WI John Tyler dies March 1844

What if President Tyler had been injured during the Peacemaker Incident on February 28, 1844, and died from his wounds a few days later? In this instance, the presidency would pass to the Senator Pro Tempore, Willie Person Magnum of North Carolina, a close ally of Henry Clay.

How does this change the course of history? How is Tyler's work toward annexing Texas affected? How does this, in turn, affect the Election of 1844? And how does all this change the course of American history?

CONSOLIDATE: One possibility is that this actually makes the annexation of Texas happen even sooner, by averting the nomination of Calhoun to be Secretary of State, and thereby the whole Peckham Letter fiasco; alternatively, President Magnum may just not submit the treaty to the Senate at all (kicking the bucket to after the election by way of choice instead of political bungling).
 
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Perhaps Magnum would have double-crossed
Clay & instead of stepping aside for him(just
a hunch but I would betcha that since he was a Clay friend Henry would not have ex-
pected Magnum to stand in his way)& run for
President himself(the Oval Office IOTL seems
to do strange things to people's minds & I
doubt this would change ITTL!) This could have split the Whig party- perhaps badly
enough so it is killed off in 1844, instead of
roughly 1853-1854 as IOTL?
 
Here is an old soc.history.what-if post of mine on this subject at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/tHMvdVnIWOw/NtU9Kj_U5oEJ

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So what are the consequences of President (or Acting President? [1]) Mangum? He had been a loyal supporter of Clay and his economic program against Tyler, and had joined other congressional Whigs in reading Tyler out of the party. (Mangum called Tyler an "imbecile" and "drunken with vanity." http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00003610/00001/325j It is indeed remarkable how overwhelmingly the Whigs--including many southern Whigs who had originally joined the party out of a concern for states' rights--united in defense of Clay's nationalistic program. It was really the first time the Whigs had shown themselves to be a disciplined national party with a real platform.) However, the Democrats had won control of the House in the mid-term elections, so there was no question of enacting the Whig economic program in 1844. The real question, of course, is Texas. I have just looked up a dissertation on Mangum's life which summarizes his views as follows:

"Before 1844, North Carolina Whigs generally favored the idea of bringing Texas into the Union. When Secretary of State Abel Upshur first broached the subject to Mangum in January 1844, the President Pro Tempore expressed his regret that the bill would be credited to Tyler instead of Clay. Mangum had no philosophical objections to the idea, only to the fact that Tyler would reap the benefits of it. After the Raleigh letter, however, [in which Clay announced his opposition to the treaty of annexation] he led the Tar Heel Whigs in denouncing annexation. Only then did they voice their concerns for the country's honor, the risk of war, or the threat to cotton prices brought on by overexpansion. In the end it was Clay's desire to maintain good ties with his northern allies and his wish to see Tyler fail, not an abiding concern for Mexico's sovereignty or America's honor, which prompted him to declare against annexation. Similarly, Mangum and most southern Whigs voted to reject the treaty out of loyalty to Clay, not to uphold a sacred principle or avoid war." Joseph Conan Thompson, *Willie Person Mangum: Politics and Pragmatism in the Age of Jackson* pp. 336-7. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00003610/00001/345j

I think that the Whigs, who for two years had settled on Clay as their presidential choice for 1844, would still favor him for the nomination even if Mangum became (Acting?) President. They would view Mangum as a good man, but an accidental president, who should make way for his friend Clay when it came to the nomination for a full term. And certainly they would oppose dividing the Whig party by persisting with the annexation treaty, which was violently opposed by northern Whigs. This is particularly true because southern Whigs, including Clay and Mangum himself, underestimated the appeal of Texas annexation in their section. (The Democrats, Mangum wrote, "count much on Texas & its excitements. They will be mistaken I think." http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00003610/00001/344j Of course part of the reason for this confidence was that Mangum, like most Whigs, at first underestimated Polk, "Who Is James K. Polk?" being the famous Whig slogan.) In any event, the treaty cannot pass the Senate over Clay's opposition (and AFAIK this was before annexation by joint resolution was seriously considered). So my guess is that Mangum, while not repudiating eventual annexation in principle, finds some excuse to withdraw the treaty.

In November, the people choose between Clay and the Democratic nominee. Who will that be? I think Van Buren's chances of getting the nomination are better in this ATL than in OTL, because (a) Democrats will not have to fear that nominating Van Buren will lead to a Tyler third party immediate- annexationist candidacy that could attract many southern Democrats [2]; and (b) Tyler and Calhoun will not have the "bully pulpits" of the Presidency and the Secretary of State's office to terrify Southerners about the Evil British Plot to Abolitionize Texas. Still, Andrew Jackson and others will insist on an annexationist candidate, and in any event it is possible that Texas was just an excuse for some anti-Van Buren Democrats. (A good many worried whether he could win, given his association in the public mind with the hard times that followed the Panic of 1837.)

If, as I think, Van Buren is the nominee (after all, even in OTL the vote to impose a two-thirds requirement, which doomed Van Buren's chances, passed only narrowly) IMO Clay wins. If it's still Polk, I am less certain. With the Texas issue even slightly less intense, Clay might carry Louisiana (which he probably did even in OTL, only to be counted out by Democratic fraud in Plaquemines Parish) and Georgia, but those by themselves will not be enough unless he carries some northern state he lost in OTL. New York of course is the key. With less excitement about Texas, Clay might carry the state by getting votes that went to the Liberty Party in OTL. (BTW, one thing I wonder is whether Mangum as President could do anything to crack down on the illegal naturalizations in New York which did so much to hurt Clay there. [3])

These are just some preliminary thoughts; I want to read Thompson's dissertation on Mangum http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00003610/00001/1j more thoroughly before commenting further...

[1] Tyler's right to call himself President rather than Acting President was disputed by many Whigs. Even if one thinks it is valid, the case might be different for a President Pro Tempore or other officer who becomes POTUS under the Presidential Succession Act, given that Article II, section one of the Constitution specifically says that in the event of the removal, death, resignation, or inablity of both the President and Vice President "Congress may by law...[declare] what Officer shall then *act* as President..."

[2] But might Calhoun become a third-party candidate in such a case? He had long believed that on matters vital to the South, there was no difference between Clay and Van Buren, contemptuously but accurately anticipating the 1844 positions of the two as early as 1838: "the two prominent candidates Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clay naturally come together on all questions on which the North and South come into conflict...They of course dread all conflicting questions between the two sections, and do their best to prevent them from coming up, and when up to evade them." (Quoted in Michael Holt, *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party*, pp. 171-2.)

[3] I discuss the role of fraud in the 1844 election at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/aeabb01fe6f6c411
 
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