What if the Mexican-American war, would the American Civil War have occurred? This is the question posed by Kornblith in his essay “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War.” Kornblith relies on then confactual reasoning method to determine the outcome of American History if Henry Clay had won New York in the election of 1844.
Kornblith asserts, “Had Clay won the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States would not have included Texas or the other lands seeded to the US as a result of the Mexican-American War.” (80) Kornblith later points out that with Polk’s nomination and election a very strong pro-annexation camp grew within the Democratic Party. Kornblith uses a letter written by Clay to support his argument that had Clay come to office no annexation would have occurred. Clay wrote in this letter “[That the annexation of Texas or war with Mexico] would menace the existence [of the US], if it did not certainly sow the seeds of a dissolution of the Union.” Kornblith writes off the results of the 1844 election as “arbitrary” citing the immigrant-vote turn out in New York as the deciding factor in the entire election.
The second argument Kornblith makes is that Clay’s election would have led to a renewal of the two-party system. (89) Because the issue of annexation should be off the table, Kornblith suggests that political discussions of Clay’s presidency should revolve around tariffs, the establishment of a national bank, and other social issues of the day. Kornblith writes “the conflict over economic issues would have strengthened the second party system and pushed the slavery question into the background of national politics. (90)
Kornblith notes the untenability of the institution of southern slavery, giving Gavin Wright’s work as an example of this. Wright writes, “Political friction between the slave owners and the free white workers…would not have gone uncontested.” (91) Wright follows this up by purposing that “a variant of the South African compromise should have developed” in the American South. (91) Kornblith states on page 92 that “slavery would have persisted… past 1865.” Because “Clay supported the gradual abolition of slavery, [had Clay been elected] he would have neither supported immediate abolition nor would he have acted to further slavery.”(94) Kornblith asserts “Clay’s administration… would have successfully contained sectional differences over justice for fugitive slaves.”(96) Kornblith notes that the sustainability of the second party system was an unsure thing, but that the second party system would have once again been revived in the later half of the 1850s. (100)
I tend to agree with Kornblith’s argument that if Henry Clay had been elected president in the 1844 election the Civil War probably would not have occurred. After reading Kornblith’s argument I believe that the driving force behind the Civil War and the secession of the Southern States was the annexation of Texas and the belief in of Manifest Destiny. I believe that the Issue of slavery was merely the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” While it is not reasonable to believe that all of the events would have conspired just as Kornblith suggested they would, I believe that this model accurately allows us to identify the underlying causes of the Civil War. The theories of the fundamentalists are too simple, the often leave out the most important political and social factors that drove this country to war. Kornblith’s essay accurately takes all factors in to account, and provides the most complete explanation for the question “what caused the Civil War?”

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