The American System: A Henry Clay TL

[TheHedgehog]

I can see it now! The Workingmen's Party slogan is going to be "The Chinese must stay*!"

*"in the ghettos"

Well, Black ghettos will be a thing in this TL, and I could see some sort of Jim Crow but for Chinese immigrants. I'm not sure I want to be that evil here, though.
Your mention of the Workingmen's Party does give me an idea of what TTL's American political landscape looks like in 2022.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Well, Black ghettos will be a thing in this TL, and I could see some sort of Jim Crow but for Chinese immigrants. I'm not sure I want to be that evil here, though.
Your mention of the Workingmen's Party does give me an idea of what TTL's American political landscape looks like in 2022.

Oh God 😂

 

[CastIron]

Any word on the Mormons? OTL Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 and the Church had succession crisis before Brigham Young took power, and the Mormons were driven West. I don't think Clay can really stop the persecutions or would care to, but I wonder if Mexico is going to let a bunch of Americans into their territory to settle, since that's basically how Texas became a thing.

 

[Born in the USSA]

Any word on the Mormons? OTL Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 and the Church had succession crisis before Brigham Young took power, and the Mormons were driven West. I don't think Clay can really stop the persecutions or would care to, but I wonder if Mexico is going to let a bunch of Americans into their territory to settle, since that's basically how Texas became a thing.

OTL there are plenty of Mormons living in Mexico now, I think they'd get a pass since they'd obviously have mixed feelings about being annexed by the US in a scenario without a Mexican-American War to make it inevitable.

 

[Born in the USSA]

@TheHedgehog if you're looking for an interesting take on the Mormons that avoids Utah/Deseret I had a scenario once where the Mormons remain in Illinois (where they played the role of electoral kingmaker in the 1840s OTL due to voting as a bloc) and move to join the Liberty Party, transforming it from a purely abolitionist party to one focused on both racial and religious toleration. It's certainly not going to be easy for them to remain in the US but they had electoral leverage they could have kept if things had gone differently. Smith's focus on abolition could make him appealing to Liberty while his platform called for expansion into the entirety of Oregon, setting up potential panic in the South down the line.

 

[jkarr]

So, in this tl, did they manage to sort out the San Juan islands into the treaty properly, or is the pig war still gonna happen?

 

[TheHedgehog]

Any word on the Mormons? OTL Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 and the Church had succession crisis before Brigham Young took power, and the Mormons were driven West. I don't think Clay can really stop the persecutions or would care to, but I wonder if Mexico is going to let a bunch of Americans into their territory to settle, since that's basically how Texas became a thing.

I think the Mormons will still decamp to less-populated areas, and as @Born in the USSA said, the Mormons weren't exactly huge fans of the US government so I think Mexico might still let them settle in the Great Salt Lake area or thereabouts.

@TheHedgehog if you're looking for an interesting take on the Mormons that avoids Utah/Deseret I had a scenario once where the Mormons remain in Illinois (where they played the role of electoral kingmaker in the 1840s OTL due to voting as a bloc) and move to join the Liberty Party, transforming it from a purely abolitionist party to one focused on both racial and religious toleration. It's certainly not going to be easy for them to remain in the US but they had electoral leverage they could have kept if things had gone differently. Smith's focus on abolition could make him appealing to Liberty while his platform called for expansion into the entirety of Oregon, setting up potential panic in the South down the line.

That could be very interesting, though I think I'm going to stick with the Mormons striking out west. I'm just not very well equipped to plot out just what the Mormons remaining in Illinois would bring both politically and religiously.

So, in this tl, did they manage to sort out the San Juan islands into the treaty properly, or is the pig war still gonna happen?

The dispute remains, although it will get resolved somewhat earlier and without as much tension.

 

[GamerGeeked]

The dispute remains, although it will get resolved somewhat earlier and without as much tension

Split down the middle?

 

[TheHedgehog]

Split down the middle?

Probably.

 

[TheHedgehog]

The 1840 and 1844 Presidential Elections:

 

[SilentSpaniard]

Nice wikiboxes!

Oh my... Look at their faces in the 1844 election! Politicians do not age gracefully.

 

[TheHedgehog]

Nice wikiboxes!

Oh my... Look at their faces in the 1844 election! Politicians do not age gracefully.

