BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE American congressman, U.S. senator and secretary of State, one of the suc cession of Americans whose ability and political acumen have led them close to the presidency of the United States, only to be defeated. In American political history Blaine was known, devot edly or derisively, as "the Plumed Knight," from an oratorical metaphor of Robert J. Ingersoll (q.v.), American orator and agnostic, in his presentation of Blaine for the nomination to the presidency in the Republican convention in 1876.
James Gillespie Blaine was born on Jan. 31, 1830, in West Brownsville, Pa., the son of Ephraim Lyon Blaine and Maria Gillespie (Blaine). He was the great-grandson of Col. Ephraim Blaine, commissary general of the American Revolutionary army during the Revolutionary War. After graduating from Washing ton college in Washington, Pa., in 1847, Blaine engaged in teaching for six years, first as an instructor in mathematics in a military school at Blue Lick Springs, Ky., and later in the Pennsylvania institution for the instruction of the blind at Philadelphia, Pa. He was married, in 1850, to Harriet Stanwood, and in 1854 moved to Augusta, Me., the capital of that State, and Mrs. Blaine's native city. He became editor-in-chief and part owner of The Kennebec Journal and from this date, 1854, onward devoted himself to journalism and politics. In 1856 he attended the first national convention of the new Republican party in Philadelphia and in 1858 was elected on the Republican ticket to the Maine State legislature. A student of parliamentary usage, he was elected, after two years' service as a member, to the office of speaker of the house of representatives of the Maine legislature. This honour he held for two subsequent years, until his election to the 38th Congress of the United States in 1862.
Blaine served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Dec. 1863 to Dec. 1876, and was then in the U.S. Senate until 1881 when he resigned to become secretary of State. In 1869, he was elected speaker of the House of Representatives, at that time one of the most powerful positions in the American Government, in which capacity he served for three terms or six years. In 1876 Blaine was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency and entered the convention with very nearly enough votes for the nomination on the first ballot. The Demo crats had previously charged him with using his high office as speaker of the House of Representatives to obtain a personal profit through the sale of bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railway, and this issue was brought up in the nominating conven tion of 1876 and clearly militated against Blaine's obtaining the additional votes needed for nomination. In addition, Blaine suf fered a sunstroke on the eve of the convention and rumours of his illness, even of his death, were circulated freely. After continuous balloting, Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated by a majority of 28 votes over Blaine.
Blaine entered the U.S. Senate as a result of an executive appointment to fill a vacancy. His subsequent election for the succeeding six-year term is unique in American history in that he was chosen by the unanimous vote of the State legislature, Repub licans and Democrats uniting in his choice. In 188o Blaine was again a candidate for the presidential nomination but was defeated by his friend, James A. Garfield (q.v.) . Blaine, however, whole heartedly supported Garfield and was active throughout the cam paign. Upon President Garfield's inauguration Blaine was named secretary of State, resigning from the Senate to accept. During the brief period of Garfield's administration, prior to his assassina tion on July 2, 1881, Blaine had time to plan and draw up invita tions for the Latin-American countries to meet with the United States in Washington the following year, for the purpose of dis cussing, only, the methods of preventing war between the nations of America. At that time Chile, Peru and Bolivia were engaged in the bloody war of the Pacific; Guatemala was fearful of invasion from Mexico; Brazil and Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, and Ar gentina and Chile were believed to be in danger of war. The invitation was actually issued by Chester A. Arthur (q.v.), who succeeded Garfield, but following Blaine's retirement from the office of secretary of State, his successor (Frederick L. Freling huysen) withdrew the invitations and the proposed Pan-American conference was postponed until Blaine again became secretary of State under President Harrison in 1889. In his few months as secretary of State in 1881, Blaine also took up with Great Britain the question of the modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 (which provided that Great Britain and the United States should have equal control of any canal across the Isthmus of Panama). Blaine's diplomacy sought to reach an agreement by which an entirely American canal might be built under a modifi cation of the Treaty of 1850. His plans in this matter were not to be realized until the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, 20 years later.
