is that Clay was the logical choice for Secretary of State for *whichever* candidate became president with Clay's support--Adams, Jackson, or even Crawford --though Crawford might have appointed Martin Van Buren instead, and anyway Clay's backing Crawford was out of the question, not only because of the latter's poor health, but because Crawford's friends had frustrated Clay in New York and Virginia. (Clay had hoped that Virginia would turn to him as its native son, once the extent of Crawford's physical breakdown became clear, but Virginia hung on to Crawford to the bitter end.)
That being said, there were also strong reasons for Clay to back Adams:
(1) Of all the candidates, Adams was most likely to help the "American System" in that he and Clay would form an east-west alliance in favor of that system. OTOH, Jackson was not totally opposed to Clay's economic nationalism. He had not yet arrived at the low-tariff position that was later to be associated with the Democratic party, instead declaring his support for a "judicious" tariff. [1] As a military man, he would have some sympathy with the idea that America had to become more self-sufficient in manufactures for national security reasons, though he was doubtless also aware of the unpopularity in the South of too high a tariff. Likewise, he could see the need for "truly national" internal improvements (as opposed to ones which were just the result of logrolling to help local interests) especially those which might aid the country's defense. The one element of the American System he was really against was the National Bank (tariffs, after all, helped manufacturers, who *produced* things; banks just turned out paper money, and helped nobody except "moneyed capitalists"). So while ideologically Clay and Jackson were not as divergent as they would be in the future, still Clay was closer to Adams. (Crawford's position was in a sense the opposite of Jackson's; he favored a National Bank but little else in the American System.)
FWIW, Clay claimed to have remembered only one conversation with Jackson during this period--at a birthday party given by the Russian minister on December 24. The two men were standing in a group discussing internal improvements, and Clay told Jackson, "if you should be elected President, I hope the cause will flourish under your administration." Jackson replied that it was a matter of how much money was available for appropriations. Now this is obviously different from saying that federal support for internal improvements was unconstitutional (as some Crawfordites argued) but it was not terribly enthusiastic, either. Perhaps it was ambiguous--did Jackson mean "we can't spend much on public works because there is so little money available" or "we can't spend much on public works unless we can raise more money by raising the tariff, so maybe we should do that"? Perhaps a more enthusiastic reply by Jackson would have made it a little less likely Clay would have supported Adams--but it is doubtful that anything that Jackson would have said could have matched Adams' promises. Jackson, even at this time, was already a fairly strict constructionist, at least compared to Adams and Clay.
(2) The decision to back Adams also seemed to make sense in terms of Clay's future political career. A Secretary of State Clay might seem the logical candidate to succeed either Adams or Jackson after eight years (most prior presidents had been re-elected so it seemed logical to assume that the next one would also be). But in the case of Adams and Clay, that would mean eight years of an Easterner followed by eight years of a Westerner, which would seem fair to people of both sections. In the case of Jackson, to be succeeded by Clay would mean sixteen years in a row of southwestern presidents, and there was reason to think that other parts of the country might resent that. Hence Clay's chances of succession looked better with Adams.
(3) Finally, Clay seems to have genuinely believed that Jackson as a "military chieftain" was not the right man to be president. As Clay put it, "I cannot believe that killing 2500 Englishmen at N. Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy." https://books.google.com/books?id=FFNLg6B8RcAC&pg=PA47 And there was what Clay's friend Peter B. Porter called Jackson's tendency "to consider the law & his own notions of justice" as "synonimous." https://books.google.com/books?id=3bceBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA18
So all in all, it is just possible for Clay to have backed Jackson, but not very likely. Had he done so and been appointed Secretary of State it would of course have been Adams' followers who would have cried "corrupt bargain" but it is doubtful they could have been as successful in destroying the Jackson administration as the Jacksonians (soon to be joined by Van Buren) were with Adams. They would after all have a hard time matching Jackson's populist appeal.
Of course there would be disagreements between the President and the Secretary of State, as there were even under Adams. One should not forget that sometimes Adams' nationalism went too far even for Clay. When Adams gave his famous message to the Nineteenth Congress urging a national university, an astronomical observatory (Adams argued that just as Congress could appropriate money for lighthouses it could appropriate money for "light-houses of the skies," a phrase which became the target of much ridicule), and a broad program of internal improvements, and urged Congress not to proclaim itself "palsied by the will of our constituents," (a phrase Adams' opponents quickly seized on as showing the aristocratic and undemocratic nature of the administration) even Clay had reservations. He did not like the idea of including a national university in the message because he did not consider it to have the same constitutional justification as internal improvements or a national bank. Otherwise he approved of the substance of the message, but warned against recommending measures not likely to pass.
Still, the differences between Adams and Clay here were basically tactical--Adams advocating things that Clay also wanted, but which he thought might be unattainable. OTOH, as Secretary of State for Jackson, Clay would no doubt lament that the president did not go far enough in supporting internal improvements. And there would doubtless soon be clashes between Clay and Vice President Calhoun, who was rapidly abandoning his earlier nationalism and would be a strong force in trying to persuade Jackson to oppose most internal improvements, any further increases in the tariff, and sending delegates to the Panama Congress. (This Congress, a predecessor to the Pan American movement, was controversial for many reasons, some of them having to do with "entangling alliances". But one objection about which the South was very sensitive, was the possibility that the issue of Haiti would come up at the Congress.)
All in all I do not think Clay would have lasted too long in a Jackson cabinet. Eventually there would be a falling out between these two strong-willed men. (And when the two parted company, one wonders whether Clay's natural ideological allies, the Adams supporters, would be willing to forgive his "betrayal" of 1824.) But if I am wrong about this, Clay might have a chance of succeeding Jackson in 1832, with the General's support (though as I noted some people would not be happy about two Southwesterners in a row in the White House).
[1] Jackson wrote: "You ask my opinion on the Tariff. I answer, that I am in favor of a judicious examination and revision of it; and so far as the Tariff before us embraces the design of fostering, protecting and preserving within ourselves the means of national defense and independence, particularly in a state of war, I would advocate and support it. The experience of the late war ought to teach us a lesson; and one never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, procured for us by our revolutionary fathers, are worth the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it is surely our duty to protect and defend them...
"This Tariff--I mean a judicious one--possesses more fanciful than real dangers. I will ask what is the real situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus products? Except for cotton he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture? and that the channels for labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out at once the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor, employ it in mechanism and manufactures, thereby creating a home market for your breadstuffs, and distributing labor to a most profitable account, and benefits to the country will result. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will at once give a home market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time, that we should become a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England, feed our own, or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we should be rendered paupers ourselves."
http://books.google.com/books?id=yNkRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA35
Critics of Jackson poked fun of his use of the word "judicious"--Clay supposedly remarked, "Well, by ___, I am in favor of an injudicious tariff!"--but as Robert Remini points out, the letter was not really ambiguous: "Jackson called for a revision of the tariff in terms of strengthening the country from foreign danger, protecting labor, and reducing the debt." Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom 1822-1832, p. 70. https://books.google.com/books?id=kbM-AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 James Parton was to ask rhetorically in his 1860 biography of Jackson, "Did Henry Clay ever deliver a speech, or Horace Greeley write an editorial article, more completely pervaded with the spirit of the protective policy, than this letter of General Jackson? The General really exhausted the subject. Not an argument escaped him." http://books.google.com/books?id=yNkRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA36
It is of course possible that southern pressure would move him in a less protectionist direction as president in 1824-8 as it would eventually do in OTL after 1828. Yet there would be countervailing pressures from states like Pennsylvania, one of his strongholds in 1824... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824