Thanks!
To be fair, the Clay one is from 1848 and the Van Buren one is from the 1850s, but yeah, Clay in particular looks undead.

 

[164522]

Nice wikiboxes!

Oh my... Look at their faces in the 1844 election! Politicians do not age gracefully.

On the painting/In real life)

 

[Sir William Jol]

The 1840 and 1844 Presidential Elections:
View attachment 716183View attachment 716186

I have a few questions.
1) Why are the Whigs blue when their colour is/was light/pale orange (I believe the specific shade is called buff, or at least according to Wikipedia)?
2) I understand why the Democrats would be red (they originally were considered the "red" party, aka like reds or socialists, pre-2000 when the closeness of the election caused all news outlets to reverse the colors in order to have a constant color palate of the two parties to accurately display the results of the election) but why light red?
3) And finally why isn't John C. Calhoun present on the 1844 election wikibox when he won South Carolina's electoral votes? Is this like Harry Byrd not present in the 1960 election because it doesn't mention that he received faithless electors from that state?

 

[fdas]

Nice wikiboxes!

Oh my... Look at their faces in the 1844 election! Politicians do not age gracefully.

At least its not Calhoun.

 

[TheHedgehog]

I have a few questions.
1) Why are the Whigs blue when their colour is/was light/pale orange (I believe the specific shade is called buff, or at least according to Wikipedia)?
2) I understand why the Democrats would be red (they originally were considered the "red" party, aka like reds or socialists, pre-2000 when the closeness of the election caused all news outlets to reverse the colors in order to have a constant color palate of the two parties to accurately display the results of the election) but why light red?
3) And finally why isn't John C. Calhoun present on the 1844 election wikibox when he won South Carolina's electoral votes? Is this like Harry Byrd not present in the 1960 election because it doesn't mention that he received faithless electors from that state?

1) According to wikipedia, one of the reasons that the Republicans were initially made blue is because the Federalists were blue, so I imagine that, as the Whigs are the descendants of the Federalists, would also be blue.
2) Honestly, no particular reason for the Democrats being red, it's just a nice contrast with blue.
3) Basically, yes. Calhoun didn't receive any popular votes in SC, so the wikibox doesn't him as a serious candidate.

 

[Sir William Jol]

1) According to wikipedia, one of the reasons that the Republicans were initially made blue is because the Federalists were blue, so I imagine that, as the Whigs are the descendants of the Federalists, would also be blue.
2) Honestly, no particular reason for the Democrats being red, it's just a nice contrast with blue.
3) Basically, yes. Calhoun didn't receive any popular votes in SC, so the wikibox doesn't him as a serious candidate.

Okay, thanks for getting back to me.

 

[TheHedgehog]

7. The First Cracks

“While Henry Clay had successfully implemented much of the Whig agenda, the party was left seriously divided by the battle over the two treaties. The 1846 congressional elections had seen antislavery ‘free-soil’ Whigs increase their representation both within congress and within the party itself.

The strengthened free-soil wing, led by former New York Governor William Seward, sought to assert itself within the party. Initially, Seward and Thaddeus Stevens supported Senator Daniel Webster because of his staunch opposition to the annexation of Texas. However, shortly before the convention Webster gave a speech in which he criticized abolitionists and southerners for stirring up tensions over slavery and called for “amicable unity.” This speech prompted Seward to publicly pull his support from Webster and endorse Scott, who was viewed as both a standard Whig and a non-partisan figure that the party could unite behind. Southern Whigs, suspicious of Scott, split between Webster and Secretary of State John M. Clayton. While Webster, as a leader of the Cotton Whigs, was acceptable to the south, his past statements against slavery meant that he was not their first choice. While about half of the southern Whigs supported Webster, another half of the south preferred Secretary Clayton, a fellow southerner.

The first ballot yielded no majority, with General Scott in the lead and Webster, buoyed by southern and New England support, in second. The two traded places on the second with Webster holding a plurality of delegates, and he held the lead for the next six ballots. On the eighth ballot, Scott was able to consolidate northern and midwestern support and take the lead, but continued southern suspicion meant that he did not have a majority. Finally, after thirteen ballots, Scott, Seward, and Clayton arrived at a deal: Clayton would give his delegates to Scott if he did not appoint any ardent free soilers to the cabinet and allowed Clayton to stay on as Secretary of State. In addition, Clayton and Scott agreed to support a platform plank calling for an end to territorial acquisitions in order to preserve sectional balance.

For Vice President, none other than Henry Clay stepped in to suggest Attorney General Crittenden. He was a moderate southerner, Clay explained, who would balance out Scott’s reputation, however circumstantial, as a free-soiler.

Presidential vote	1	2	3	…	13	14	Vice-Presidential vote	1
W. Scott	101	94	96		115	171	J. Crittenden	277
D. Webster	99	105	110		89	83
J. Clayton	56	60	51		67	1
Other	24	21	23		21	25	Other	3

For all the tension and frantic negotiations, the Whig convention produced a remarkably nondescript and evasive platform and ticket. Scott refused to elucidate his opinion of slavery or abolitionists aside from an appeal to sectional harmony. The platform, meanwhile, made no mention of the issue at all. Henry Clay was too busy organizing his return to the Senate to involve himself in a national campaign, while southern Whigs elected to let Scott lose and then return in 1852 to push a candidate more amenable to their demands.”

-From WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS by Josiah Wentworth, published 1978

“After Martin Van Buren led the Democrats to defeat in both 1840 and 1844, the prevailing attitude within the party was that their next nominee should have the full support of the south. That entailed that the nominee should be amenable to slavery and its possible extension. However, the north had to be kept on board, meaning that the ideal nominee would be a northerner with southern sympathies. This strengthened the positions of Senator James Buchanan, and former Governor William L. Marcy. Other candidates included Senator Lewis Cass, a supporter of popular sovereignty (where each territory decided for itself whether to allow slavery), former Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury [1] and Governor William O. Butler [2]. Martin Van Buren contemplated a third run, but ultimately decided to retire from politics and endorsed the Liberty Party ticket.

…The first ballot saw Lewis Cass emerge in the lead, but only barely. James Buchanan enjoyed strong southern support, and he gained strength on the next two ballots. Cass, meanwhile, lost support in the south to Buchanan and the west to William O. Butler. While Butler was unable to gain traction in the south because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Buchanan was able to combine his dominance of the southern delegations with a growing willingness of the northern delegations to support him.

As the convention listened to the results of the 3rd ballot be read aloud by the convention chair, it was clear that the landscape of the race was shifting. William Marcy experienced a significant loss of support as rivalries within New York state led to a significant number of anti-slavery delegates breaking from Marcy in favor of Van Buren (who was not a candidate). Marcy’s hopes of becoming a compromise candidate were dashed. Meanwhile, Cass and Buchanan remained nearly tied, with Cass just two delegates ahead. At this hour, Buchanan approached Marcy with an offer: in exchange for his support, Buchanan would nominate him for Secretary of State. Facing the collapse of his presidential aspirations, Marcy agreed. Cass, meanwhile, had stagnated on the second and third ballots, having gradually lost support. His failure to gain significant traction led several of his supporters, especially in the south, to consider other options. On the fourth ballot, Buchanan jumped into the lead, coming just 12 delegates shy of a majority [3]. He was nominated on the fifth ballot as northern delegates continued their stampede away from Cass.

Buchanan had wanted his close friend William R. King [4] of Alabama chosen as his running mate, but anti-expansionist and anti-slavery delegates made it known that they wanted someone to balance the ticket. As King was a slaveholder, a large contingent of anti-slavery delegates, led by the Barnburner faction in New York, pushed for the moderate William O. Butler instead. Butler had expressed support for gradual, compensated emancipation in the past, but was also the popular governor of Kentucky, a Whig stronghold. Despite Buchanan instructing his delegates to support Senator King, Butler was nominated on the second ballot.

Presidential vote	1	2	3	4	5	Vice-Presidential vote	1	2
J. Buchanan	83	85	90	115	149	W. Butler	94	135
L. Cass	98	94	92	79	56	W. King	107	98
W. Butler	26	23	27	36	31
W. Marcy	47	52	28	3	0
Other	0	0	17	21	18	Other	53	21

Like the Whigs, the Democrats made little mention of their stance on slavery. Unlike the Whigs, the Democrats were steadfastly unified behind their non-message and were content to run on their opposition to the national bank, and maintaining sectional balance. What maintaining sectional balance entailed, neither the party platform nor Buchanan would say.”

-From IN THE SHADOW OF JACKSON by Michelle Watts, published 2012

“Throughout the campaign, Scott was hampered by the divide within his party, and the perception that he was the candidate of the abolitionists. “The choice is clear,” one Democratic editorial read. “Our President shall either be Senator Buchanan, who is conscientious to sectional differences and conciliatory to the south, or General Scott, who is Seward’s man and beholden to the north alone.” In contrast, Buchanan hardly campaigned and had his surrogates and allies emphasize compromise and preserving the Union, making little mention of slavery or expansion.

The Whigs leaned heavily on Scott’s reputation as a war hero, hoping to avoid dividing the party with talk of slavery. However, his standing in the south was severely hampered by the fact that his main backers were noted abolitionists William Seward and Thaddeus Stevens. Seeing an opportunity, Buchanan’s surrogates, especially his close friend William R. King, campaigned heavily in Whig-leaning southern states like Louisiana, North Carolina, and Maryland. In the north, Buchanan made it known that he supported “protection to all the great interests, including manufacturing of the whole Union,” in effect signaling to the industrial states that he would leave in place the bulk of Clay’s protectionist legislation [5]. This blunted Whig charges that Buchanan would gut America’s growing industrial economy and curried favor with mercantile groups. In another letter, Buchanan sought to allay Democratic fears that he would pursue wholly Whiggish policies and strongly criticized the National Bank as a “bastion of corruption.”

As for the issue of slavery, the ambiguity of Scott and the Whigs might have secured them the election in a more normal year, but the Democrats were masterfully evasive to such an extent that the Whigs came off as divisively decisive by comparison. The Democrats were able to remain above the fray of the slave question while still tarring Scott as the candidate of the free-soilers, Seward, Stevens, and Weed.

	James Buchanan	Winfield Scott
Electoral Vote	187	103
Popular Vote	1,381,296	1,291,817
Percentage	49.7	46.5

Ultimately, Scott was unable to overcome his party’s divisions. The election was closer than expected, however, and several long-term electoral trends first emerged in 1848. The Midwest began drifting towards the Whigs, with Scott winning Indiana and Michigan and coming close in Illinois and the new states of Wisconsin and Iowa. Buchanan, meanwhile, reversed Whig trends to win every southern state except for Kentucky and Tennessee, with even the Whig stronghold Maryland narrowly voting for the Democrats.

Down ballot, the election was much worse for the Whigs. In the House of Representatives, Democrats gained 30 seats, granting them a strong majority. Many of these gains came from Whig-held districts in the south, halving the number of southern Whigs in Congress. Meanwhile, anti-slavery Whigs continued to gain strength in the north, tilting the intraparty balance of power further in favor of free soil. While the outgoing President Clay was elected to his old Senate seat in Kentucky [6], the Democrats expanded their Senate majority by two seats.

The 1848 elections saw the beginning of a transformation of the Whigs, from a party awkwardly straddling north and south to a wholly northern party without pretending to reconcile sectional differences. While Henry Clay was still a force within government, his word no longer carried the weight it once did – anti-slavery politicians like now-Senator William Seward understood that the future of the Whigs belonged to them.”

- From THE EVOLUTION OF THE WHIGS by James Welter, published 1997

[1] OTL, Woodbury was appointed to the Supreme Court by James Polk. With Henry Clay as President, a Whig is appointed instead.
[2] OTL, Butler narrowly lost the 1844 Kentucky Gubernatorial election. TTL, with a Whig President, he does better and wins in an upset.
[3] TTL, the 2/3 Rule was not reinstated at the 1844 convention, and is not implemented in 1848, either.
[4] There aren't any documents indicating the precise nature of their relationship, so I’ll take the cautious route.
[5] OTL, Buchanan supported high tariffs, being from a manufacturing state. His letter is modeled after one James Polk wrote in 1844.
[6] Henry Clay will never just retire; he’s always got to be in The Room Where It Happens.

 

[TheHedgehog]

The 1848 election wikibox:

 

[CountDVB]

Looks like things are definitely gonna get more interesting...