1844 U.S. Presidential Election, Texas, and Sectional Conflict

Andrew Jackson

Clay's nemesis, whom Clay might have become sufficiently controversial to emulate by serving as the focus of partisan struggles had he been elected President: 334.

Martin Van Buren

The former president who was Henry Clay's anticipated Democratic rival in the 1844 election, having been at the country's helm when the economy crashed in the late 1830s: 89. He opposed the immediate annexation of Texas, leading to the dissolution of support for his nomination: 97, 98.

John Tyler

The incumbent president in 1844 who acceded to office upon the death of William Henry Harrison: 86. Though nominally a Whig, he alienated the party by opposing its fiscal program and vetoing initiatives, and he later withdrew his independent candidacy to favor James K. Polk: 87, 120, 121.

Henry Clay

The Whig candidate who lost the very close 1844 presidential election: 27, 91. His hypothetical victory would have kept Texas an independent republic and likely avoided the Mexican-American War, changing the course of sectional conflict: 28, 29, 93, 414, 492.

James K. Polk

The first Democratic 'dark horse' candidate who won the presidency in 1844: 95, 96. His pro-annexationist ticket led to Texas annexation and the Mexican-American War: 106, 24, 151.

Fundamentalists/Revisionists

Two major camps of Civil War historians: Fundamentalists argue the war was irrepressible due to northern and southern social divergence; Revisionists argue the conflict was potentially reconcilable and resulted from poor leadership or other extrinsic factors: 31, 32, 33.

John C. Calhoun

As a successive Secretary of State under Tyler, he negotiated the Texas annexation treaty and wrote the Pakenham Letter: 124. He is compared to Charles Townshend for his disdain for compromise and insistence on rigid constitutional guarantees over pragmatic political solutions: 521, 525, 532.

Lord Aberdeen

The British foreign secretary who floated a proposal in 1843 coupling Mexican recognition of Texan independence with abolition and British assistance: 188. He temporized on Texan abolition thereafter for fear of encouraging American annexation: 190.

Sam Houston

The president of the Republic of Texas who briefly displayed some interest in Lord Aberdeen's 1843 proposal for independence coupled with abolition: 189.

Manuel Micheltorena

The beleaguered governor of California in early 1844 who recommended to Mexico City that they consider handing the province over to British creditors rather than let it fall into the hands of American immigrants: 208. He was later ousted by a group of californios: 210.

Cassius Marcellus Clay

Kentucky's foremost abolitionist who sought to persuade antislavery northerners to support his distant cousin, Henry Clay, in 1844, but whose claims about Henry Clay's feelings were publicly and strongly denied: 325, 326, 328, 486.

William Lloyd Garrison/David Walker

Garrison was an abolitionist whose allies objected to political participation and sought comprehensive social and spiritual reformation, denouncing the Constitution as 'a covenant with death': 341, 342, 344, 345. Walker, a black abolitionist, raised the possibility of violent resistance in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World as early as 1829: 352, 355.

São Paulo planters

A group of Brazilian slaveholders who broke ranks with other southern slaveholders and embraced immediate abolition when faced with mass desertion by their slaves in 1887-1888: 476.

'Tippecanoe' Battle

Not explicitly defined, but William Henry Harrison, the president who died three years before the 1844 election, was famous for his role in the Battle of Tippecanoe: 86.

Republic of Texas (1836-1845)

The independent republic that, had Clay won the 1844 election, would almost certainly have remained independent in 1845 and not been annexed by the U.S.: 28.

Oregon Country

Territory that was the subject of a controversy with Great Britain which, under a President Clay, would have been resolved by quickly accepting the fortyninth parallel as a compromise boundary: 200, 202.

"US Territories" (status of slavery)

The issue of the status of slavery in newly acquired federal territories became the critical element in the escalation of the sectional conflict: 78, 79. The MexicanAmerican War and the resulting new land made this a question of national policy with constitutional dimensions: 265.

Missouri / Maine balance of 1820

Refers to the Compromise of 1820 which settled the question of slavery for the territory within the Louisiana Purchase: 261. The balance is alluded to as a potential pairing of Texas and California under Clay: 234.

New York (electorate)

The key state in the 1844 presidential election where Henry Clay's loss of just 5,107 more votes (out of over 485,000 cast) led to his defeat and James K. Polk's victory: 27. Any single cause for the result here is considered futile to identify: 146.

Alta California

The region of the U.S. West that Mexico would have sustained its claims to only with difficulty: 206. It was viewed as naturally designed for separate geopolitical existence, and President Clay might have preferred it remain independent rather than risk national controversy by annexing it: 217, 219.

"natural limits" of cotton

An economic premise related to the "natural limits" thesis: 272. However, some fundamentalist historians and cliometricians like Fogel and Engerman argued that the assumption that additional land for cotton was almost exhausted by 1860 is false: 292.

