James G. Blaine of West Brownsville

BLAINE, JAMES G.


Blaine, James Gillespie (1830-93), American legislator, who served as
Speaker of the House of Representatives (1869-75) and secretary of state
(1881 and 1889-92) and was the Republican candidate for the presidency in
1884.
Born January 31, 1830, in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Blaine later moved
to Augusta, Maine, where he became a journalist. His political career began
in 1859, when he was made chairman of the Republican state committee. He
kept the post for 22 years, becoming the undisputed leader of his party in
Maine. After three terms in the Maine Legislature, he served first in the
U.S. House of Representatives (1863-76)-becoming Speaker-and then in the
U.S. Senate (1876-81). He became known as an advocate of high tariffs and a
hard-money policy.
At the Republican convention of 1884, Blaine was the leading contender for
the presidential nomination, although he was a center of controversy within
the party; he had been denied the nomination in 1876  and 1880 because his
reputation was tarnished by charges of graft in a railroad deal. When he was
nominated on the first ballot despite the revival of these charges,
disaffected party members, known as Mugwumps, seceded and promised to vote
for the Democratic nominee. During the campaign, the Mugwumps kept Blaine's
alleged misconduct in the public eye, and although he enjoyed great
popularity in the crucial state of New York, he lost the state by a
razor-thin margin and with it the election.
Four years later President Benjamin Harrison appointed Blaine secretary of
state. At that time the United States was in conflict with Germany and Great
Britain over possession of the Samoa Islands and with Canada over the seal
harvest in the Bering Sea, while a revolution in Chile threatened U.S.
investment in that country. In each case, Blaine directed a foreign policy
shift to increase protection of expanding U.S. commercial interests, thus
initiating U.S. expansionism in the Pacific and Latin America in the
following decades. Blaine retired from the cabinet in 1892 and died in
Washington, D.C., on January 27, 1893.