After Sectional Divisions Lead to His Defeat in the 1844 Election, Henry Clay Virtually Predicts the Onrushing Civil War

He asks for the mercy of God on the nation, and expresses disappointment and fatalism at his election loss: “This is a world of trial and suffering, and ought you not to bear your full share for the sake of our common Country?”

In April of 1844, President John Tyler submitted a treaty for the annexation of Texas as a slave state. This aroused opposition in the North, where adding additional slave states was anything but popular, and excitement in the South, which saw a golden expansion opportunity. The Whig Party, which had both a northern and southern wing, faced the specter of a split that would render it ineffectual. Its leader, Henry Clay, denounced the Tyler annexation bill and predicted that its passage would provoke a war with Mexico, whose government had never recognized Texas independence. Clay underlined his position, warning that even with Mexico’s consent, he would block annexation in the event that substantial sectional opposition existed anywhere in the United States. He would not pit section against section over slavery. So in the 1844 presidential election the Whigs would need to stand squarely against acquiring a new slave state and be content to restrict their campaign platform to less divisive issues such as internal improvements and national finance.

On May 2, 1844, the Whig National Convention in Baltimore nominated Clay to be the party’s standard-bearer in that year’s election. Clay, in keeping with his desire to avoid sectional controversy, had the convention adopt an anti-annexation platform on the principles of preserving national unity and, also, avoiding war with Mexico. His Democratic opponent was expected to be former President Martin Van Buren, who wanted to stop the expansion of slavery and also opposed annexation. These two candidates had a tacit agreement not to allow the Texas question to become an election issue. But at the Democratic Convention, which began on May 27, Van Buren’s anti-annexation position lost him the support of many Democrats, including former President Andrew Jackson, who still had much influence. Van Buren won a simple majority on the convention’s first ballot but could not attain the two-thirds supermajority required for nomination. The convention instead nominated James K. Polk, a Jackson protege and fervent expansionist who supported annexation not merely in Texas but the Oregon Territory as well (and he had his eye on the Mexican territory of California). But the opponents of slavery were unhappy that both major party candidates were slaveholders, and with what they saw as Clay’s temporizing on the slavery expansion. So abolitionists formed the Liberty Party and nominated James Birney as their standard bearer. Thus, all bets were off on bypassing the Texas issue; in fact, it would become the principle issue of the 1844 campaign. Meanwhile the U.S. Senate rejected the annexation in June 1844.

Clay was the early front runner, and expected to have an easy victory. But his opposition to the annexation of Texas lost him key support in the South. Polk cleverly made a case that his was a national rather then southern expansion policy by linking Texas annexation with promises to settle the U.S.-British boundary dispute over Oregon to the U.S.’s advantage. In doing so, the Democratic Party nominee appealed to Northern expansionists, who demanded Oregon as free-soil, with pro-slavery Southern expansionists, who insisted on acquiring Texas as a slave state. In doing so, Polk picked up some votes in the North and narrowly outpolled Clay, with Birney siphoning off enough support in the North to deny Clay a win in New York and Michigan, which would have given him the election. Clay blamed the abolitionists for his defeat.

Clay saw his defeat as having two serious short term and one pivotal longer term consequence. In the short run it would lead to the annexation of Texas, and would throw the United States into a certain war with Mexico. But even more dangerously, in the longer run, because the election was fought, and had turned, on the questions of militant territorial expansion of the nation (with the potential for innumerable new territories), and on the expansion of slavery (even leading to the creation of an entirely one-section party – the Liberty Party – that had decided the election), it had not only exacerbated the sectional divide of North versus South, but set in motion a chain of events that would lead to ongoing future confrontations.

In November 1811, President James Madison appointed 32-year-old Joseph Story to the U.S. Supreme Court. The youngest person ever to join the Court, Story soon aligned himself with Chief Justice John Marshall. Story was erudite, and he contributed significantly to decisions that laid the legal foundations of federal power. By 1845 he had set on the Court for 34 years. Story had known Clay for decades, since Clay had impressed Story arguing a case before the Supreme Court in 1822. In politics, he was a Whig and the two men had great affection for each other. As 1845 dawned, Story contemplated retiring because of ill health. John J. Crittenden was Clay’s colleague as U.S. Senator from Kentucky. He was a longtime supporter of Clay and Clay’s agenda.

Autograph letter signed, from his Ashland estate in Kentucky, January 9, 1845, to Story, expressing disappointment that he had never achieved election to the presidency, explaining that one of his chief hopes as president would have been to make Supreme Court appointments, virtually predicting the onrushing Civil War, and asking for God’s mercy. “Our mutual friend Mr. Crittenden communicated to me many friendly messages and kind expressions from you, which I was very happy to receive, and the spirit of all of which I cordially reciprocate. I was truly distressed to learn from him, confidentially, that you entertain serious thought of finally retiring from the Bench. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider the matter, and come to a different conclusion. You are the only remaining member, of what the Supreme Court of the U. States, in its bright and better days, once was. And your retirement from it, as it now is, would he a very great National misfortune. In anticipation of an event, which has not happened, scarcely anything gave me more satisfaction, than that I might have the power of placing on the Bench, with the concurrence of the Senate two new members, worthy of the ancient renown of the court, and worthy of an association with you! It has not been allowed me to enjoy that gratification, and I can well well consider the discomfort of your official situation, present, and prospective. But this is a world of trial and suffering, and ought you not to bear your full share for the sake of our common Country?

“Everything, it is true, has a downward look and tendency, but who knows what a good Providence may yet bring forth for us all! In his will we are bound to submit; in his mercy, we may hope. The result of the Presidential election surprised everybody but those who knew of the fraudulent means employed to produce it. I shared the common surprise, but the event effects me less by its direct influence upon me, than by the sympathy excited for our Country, and our friends, of which evidence almost daily reaches me in the most touching forms, in prose and poetry from both sexes. Never was so fine an opportunity wantonly lost of uniting the various sections of our Country upon leading measures of national policy, that of protection especially. You, in the free states, are chiefly to be reproached. Henceforward you ought to cease to upbraid us with slavery. The leaders of the Abolitionists— what do they deserve to have said of them! In early and middle life I desired to be preserved from the grumbling and murmuring incident to old age. I wish now to avoid taking too desponding a view or our public affairs; but, in spite of all my efforts, very few glimpses of light and hope break through the darkness of the gloomy future. I pray God that my fears may not be realized. But I ought to annoy no one, not you particularly, with my fearful forebodings.” The integral address panel addressed to Story in Clay’s hand is still present. Story died eight months later.

Polk’s election was interpreted as a mandate for annexation, and Congress reconsidered the measure. On February 27, 1845, less than a week before Polk’s inauguration, the Senate voted 27–25 to admit Texas after all. Polk was inaugurated on March 4, and the Mexican War followed a year later. At its conclusion in 1848, the U.S. had an enormous expanse of new territory, which as Clay foresaw, led to constant clashes between North and South over the expansion of slavery. The Civil War loomed ahead.