Humphrey Marshall kills Henry Clay, 1809

In 1809, Henry Clay was wounded in a duel with Humphrey Marshall, leader of the Federalist party in Kentucky, who had called Clay a "poltroon." https://books.google.com/books?id=f9Hb6i90_mAC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54& (Marshall btw was the brother-in-law as well as a cousin of John Marshall.) Suppose Clay had been killed.

A few possibilities:

(1) People sometimes forget that there were *two* Missouri Compromises--one of 1820 and one of 1821. Clay had an important role in the first (although it was Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois who first suggested the 36 degrees, 30 minutes line) but the second (which was prompted by Northern outrage at the new Missouri Constitution's prohibition of "free negroes and mulattoes" from entering the state) was almost entirely his work. (The second compromise, which basically said that Missouri had to promise not to abridge the privileges and immunities of any citizen of any state, only got through the House by a vote of 87 to 81.) One can always say "Someone else would have worked out a compromise"--but I am not so sure. It is hard to think of anyone else who would have had the power over the House Clay did.

(2) Of course other people would advocate tariffs, internal improvements, etc. But would others be as successful in tying them into one program and giving it a catchy name like "the American System"? (John Quncay Adams of course favored a similar nationalist program but was too dour to have much of a chance of selling it to the American people--moreover, he was more skeptical than Clay about the tariff.)

(3) Without Clay, if the 1824 election went into the House (assuming the other candidates to have been the same as in OTL) it is hard not to see the Western states going for Jackson, which would probably lead to Jackson's election, unless the Crawfordites were more stubborn than I think they would be.

(4) Assuming there would eventually be some kind of Nullification Crisis (there would have been protectionists who would have gotten a high tariff enacted even without Clay, and resentment in much of the South, especially South Carolina, of that tariff) I am not sure that anyone other than Clay would have had the authority (because of his association with the American System) to get Northern protectionists to agree to the Compromise Tariff that helped to end the crisis.

(5) Clay may actually have been an obstacle to the unification and strengthening of anti-Jackson forces, because (a) as a Freemason he had a hard time with the Antimasonic vote, and (b) he was haunted by the "corrupt bargain" charge. Eventually, an anti-Jackson party would have arisen, whether it would have called itself "Whig" or not (Clay didn't originate the use of "Whig" for the anti-Jackson party, but he did much to popularize it). But obviously its history would have been very different, especially if Jackson had first been elected in 1824 rather than 1828. OTOH, if Clay had not been its early leader, who would have been? Webster? He was too aristocratic, too Federalist to be very popular.

As for still later events, like the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850, things might have changed so much before then that I don't even want to consider them yet, though others are welcome to do so...
 
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