Overseas textile demand

A factor in the southern economy, with the British textile industry's high demand in the antebellum years: 281. It was argued by some that this demand was on the brink of a major downturn in 1860, suggesting structural weakness for the cotton economy, though others disputed this: 284, 296.

Nebraska territory

A territory that, had the MexicanAmerican War been avoided, would likely have been organized on the basis of the Missouri Compromise with little congressional debate: 417. The crisis of the Wilmot Proviso led to the idea of popular sovereignty that later voided the Compromise for this territory: 412, 418.

South Carolina (proslavery radicalism)

The state where "ultras" like James Henry Hammond looked "suspiciously like the nag who had been too often to the post" by 1852: 444. Without the sectional crises of 1850 and 1854, this state would have stood isolated from the rest of the South in its radicalism: 444.

Boston-based abolitionist printing (Appeal/Liberator)

A location/type of activity related to the abolitionist movement. The Liberator was the publication of William Lloyd Garrison: 566. David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World raised the possibility of violent resistance: 355, 663.

Paraíba Valley coffee regions (of São Paulo)

Part of the Brazilian economy where the termination of the slave trade led to a major southward shift in the geographic distribution and concentration of slave labor, as coffee production was Brazil's most profitable economic sector: 473.

Abraham Lincoln

Praised Henry Clay for opposing the extremes of both immediate abolition and permanent enslavement: 314. He despised slavery but believed in its constitutionality where it existed and was prepared to tolerate its persistence: 435.

Party 'machinery' of Jacksonian Democrats

The system used by Democrats that was terrifyingly successful in mobilizing massive numbers of new immigrant voters behind Polk and their other candidates in 1844, contributing to Henry Clay's defeat in the North: 144, 145.

Death of President Wm. Henry Harrison

The event that led to the accession of Vice President John Tyler in 1841: 86. Tyler's subsequent opposition to the Whig fiscal program thoroughly alienated the mainstream of the party: 87.

Joint resolution for Annexation (see transcript)

The legislative action (used to bypass the Whig-dominated Senate) through which John Tyler succeeded in pushing the annexation of Texas before leaving office: 155, 615. Under a Clay victory in 1844, Tyler would not have succeeded in this action: 155.

Whig Economic Nationalism (#3337 too)

The core economic policies dearest to Henry Clay's American System vision, including maintaining a protective tariff, promoting internal improvements, and reestablishing a national bank: 240. Conflict over these issues would have strengthened the Second Party System and pushed slavery into the background: 242.

Clay's Raleigh Letter / Alabama Letter(s)

A series of public letters in which Henry Clay consistently stated his opposition to the immediate annexation of Texas, citing the prospect of military conflict with Mexico and the danger of adding territory to strengthen one part of the Confederacy against another: 129, 130, 135, 137, 180, 133.

Calhoun's 'Pakenham Letter'

A letter conveyed by the Tyler administration along with the Texas annexation treaty, in which Calhoun explained that annexing Texas sought to protect slavery in the South and frustrate an alleged British abolitionist conspiracy: 124. It generated controversy and made annexation a litmus test of support for slavery: 125, 126.

Wilmot Proviso

The measure that, had it not been for the acquisition of new western land, would have been absent. It was essential to the exacerbation of sectional tensions by transforming longstanding differences over slavery into a constitutional question about Congress's power to legislate for the territories: 259, 260, 265, 266.

historians' on slavery's economic prospects

A debate between historians. Some fundamentalists argued the Southern economy was moving into an 'insoluble crisis' without fresh land: 276. Others, like Fogel and Engerman, argued the slave economy was a 'flexible, highly developed form of capitalism' with good long-term prospects, not nearing a peaceful end: 295, 299, 305.

Personal Liberty Laws

State laws in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and other northern states that were strengthened in the wake of the Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) Supreme Court decision. They were designed to obstruct the capture and reenslavement of fugitive slaves: 358, 361, 667.

Republican Party Voters (compared to Liberty Party)

The Republican Party's stunning vote totals in the North in 1856 far exceeded the meager support for Liberty Party candidates in the early 1840s: 411. The former were mobilized by the voiding of the Missouri Compromise and fears of the Slave Power: 412, 424.

Objectives of Know-Nothings in mid-1850s

A political party whose candidates made impressive showings in northern elections in 1854-1855, propelled by the increase in ethnic and religious animosities associated with the upsurge of European (especially Irish Catholic) immigration: 144, 396, 398, 399.

UK pressure on Brazil's slave trading (1830-50)

A key external factor that pushed Brazil toward abolition. It took the threat of a British naval blockade in 1850-1851 to move the Brazilian government to end the African slave trade: 461.