In his article “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise”, Gary J. Kornblith proposes a different view for the cause of the Civil War than those proposed by fundamentalists and revisionists. While he acknowledges that there were significant differences between the North and the South, he does not consider these as important to the start of the war. His argument revolves on the idea that the Civil War was directly influenced by the outcome and the sentiments from the Mexican American War. He creates a counterfactual scenario in which Henry Clay won the Election of 1844, and therefore changed the chances of the Mexican-American War taking place.
According to Kornblith, had Clay won the election, the war between the United States and Mexico would not have taken place because he considered “annexation and war with Mexico [as] identical” and he was not willing to take the risk of a conflict because of an addition of land. Throughout the article, Kornblith argues that the territory expansion due to the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of land from Mexico because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo caused the issue of slavery to rise again in the minds of both Southerners and Northerners. He argues that if there had not been a war, which there would not have been if Clay had won and kept to his campaign, then the Wilmot Proviso would not have been necessary. If there had not been that expansion of territory, the issue of allowing slaves in the new lands would not have been a problem and therefore the issue of slavery would not have come to the forefront of political discussions in country. He claims that the Wilmot Proviso was a key in the “exacerbation of sectional tensions that culminated in the Civil War.”
Since Kornblith hinges his argument on the counterfactual scenario that Henry Clay won the election of 1844, he goes on to talk about other things under the imagined period. The author argues that had Clay won the presidency, he would have kept the focus of his term on “maintain the protective tariff, promoting internal improvements, and reestablishing the national bank.” The platform he ran under and the course of his presidency would have stayed away from issues of land acquisitions and therefore the issue of slavery. He also says that divisions within the political parties “seemed to insure the protection of republicanism, of liberty and equality, which was the most fundamental goal of American in both the South and the North.” In other words, he seems to think that the differences in opinion between parties would overcome the sectional differences that fundamentalist claim were the reason for the war.
Kornblith’s argument that the territorial expansion after the Mexican-American War was essential in the prominence of the slavery issue in the time before the outbreak of war makes sense and his explanation of how the election of Henry Clay would have affected the way party politics and sectionalism are feasible. However, I have a difficult time accepting his claims because they are based on the supposition of an event. The fundamentalist and the revisionists formed their arguments on the causes of the civil based on the issues that they, as historians, had confirmed. This gives them certain validity because although the facts are often interpreted differently, they are not guesses or suppositions on past events. While all that Korblith claims could have happened, the reality is that we do not know how Clay would have reacted to the potential annexation of Texas or if he would have kept his presidency focused away from slavery.