Blaine was finally nominated for the presidency at the Republic an convention in 1884. His campaign was brilliant and his vic tory was expected until the very last days preceding the election when he began "storming" the State of New York, the native ground of his Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland. The presidency slipped from Blaine's grasp, in the end, by the loss (by 1,149 votes) of the State. Blaine, himself, as well as many others, attributed his defeat to the loss of the Roman Catholic vote following the enunciation of the phrase, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" used by the Rev. Dr. Samuel D. Burchard in describing the Democratic party in a speech made in Blaine's presence at the Fifth Avenue hotel, New York city, on Oct. 29. Blaine in his reply failed to disavow Mr. Burchard's allegation and the opposition made ready capital of Blaine's alleged endorsement of the bracketing of Roman Catholicism with the liquor traffic and sedition.
For a time after this Blaine and his family lived in Europe and he declined to have his name used in connection with the presi dential nomination in 1888. He returned to the United States to take active part in the electoral campaign of Benjamin Harrison and following Harrison's election was again appointed secretary of State. In the four years that followed, Blaine brought into realiza tion his broad foreign policy, with particular reference to Latin America. He called what was later to be known as the first Pan American conference to meet in Washington in 1889 and laid the foundations for the ideals of arbitration between the American countries and for the type of commercial activities which have characterized the Pan-American movement since that date. Blaine sought common American support of measures encouraging the building of a railway for the length of the American hemisphere ; for the signing of copyright and trade-mark agreements, a uniform system of customs dues, weights and measures and currency, and finally an agreement looking toward the arbitration of all international questions between the American nations.
From the beginning of his career in Congress Blaine had been an enthusiastic advocate of reciprocity between the United States and Latin-American countries. The Pan-American congress of 1889 placed itself on record for reciprocity between all the coun tries of the Western hemisphere and Blaine definitely shaped his foreign commercial policies on this foundation. The period was one of tariff controversies, the Democrats being insistent upon "free trade" and the Republicans on a high tariff. Blaine, while an ardent Republican and supporter of Republican tariff princi ples, held to the ideal of reciprocity with the neighbouring nations of Latin-America as a matter of foreign policy and as of great economic value to the American manufacturing interests which were being protected by the high tariff against European manufac tured goods.
Blaine faced, during his second term as secretary of State, the strained relations of the United States and Chile, growing out of the killing of American sailors in the streets of Valparaiso in 1891. The issue was a complicated one, and a question of policy as well as of diplomatic arrangement. The attack on the American sailors was in part due to the memory of Blaine's alleged partisanship for Peru in the war on the Pacific during his previous service as secre tary of State in 1881. The first lively controversies on seal fish ing in Bering sea, which were later settled by arbitration between Great Britain and the United States, came up under Blaine's secretaryship in Harrison's administration. He prepared the ground at that time for the later adjustment of the seal fisheries issue, one of the notable examples of successful arbitration of a highly complicated economic issue. Blaine resigned as secretary of State under President Harrison on June 4,1892, as a direct re sult of the unauthorized activity of his partisans, who sought to use his name in the Republican convention of that year in the face of his failing health and in spite of his membership in the cabinet of President Harrison who was himself a candidate for re-election. When Blaine resigned he had been absent from his office almost continuously for many months owing to his poor health, and fol lowing a series of deaths in his immediate family in which he lost two sons and a daughter in less than two years, Blaine himself died at Washington, D.C., on Jan. 2 7, 1893.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Mrs. James G. Blaine (Harriet Stanwood Blaine), Bibliography.-Mrs. James G. Blaine (Harriet Stanwood Blaine), Letters, 19°8, Blaine's own autobiography, Twenty Years in Congress, 1884 and 1886, and the Lives by R. H. Conwell, 1884 ; Gail Hamilton (Mary Abigail Dodge), 1895; and Edward Stanwood, i9o5, are the best. The letters to Warren Fisher are published in full in Mr. Blaine's Record, published by the Committee of One Hundred in Boston, and the Congressional Record for his long service there, the annual publications of Foreign Relations of the United States, com piled by the department of State for the time of his two services as secretary of State, as well as the unpublished files of the depart ment of State which are accessible to historians, contain a vast amount of source material which has never been adequately studied. See also Gamaliel Bradford, American Portraits, 1875—Ipoo (Boston, 1922) ; Tyler, Alice Felt, The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1928). (W. THo.)