Harrison was elected, and offered Clay a cabinet position, but Clay declined feeling he could run the country as the leader of the Senate. Clay antagonized the new President, and Harrison felt Clay was arrogant and presumptuous, and finally told him, “Mr. Clay, you forget that I am President.”
After a month, Harrison died and Clay’s friend John Tyler became President. Clay looked forward to better relations with the White House, but Tyler also found Clay arrogant and presumptuous. When Clay got Congress to pass his bill chartering another Bank of the United States, Tyler vetoed it. Clay, keeping his cool, passed another version, this one a compromise taking some of Tyler’s views into consideration. When Tyler vetoed the second Bank bill, Clay resigned from the Senate in protest and focused his entire energy on the election of 1844.
It was in the 1844 election that Clay came closest to winning what he most wanted, the Presidency of the United States. As the election approached, everyone assumed the two candidates would be former President Van Buren for the Democrats, and Henry Clay for the Whigs. The main issue was the annexation of Texas, which would immediately risk a war with Mexico and once again open the slavery issue. Both Clay and Van Buren agreed not to raise the Texas issue, but this agreement was meaningless as Van Buren lost the Democratic nomination to James K. Polk. Polk had come out squarely in favor of annexation, while Van Buren tried to avoid a definite stand but was eventually pinned down as being opposed. This left Clay running against a candidate taking a strong stand in favor of annexation of Texas, and territorial expansion in general. It would be a very close race.
In the next article, we will follow the exciting campaign of 1844, and the dramatic final episode of Henry Clay’s amazing career.
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