The Great Triumvirate by Peterson Merrill D.;

Author:Peterson, Merrill D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 1987-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Six

THE WHIG DEBACLE

William Henry Harrison may have been elected president, but Henry Clay was still the leader of the Whig party. Harrison himself was little inclined to dispute the point. Like Clay, who was five years his junior, he was a native Virginian who had made his career in the West and risen to fame in the War of 1812, though in a military rather than a civilian capacity. As an Ohio congressman after the war, and sometime later as a senator, he had followed the Star of the West; and it was Clay to whom he owed his appointment as United States Minister to Columbia in 1828. Not long before the Whig nomination in 1839 Harrison confessed to Clay how “distressing and embarrassing” he felt his position toward him to be. “How little can we judge of our future destinies. A few years ago I could not have believed in the possibility of my being placed in a position of apparent rivalry to you. Particularly in relation to the Presidency. An office which I never dreamed of attaining and which I had ardently desired to see you occupy.”1 The silver-haired general had neither friends nor enemies; he owed his nomination in part to that and in part to the belief that, unlike Clay, he would be a weak leader, easily bent to the will of local party potentates. It was not true that he stood for nothing: he stood for the Whig principles and policies advocated by Henry Clay. He believed in legislative supremacy and repeatedly pledged himself to a single presidential term. Obviously he would look to the Whig giants, Clay and Webster, for leadership of his administration. The only question was which of these rivals would be chief.

Soon after the election Harrison paid a visit to Kentucky, ostensibly on family business, and Clay hastened to Frankfort to meet him. There was some wariness on both sides. Harrison did not wish to add to the impression that he was under the senator’s thumb, while Clay feared the influence of Charles Wickliffe and his family with the president-elect. It was rumored that the Old Duke, an anti-Clay and anti-bank Whig, would be named postmaster general in the new cabinet and from this patronage post mount a challenge to Clay in the Bluegrass State. But the senator’s position had seldom been stronger. He had won plaudits for magnanimously campaigning for Harrison, and he came out of the contest, it was said, “with the whole of Kentucky at his back.” The state gave Harrison his largest popular majority. It also elected a Clay stalwart, Robert Letcher, governor. Under the circumstances Harrison could scarcely begrudge Clay’s counsel. The Wickliffe challenge, such as it was, collapsed when Harrison, on the senator’s recommendation, subsequently named another Kentuckian, John J. Crittenden, to his cabinet as attorney general.2

At Frankfort Clay persuaded Harrison to visit him at Ashland. There he had ample opportunity to fill the general’s head with his own ideas. In the opinion of the Democratic press, Clay virtually dictated the design of the new administration.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.