What if Henry Clay doesn't give his anti-abolitionist speech of February 7, 1839? https://archive.org/stream/speechofhonhenry1839clay#page/n1/mode/2up It was probably as responsible as anything for the fact that he didn't get the support of any northern state but Rhode Island at the 1839 Whig National Convention. As Robert Remini puts it: "'I had rather be right than President', Clay had reportedly announced. So be it, responded the delegates." https://books.google.com/books?id=f9Hb6i90_mAC&pg=PA554
Without the speech, Clay would still have probably been supported by most southerners over Harrison and Scott. (After all, he was the only slaveholder of the three, despite the Virginia origins the other two shared with him.) If you add to that the additional northern support he would get, he might have been nominated and would be pretty sure to beat the unpopular Van Buren in 1840.
Carl Schurz would write decades later: "This ['I had rather be right than president'] was a fine saying. But, alas! Clay wanted very much to be president, and men who want very much to be president are often not fully conscious of their motives. What he called 'right' on this occasion he would not have called right at other periods of his life. He said it with the presidency in his mind. But it did not make him president after all." https://books.google.com/books?id=4r3TAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA169
Without the speech, Clay would still have probably been supported by most southerners over Harrison and Scott. (After all, he was the only slaveholder of the three, despite the Virginia origins the other two shared with him.) If you add to that the additional northern support he would get, he might have been nominated and would be pretty sure to beat the unpopular Van Buren in 1840.
Carl Schurz would write decades later: "This ['I had rather be right than president'] was a fine saying. But, alas! Clay wanted very much to be president, and men who want very much to be president are often not fully conscious of their motives. What he called 'right' on this occasion he would not have called right at other periods of his life. He said it with the presidency in his mind. But it did not make him president after all." https://books.google.com/books?id=4r3TAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA169