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9. William H. Harrison / John Tyler (Whig): 1841
1840: Martin van Buren / Richard M. Johnson, various (Democratic)
With the Whig triumph of 1840, Henry Clay was confident that with the goals of the American System to be enacted and a loyal ally in the form of William Henry Harrison in the White House to follow his guidance, he would fix the American economy, overturn the chaos of Jackson and secure for the United States the great future he knew he could lead it to.
The first problems arose when William Henry Harrison proved to have a different view about who was more important under the constitution, the President of the senior Senator from Kentucky. Rather than do as he was told Harrison moved with his inaugural address and his cabinet appointments to place himself, not in the dominant camp of Henry Clay but to ally with the only other possible rival the Great Compromiser of the West, that being his surprise nominee for Secretary of State, “The Great Patrician” of the East, Daniel Webster. At the core of this debate was the issue of if the President would continue to lead from the executive or if Clay’s dreams of Congressional Rule could be met. Even then there was trouble for Harrison, as Webster attempted to influence the appointment of territorial governors and bully Old Tippecanoe to follow his line against Clay. But in the end, neither man quite understood that Harrison was a patriot, and that the old General’s first loyalty lay not with party factions but to the Constitution, while Webster was willing to back off, Clay attempted to force the President to toe his line with threats over bankrupting the government. A great showdown in the Whig Party, and in the nation was being set, with the very nature of its government in the balance.
And then, only three weeks into office, Harrison fell ill. The best (that is to say, worst) medical treatments available did no good, and one month after taking office, Harrison, the Ninth President of the United States was dead, his goals not even fully developed, his legacy disregarded to be a footnote on one hand, and on the other, one of massive, unforeseen consequences that would in the end, transform the American Republic.
10. John Tyler /vacant(Expelled Whig) [Acting]: 1841-1842
With the first death of an incumbent President in the United States trouble developed at once, as to what exactly the role of the Vice President now was. the theories had never been tested before but things were placed in two camps, the first generally that view of the Democrats was that the Vice-President assumed office and that was that, he would serve until the end of his deceased predecessors term. The view though promoted by Henry Clay was that the veep was now simply “Acting” as President, until such a time that a new election could take place in the next round of congressional elections and that was that. The framers of the constitution had not delved too far into the issue, being more concerned with what would happen if both executives were removed before the end of the term. It was in this uncertainty that John Tyler, the former Democrat-turned-Whig Vice President assumed office.
Like Harrison, Tyler was an old friend of Henry Clay, and Clay hoped that while things had gone badly with Harrison that John Tyler would be more reasonable to his views as to just whom was really going to manage things in the American Republic. Clay sought to pass a slate of laws for the Whig Platform as the nation faced a growing deficit of a staggering $11 Million and an economy in tatters. But Tyler was not willing to act as a good Whig should. There would be no moves on his part to support the creation of a Third Bank of the United States, the founding law of which he would veto, twice. There would be no end to the Independent Treasury, no raising of tariffs past their 1833 “Compromise” levels, and opposed the Whig’s policy of selling Federal Lands. All through 1841 the only response from the White House to the Whig agenda was the old move of the despised Jackson, “veto, veto and more vetoes”.
While Clay had been willing to threaten Harrison and Tyler with the idea of a Federal Default on the debt, he now balked at the idea of it actually happening, as it would no doubt risk his own chances of election in 1844. Thus drastic measures would need to be taken, In the spring of 1842, with the whole of the Federal Government in deadlock Clay oversaw the resignation of the entire cabinet --- with the delayed exception of Daniel Webster who had no interest in following the Party Leader’s line --- and then oversaw the removal of Tyler from the Whig Party. To cap it off, came impeachment. Tyler’s obstructionism had doomed him, no one, not even the Websterite Whigs was willing to stand by him, and while he hoped to win the support of at least some Democrats, the writing on the wall against him was too much, even for the annexationists of John C. Calhoun he hoped to recruit.
In a special session in May of 1842 both houses of Congress voted for impeachment, with Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice presiding, and in the name of a good deal of Jacksonian revenge, gleefully supporting the move. Clay held off just long enough in the end to allow his old ally and rival Webster to resign from office, and by the second Monday of May, Tyler, the Acting President was finished in Washington.
11. Samuel L. Southard /vacant(Whig) [Acting]: 1842
This time, Henry Clay would make sure he had the man he needed in the White House. The President pro Tempore of the Senate, by the 1792 Presidential Succession Act would hold the office until an election could be held, no later than December. Thus it was by the laws of the land and the actions of Clay that Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey assumed the office of Acting President.
Southard had not wanted the job, no fool, he knew that he was facing a final collapse of his health and that his only chance of survival was to seek the best medical treatment available for his collection of ills and to relax somewhere in the warm weather of the South. But Henry Clay promised him all of that. All he needed to do was appoint Clay Secretary of State, and then take a carriage south, to Richmond or Williamsburg, to relax and wait for his recovery. With the option on the table, and the massive pressure that was being placed on him, he agreed. The Senate rapidly approved the appointment of one of their own to the leading Department of the Government and Southard left malarial Washington at once.
He would at least, last longer as the Chief executive than Harrison did, making it a full six weeks before he died, not once sleeping in the Executive Mansion, the only other president to do such besides Washington. His main legacy was that the keys to the kingdom had been handed over, Henry Clay was for the first time since the second Adams Administration back in the State Department, and for the first time ever, in control of the spoils system and Federal Policy. It was to he that the first message came on June 29th that the latest President was dead. And it was he who took his horse to the other side of Washington to meet with the man who would next assume the office.
12. Willie P. Mangum /vacant(Whig) [Acting]: 1842-1843
Willie P. Mangum was the leader of the Southern Whigs, following the years of John C. Calhoun not quite committing to join the Jacksonian opposition Party. This was exactly not what Henry Clay had hoped for when he sent Southard to the Virginia Peninsula. Mangum was another one of the close personal friends who had the unpleasant ability to show a spine, much like Webster, Harrison and Tyler.
But Mangum did know how things worked in the Whiggish world of Washington. Clay was kept on as Secretary of State, with the goal of negotiating a treaty with the British government over the Oregon country. which Clay would secure by the fall, setting the border at the Columbia River, making that river an open territory for movement for both countries, and thus securing the United States a permanent presence on the Pacific Coast. Both men would come to loggerheads over the other great territorial question of the time, that being the status of the Republic of Texas but while Mangum wanted to bring Texas into the Union, preferably as a Slave State and Clay wanted it to remain as a Western protectorate, neither man was particularly keen in changing its status at all, least the United States be required to enter into border disputes with Mexico, or worse have to be responsible for the Debts, Corruption, Incompetence and nearly-failing state issues of the “feisty” little republic. And thus the issue waited.
Mangum had only a few months in office, and when the Whig Party met to discuss what their course of action would be in the emergency election of 1842 --- The first time in history the whole country would vote for its electors on the same day, though with South Carolina only having its legislature meeting to do such --- discussions with various leaders over Brandy and Cigars showed that many Southern and a good deal of Western Whigs wanted Mangum to run, but the Northern Whigs were in opposition, and the decisive issue would be Clay who seemed unsure over if Mangum could deliver in a confused, and to many Americans questionable election. In the end it seemed to many the time just wasn't right, and that the country would want a new beginning after the past two years of chaos. It seemed clear to all that if Mangum ran, and lost again, as he had in 1836, there would be no third chance. Little did he know that this move was exactly to the wishes of Clay, who at once moved to find the proper, malleable figure to serve as America’s first "true" President since the brief Harrison Interregnum
13. Edward Everett / Richard H. Bayard (Whig) [Acting]: 1843-1844 1842: James Buchanan / James K. Polk (Democratic)
In the Whig and Democratic Parties by 1842 there were two obvious men to run for President. On one side was the Whig Autocrat-behind-the-Democracy, Henry Clay. On the other, was the defeated but rebounding former President Martin Van Buren. But in America’s first Emergency Election, neither man moved towards the nomination. The economic recovery was developing, thus making Van Buren uneasy about running against the American System. For Clay the repeated history of defeat meant that in an election many questioned the value of, and in an era where popular preceptions were questioning just how responsible the Whigs were over the past few years, was just too much, it was far better to sit in another office and wait. In turn both "obvious challangers" of the Democrats and Whigs, Calhoun and Clay seemed disinterested with the attempt. Thus it was that both parties would choose Black Horses, and the election of 1842 could long be suggested as being a race of pygmies.
For the Democrats would come a ticket headed by the personable if unintelligent, James Buchanan whom Andrew Jackson had once appointed Minister to Russia simply to get rid of him from his annoying place near the center of the Washington social scene. and with him the virtually unknown Governor of Tennessee, James K. Polk. Against them came one of the only men that Henry Clay and Daniel Webster could agree on, Edward Everett formerly the Governor of Massachusetts, whose “poor” slavery credentials were reenforced by Delawarean Richard H. Baynard.
It was Everett and Baynard who would be sworn in in March of 1843 for a full term. Under them, Clay would stay in the cabinet and the nation would be transformed by his, if not their, works for it was under the administration of a man appointed simply as a filler, that the American System passed into law.
Within three months there was the establishment of the Third Bank of the United States, something Van Buren lacked the economic credentials to counter, as well as the end of his Independent Treasury. Federal funds, raised by Tariffs on Imports were in turn passed to the states in a system of “New Federalism”. In Washington D.C. came the founding of the University of the United States in Georgetown. Federal roads and Federal grants for the new railroads began to spread across the country. The Land Sales Act of 1844 would open the western territories for farmers looking for cheap lands, buying acres for pennies.
On the front of reorganizing the American political system, little reform was done in the Civil Service, as appointments proved to be just as lucrative for Whigs as they had for the Democrats they denounced.
The Democrats were able to prevent massive increases in the tariffs, a new compromise setting the highest numbers for certain goods at 35%. There would be no Federal assumption of control over the militia, though for the first time Federal Officers were appointed to serve on the staffs of designated commanders of State Militias. And a different kind of action would come with the program of naval expansion that Clay oversaw to increase American prestige and defense.
For it was in March of 1844 that the President of the United States, his Secretary of State, and his Secretary of the Navy, Henry A. Wise of Virginia all visited the Philadelphia Naval Yard to see demonstrations aboard the most advanced ship in the United States Navy, the USS Princeton. During a Demonstration of the Screw-powered ships long-range cannons, an explosion occurred and all three men, as well as four others including the Ship’s captain Robert Stockton were killed by shrapnel. In one fell swoop the Navy lost its leader and its most innovative officer, the Republic would lose its President, and perhaps even more importantly for the way of things to come, the Whig Party would lose its master, as Henry Clay lay dead upon the deck.
14. Richard H. Bayard /vacant(Whig) [Acting]: 1844-1845
By the time Richard H. Bayard assumed the office of Acting President, no one in the country though the Whig Party wasn’t cursed. Where before no President had ever died in office, the Whigs had lost three in a single four year term. And had for show also impeached the only President in history and had one fellow who the popular perception said, had simply seen the writing on the wall and gotten out while the going was still good. Talk of a “Curse of Tecumseh” was widespread. Baynard, an uninspiring member of an uninspiring state that his uninspiring family had politically dominated though the whole century so far, did little to dispel the feeling. It was a poor country that was forced to be led by such a dullard in an era of political chaos.
With the death of Henry Clay he not only was forced to deal with the national issue of the chaotic era but he had lost a personal friend, and of course as was becoming par for the course with the Whigs, the hand that had guided the rudder of his opinions and actions. In the aftermath of this, Daniel Webster with whom Bayard, that defender of Whiggish Slavery, had such a terrible relationship with was no beacon for party unity. Instead Bayard hoped lightning would strike twice as he appointed John C. Crittenden, Whig from Kentucky to be his new Secretary of State and to fix everything before the next election. Neither man proved particularly up to the task.
In Bayards months in office there would be no restoration of Whig ascendancy, no passage of additional laws. Only a standing by of the work passed by Everett. The highlight of the period being the appointment of Henry C. Carey to be President of the Third Bank of the United States. Beyond this, it was simply a matter of waiting, and wondering what the Whigs would do when they met for convention in June at their delayed convention, without the Dear Leader to guide himself into another run, to run in yet another Emergency Election, this one ironically fitting Presidential elections back on their old track.
With just under a year in office, Bayard would leave the White House and public life behind him, bringing an end to the tumultuous first Whig term in office.
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This has been edited now, to put it in line with the more common interpretations of the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 and those articles of the United States Constitution pertaining to Presidential Elections.