Blackleg in the White House: A Henry Clay Victory TL

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Author's Note & Prologue
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    • True Whig

    True Whig

    BLACKLEG IN THE WHITE HOUSE
    The Presidency of Henry Clay

    This timeline discusses the putative presidency of Henry Clay. I will make infoboxes and occasionally use RNG to make plot decisions that I do not trust myself to make. If I find it enjoyable to write, I will continue to write it, after Clay's presidency has ended, at my leisure.

    Prologue    ​
    The New York gubernatorial election in 1844 would be of unprecedented consequence. Its outcome, favoring the Whig Party, would shift the balance of power in the nation's most electorally-significant state. The untimely death of the popular Senator Silas Wright from apoplexy in April 1843 forced the Albany Regency, New York's ruling clique at the time, to scramble to find a suitable candidate. The Regency's gaze landed on one of its charter members, Benjamin Franklin Butler, the former U.S. Attorney General under President Van Buren. Butler, however, was ill-suited to the kind of popular campaigning that electoral politics now required. He was stiff and legalistic, an unclubbable man who was not at ease among the regional powerbrokers and Tammany Hall hucksters of New York.

    Former U.S. Rep. Millard Fillmore, a charismatic and handsome politician, if also supercilious and arrogant, seemed the most viable candidate for New York's Whig Party to take the Governor's Mansion from the Democrats. He had served with distinction, albeit briefly, as the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Thurlow Weed, the consummate Whig schemer of the Empire State, pulled Fillmore away from the Whig vice presidential nomination, for which he was an early leader, to seize the New York governorship. Politically, Fillmore was a firm opponent of Texas Annexation and suspected by some Southern Whigs of abolitionist sympathies. He was five years younger than Butler.

    Screen Shot 2020-09-19 at 4.22.50 PM.png
    ​
     
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  • Index
    • Introduction: The Election of 1844
  • Index
    • True Whig

    True Whig

    BLACKLEG IN THE WHITE HOUSE
    The Presidency of Henry Clay

    henry-clay-9250385-1-raw-res.jpg

    'The Star of the West' or 'The Great Compromiser'

    The Presidential Election of 1844
    Henry Clay
    Theodore Frelinghuysen
    of the Whig Party
    vs.
    James K. Polk
    George M. Dallas
    of the Democratic Party
    genusmap.php

    Electoral Vote
    Clay / Frelinghuysen - 141
    Polk / Dallas - 134

    Popular Vote
    Polk / Dallas - 1,335,740 (49.40%)
    Clay / Frelinghuysen - 1,303,987 (48.23%)
    Birney / Morris - 62,054 (2.30%)
    Others - 2,082 (0.08%)
    ​
    Henry Clay won New York, the closest state in the election of 1844, and its 36 electoral college votes by a margin of 3,830 votes (0.79%). With New York, Clay won the presidency, with just three more electoral votes than were absolutely necessary. Recalling the words of the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo, former Whig Governor William H. Seward of New York called the race "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." Former New York City Mayor Robert H. Morris, the boss or Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, had failed to deliver the presidency for his party.
     
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    • Ficboy

    Banned
    Looking forward to your timeline. I've got my TL in the works that is related to Henry Clay that has his early death by tuberculosis on January 21, 1850 as a major plot point that leads to an early Civil War.

    Given that Henry Clay was opposed to the annexation of Texas there are definitely going to be butterflies regarding the Mexican-American War and the Civil War it might lead to them either not happening at all or being delayed to another decade or two.
     
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    David T

    My own favorite personal POD for having Clay carry New York and thus win the election: Have Silas Wright die a few years early, or at least decline to run for governor. Wright won by over 10,000 votes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1844_New_York_state_election and probably was responsible for Polk's 5,106 vote victory in the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1844_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York

    Most other PODs have their problems, e.g., "Clay should have come out more unequivocally against the annexation of TX, so he could win some of Birney's votes." But this would probably have cost Clay TN, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1844_United_States_presidential_election_in_Tennessee and without TN, even NY couldn't save Clay.
     
    Last edited:

    Ficboy

    Banned
    True Whig said:
    BLACKLEG IN THE WHITE HOUSE
    The Presidency of Henry Clay

    henry-clay-9250385-1-raw-res.jpg

    'The Star of the West' or 'The Great Compromiser'

    The Presidential Election of 1844
    Henry Clay
    Theodore Frelinghuysen
    of the Whig Party
    vs.
    James K. Polk
    George M. Dallas
    of the Democratic Party
    genusmap.php

    Electoral Vote
    Clay / Frelinghuysen - 141
    Polk / Dallas - 134

    Popular Vote
    Polk / Dallas - 1,335,740 (49.40%)
    Clay / Frelinghuysen - 1,303,987 (48.23%)
    Birney / Morris - 62,054 (2.30%)
    Others - 2,082 (0.08%)
    ​
    Henry Clay won New York, the closest state in the election of 1844, and its 36 electoral college votes by a margin of 3,830 votes (0.79%). With New York, Clay won the presidency, with just three more electoral votes than were absolutely necessary. Recalling the words of the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo, former Whig Governor William H. Seward of New York called the race "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." Former New York City Mayor Robert H. Morris, the boss or Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, had failed to deliver the presidency for his party.
    Click to expand...
    Just follow David T's suggestion of having Silas Wright dying or not running for office thus allowing Henry Clay to win the election.
     

