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US history is an extremely fascinating subject, ever more so for being very pertinent to today's issues. Like, there is no law passed in XIX century Russia that remains relevant today. In the US, we keep arguing about shit written 250 years ago.
Case in point: Henry Clay

Everyone knows Clay's most famous quotation: "I'd rather be right than be President", which is often presented as an example of moral courage and integrity sorely lacking in modern politicians.
Harry of the West was (and is) often right, but the story of this quote is rather sad.

In truth, Clay uttered it as a defense of his speech denouncing abolitionism. Clay was always against slavery, but he was also always a moderate and he saw abolitionist radicals as counterproductive and dangerous to the goal of ultimately getting rid of slavery...

So, in 1839, he delivered a speech to Congress laying out this particular view. But it wasn't all pragmatic "hey, let's approach this slowly" stuff. In it, he also revived stale Jeffersonian bugaboos about how liberated blacks cannot possibly coexist with whites...

Yeah, it was horrifically racist shit. Proudly defined as such. He literally said "I prefer the liberty of my race over that of any other." Sordid stuff, and it ultimately lost him almost all Northern delegates, and a chance at presidency.
But hey, he'd rather be "right"...

But Clay had a very well defined idea about ending slavery. He was afraid that agitating the South on the subject would lead to disunion because southern white, if forced to choose between slavery and the Union, would always choose the former. He was right about that...

But he also thought that leaving the South to its own devices and treating it in the spirit of bipartisanship, moderation and understanding would eventually mellow them out and lead to a natural, gradual end of slavery.
Oh boy, did Harry of the West swing and miss there!

Of course, Clay was a major influence on Lincoln. He was basically his Jedi master, and Abe quoted from Clay extensively and based most of his political philosophy on him, especially on this issue. Abe was very moderate in the 1850s. He was all about leaving the South be...

He was very much against agitation. And all of his problematic quotes about black people that revisionists love to trot out date to his Clay-worshipping days.
So... How did the South react when the moderate, sensible, placating, Clay-adoring Abe get elected?
Exactly!..

To my mind, the main historical lesson to be drawn from Clay's quote is this: placating a reactionary minority standing with both feet on the wrong side of history is never going to work. They are already radicalized, because their entire worldview is radically wrong...

And even if well-meaning moderates do absolutely nothing, the dangerous radicalized minority will get radicalized even more, because the very march of time and the changing world around them will make them more marginalized, more resentful, more angry, more violent...

Sooner or later, they will work themselves into a lather over absolutely anything and do the exact thing you are afraid they will do if you agitate them now.
The only thing you "win" by not agitating them now is time. Did I say "win"? I meant to say "lose", of course...

Putting reforms aside at the fear of radicalizing the lunatic fringe (which, make no mistake about it, was exactly what all of the white South was back then) will only slow down needed reforms and cause more misery than necessary.
Root the evil out now.

"I'd rather be right than be prudent" should be the motto. Otherwise, you run the risk of being both wrong and not President, which was ultimately Clay's fate.
The fate Lincoln avoided by shedding his moderation when he saw its futility.
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