In “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Gary Kornblith speculates how American history would have proceeded had Henry Clay and Whigs won the presidential election of 1844 instead of James Polk and the Democrats. Kornblith points out that one of the main issues of that election was the annexation of Texas, he argues that this was not the reason for Clay’s defeat in 1844. Rather, it was a high immigrant voter turnout in New York that gave Polk the edge over Clay. Had something diminished that voter turnout, Kornblith believes American history could have turned out very differently.
The first main difference in the Clay presidency is a lack of westward expansion. While Clay had once been a war hawk, he feared that the “Annexation and war with Mexico are identical. Now, for one, I certainly am not willing to involve this country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring Texas.” He was not entirely against the annexation of Texas but refused to do so at the cost of American lives or the stability of the Union. If the United States allowed Texas to develop into an independent republic, Texas would be a strong ally. Based off of his position on Texas, a Clay presidency would likely have ignored California as there would be no war with Mexico. Even with the discovery of gold in California in 1848, Clay would have been apprehensive as adding states to the Union would increase sectional tensions. Since Kornblith argues that a Clay presidency would have avoided a war with Mexico, his term would have focuses on the revitalization of the economy and the creation of a new federal bank.
Kornblith proceeds to claim that Clay’s policies would have created a two party system, where Congress was divided along party lines would have curbed sectionalism. Had the Democrats and Whigs been so staunchly divided in Congress, voters would have developed allegiances along party lines, rather than along the issue of slavery. The debates would be over economic policy and tariffs, instead of expansion of slavery into newly acquired territory.
The end result of Clay’s presidency would have been that the reasons for the emergence of the Republican Party never truly would have occurred. If there was no territory for slavery to expand into, there was no need for a party with the platform to halt slavery’s expansion. In fact, many would have supported a gradual abolition of slavery. However, there would be not plan for its complete eradication and many southerners would be unable to entirely do away with that establishment. Without sectionalism and an extreme event to end the system of slavery, slavery would have occurred well beyond the 1860s. In the end, Kornblith’s argument is that it would have been hard for a Civil War like event to have occurred with the westward expansion that resulted from the Mexican American War.
While I find Kornblith’s progression of events through the counterfactual method, I find it hard to believe that simply changing one major event would prevent sectionalism from fomenting. Everything that Kornblith has laid out seems far too neat and too far divergent from American history. There are many “what-if” questions that could be asked about James Polk’s presidency and the ruling power of the Democrats. However, there is no position on how a small change in Polk’s policy could have affected the course of American history. Kornblith does effectively prove that the North and South were not so fundamentally different that a Civil War over slavery would have unquestionably occurred. However, the mere speculation of events and creation of an alternate history for the United States seems less academic and effective than one based in facts.