Kornblith presents a counterfactual hypothesis that revolves around the absence of the Mexican-American War and the effects this would have on delaying or perhaps halting the outbreak of the Civil War. Kornblith postulates that this counterfactual scenario is vital to understanding the causes of the Civil War and for clarifying the “long-standing debate between fundamentalists and revisionist about Civil War causation” (104). Vital to this scenario, Kornblith posits the victory of Henry Clay over James K. Polk in the presidential election of 1844 for “had Clay won, the ‘manifest destiny’ of the United States would probably not have included Texas and the lands ceded by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo” (80). Kornblith begins by stating that if Clay’s defeat resulted from popular enthusiasm for westward expansion, then Clay’s election might have only delayed the annexation of Texas and war with Mexico; however, if Clay’s loss was caused by other factors unrelated to expansion or slavery, “his election could have set the nation on a very different course in the mid-1840s, on that might have ended in a permanently smaller United States and no civil war–at least no civil war in the early 1860s” (81). Kornblith concurs that the role of expansion contributed to the Democratic victory in the South but he emphasizes that the Whigs lost the election in the North due to the hostile voting style of New York immigrants against the Whigs. Thus, Kornblith postulates that a Clay victory in 1844 was entirely possible as his defeat was not caused by immense popular support for war with Mexico (84). Kornblith continues, arguing that by avoiding war with Mexico, Clay would have been free to focus on economic policies like maintaining a protective tariff, promoting internal improvements, and reestablishing a national bank. In addition, these policies would split Congress along partisan lines, reinforcing the second party system, and would have “pushed slavery to the background of national politics” (89). More importantly for his hypothesis, the strengthening of the two-party political system would have prevented the emergence of the Republican Party. Furthermore, Kornblith presents the idea that “under a Clay presidency, the debate over slavery would have persisted and probably intensified, but without territorial expansion, it would not have been framed in terms of irreconcilable constitutional interpretations, each with passionate popular support” (90). Kornblith concludes “if both Democratic and Whig party candidates that year had opposed expansion, and if settlers in Texas and California had subsequently grown confident they could govern themselves in independent republics, mainstream political debate throughout the 1850s might have ignored the question of slavery in federal territories” (100).

I am persuaded by the article’s argument to a certain extent. The one thing that bothers me about Kornblith’s argument is that counterfactual reasoning rests on assumptions. However more importantly, the article’s argument in regard to the role of slavery identifies weaknesses in revisionist and fundamentalist thinking about the causation of the Civil War. Kornblith alleges that early twentieth-century revisionists argue that the Civil War could have been avoided because slavery would have gone into rapid decline over the next generation (90). However, Kornblith suggests “for all their analytical differences, recent historians of the political economy of the Old South have agreed on one crucial point: southern slavery was not nearing a peaceful conversion to free labor when the Civil War broke out” (92). Thus for Kornblith, if Clay had won, the fate of slavery rested on the “relative strength of proslavery and antislavery forces in American politics” (92). Regarding the fundamentalists, Kornblith summarizes their argument, stating that “removing other historical factors would have made little or no difference” for fundamentalists (79). However as Kornblith postulates: had Clay won the election of 1844 and thus avoided war with Mexico, his implementation of economic policies would have reinvigorated the two-party system and would have pushed slavery to the background. Furthermore, even if slavery did persist (as Kornblith alleges it would have regardless of Clay’s victory), the Wilmot Proviso and subsequent debates over the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act would not have happened because the Nebraska Territory would have been organized on the basis of the Missouri Compromise with little congressional debate. Thus, the fact that Kornblith’s article presents a reasonable argument for at least halting the outbreak of war lends doubt to the fundamentalist viewpoint that the social and cultural systems of the North and the South were too different for reconciliation and that war could not have been avoided.

In his article “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Kornblith uses counterfactual history to prove that the Mexican-American war was a significant cause of the Civil War. Through his argument, he also evaluates several of the events and issues that fundamentalists would say caused the Civil War to be inevitable, to determine whether any were significant. According to Kornblith, the major cause of the Civil War were the conflicts over the slave status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War, and that, without these, the Civil War never would have taken place.

After proving his postulation that Clay won the election in 1844 is not ludicrous—the election was very close and had clay gotten just 5,000 more votes in New York, he would have been president—Kornblith speculates on how Clay would have approached sectional tensions. According to Kornblith:

“Clay was more sensitive than Webster to sectional tensions and to the explosive consequences of adding new territory to the federal domain.”

Kornblith says Clay would have advocated Texas and California remain independent territories, and would have encouraged Missouri Compromise-type situations for any other territories that wanted to join the Union. Since Clay would have successfully diffused the sectional tensions over slavery, Clay’s presidency would have led to conflicts over economic issues, such as concerns about a new national bank.

Kornblith goes on to examine the status of slavery and abolitionist movements, to see if these could have caused the war independent of conflicts over slavery in new states. Although he cites a memorial by Lincoln that suggests Clay advocated gradual emancipation combined with African Colonization, Kornblith thinks it’s unlikely Clay would have made this a policy. Kornblith said abolitionism was still very much divided and not very popular. The main issue would have been conflicts over the fugitive slave law, which Clay, as a slaveholder, would have upheld and perhaps strengthened, but Kornblith does not believe these sectional differences would have led to secession, at least not by 1865.

Would slavery then have continued indefinitely in the United States, or come to a peaceful conclusion, as it did in Brazil in the 1880s? Kornblith finds this unlikely, as it would have been impossible to get enough support for a constitutional amendment at least until the 1900s.

The last question Kornblith raises are the parallels between the American Revolution and the Civil War. He cites the stories of Calhoun in the Civil War and Townshend in the American Revolution to show that, on some level, both wars were an issue of principle and stubbornness. Just as Townshend radicalized some colonists with his insistence on achieving constitutional clarity regarding Parliament’s role in taxes, Calhoun cared less about new territories and more about the constitutional right to bring slaves there.

While Kornblith raises some interesting questions regarding the causation of the Civil War, I am not entirely convinced by his argument that the Mexican-American War was mainly responsible for the outbreak of the Civil War. Of course it is impossible to know for sure how people would have reacted 170 years ago, but, regardless, Kornblith ignores some of the other factors fundamentalists cite in their arguments. For instance, he does not discuss the major economic differences between the North and the South that existed independently of the Mexican-American war. With these economic differences came a range of cultural differences. While any single one of these arguments would not, in and of itself, have led to secession or a Civil War, fundamentalists do not argue this either. They say the war was the product of a combination of irreconcilable factors. Even if Clay had not become president and things had played out exactly as Kornblith suggests, it is not unreasonable to posit that even just the fugitive slave law, in conjunction with some of the arguments over the slave status of new territories and economic issues such as a national bank, could have led to an argument resulting in secession.

Kornblith also ignores any other environmental, historical and political factors that could have led to an increase in the popularity of the abolitionist movement, such as the religious revival in the North mentioned by Manning. It took nearly 20 years following the 1844 election for the Civil War to commence, and movements such as these would have just been beginning to take hold. Even Kornblith cannot prove that the North and the South got along delightfully before the Mexican-American War, and, even without the war, it is quite likely that other events would have highlighted sectional differences that would ultimately result in secession.