    David T

    It can also be argued that Clay could have carried New York is he had chosen a New York running mate instead of Frelinghuysen. But the two leading New York possibilities each had disadvantages:

    (1) Senator Nathaniel P. Tallmadge: Tallmadge had been a leader of the "Conservatives," a Democratic faction that broke with Van Buren over the Independent Treasury and supported Seward for governor in 1838 and Harrison for president in 1840. Putting Tallmadge on the ticket might enable Clay to carry New York. The problem, of course, is that after the Tyler fiasco, the pressure to pick a "real" Whig, not a convert, was overwhelming.

    (2) Millard Fillmore was of course a "real" Whig, but there were two problems: (a) Southern Whigs suspected he had abolitionist sympathies--and again remember that TN went for Clay by the narrowest of margins, and any suspicion of his running mate could have cost Clay that state, without which even winning NY would not be enough. (b) Thurlow Weed was determined to keep Fillmore off the national ticket because he wanted to run Fillmore for governor that year.

    (It could also be argued that without Frelinghuysen, the Whigs might have lost NJ, but I doubt this: the state had gone for Harrison in 1836 as well as 1840, and would go for Taylor in 1848. Indeed, Clay might have carried it in 1832 if not for William Wirt's votes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1832_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Jersey)
     
    True Whig

    True Whig

    This TL is not DOA. I've just been busy starting up my college term.

    David T said:
    Have Silas Wright die a few years early, or at least decline to run for governor.
    Click to expand...
    I think I will go with this POD. I'll just say that Silas Wright's OTL apoplexy struck a few years earlier, killing him in 1843.

    David T said:
    (b) Thurlow Weed was determined to keep Fillmore off the national ticket because he wanted to run Fillmore for governor that year.
    Click to expand...
    I like this suggestion as well. I think a good way to dovetail Fillmore into Clay's election is to have him be elected Governor of New York in 1844. His opponent probably would have been an Albany Regency loyalist like Benjamin Franklin Butler.
     

    Ficboy

    Banned
    True Whig said:
    This TL is not DOA. I've just been busy starting up my college term.


    I think I will go with this POD. I'll just say that Silas Wright's OTL apoplexy struck a few years earlier, killing him in 1843.


    I like this suggestion as well. I think a good way to dovetail Fillmore into Clay's election is to have him be elected Governor of New York in 1844. His opponent probably would have been an Albany Regency loyalist like Benjamin Franklin Butler.
    Click to expand...
    I hope you start this timeline and expand into things such as the almost crisis of Texas going into New Mexico to seize Santa Fe (which was close to happening based on contemporary writings of politicians and newspapers in OTL), the Compromise of 1850 and the Civil War.
     

    Darth_Kiryan

    Ficboy said:
    Given that Henry Clay was opposed to the annexation of Texas there are definitely going to be butterflies regarding the Mexican-American War and the Civil War it might lead to them either not happening at all or being delayed to another decade or two.
    Click to expand...

    Debatable that Clay is really opposed to Texas being annexed. During his time as Secretary of State in 1825-1829 he tried by buy Texas. At best, Clay is opposed to annexing Texas if it leads to war, which is what happened in 1845. If annexing Texas did not lead to a war, he would fully be leading the charge. I mean, at heart Henry Clay is a diehard expansionist and firm believer in Manifest Destiny.
     

    Ficboy

    Banned
    Darth_Kiryan said:
    Debatable that Clay is really opposed to Texas being annexed. During his time as Secretary of State in 1825-1829 he tried by buy Texas. At best, Clay is opposed to annexing Texas if it leads to war, which is what happened in 1845. If annexing Texas did not lead to a war, he would fully be leading the charge. I mean, at heart Henry Clay is a diehard expansionist and firm believer in Manifest Destiny.
    Click to expand...
    Well in 1845, Texas was an independent republic and Mexico didn't recognize it. If the United States under Henry Clay stays away from it then there is no war.
     

    Ficboy

    Banned
    True Whig said:
    Thank you for the encouragement! I'll be back soon, don't worry.
    Click to expand...
    Speaking of which, I've got a timeline which involves Henry Clay but in a way that wouldn't expect (Hint: It has Texas vs the United States over Santa Fe, New Mexico which in turn leads to an early 1850s version of the Civil War). I'll send you the link and you might contribute to the timeline if you're interested.
     
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