James G. Blaine

American politician

• Born: January 31, 1830
• Birthplace: West Brownsville, Pennsylvania
• Died: January 27, 1893
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

Blaine was the most popular Republican politician of the late nineteenth century. Although he lost in his bid for the presidency, through his personal appeal and his advocacy of the protective tariff, he laid the basis for the emergence of the Republican Party as the majority party during the 1890’s.

Early Life

James Gillespie Blaine was born January 31, 1830, in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. His father, Ephraim Lyon Blaine, came from a Scotch-Irish and Scotch-Presbyterian background. Blaine’s mother, Maria Louise Gillespie, was an Irish Catholic. Blaine was reared a Presbyterian, as were his brothers, while his sisters followed their mother’s faith. In later life, Blaine became a Congregationalist but was tolerant of all creeds and avoided the religious issue in politics. Blaine’s maternal background gave him an electoral appeal to Irish-Catholic voters.

Ephraim Blaine was a lawyer who was elected to a county clerk position in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1842. His son entered Washington and Jefferson College, a small school in the area, and was graduated in 1847. Blaine then taught at the Western Military Institute in Georgetown, Kentucky, from 1848 to 1851. He admired the policies of Henry Clay, the Whig leader, during his stay in the state. He also found time to court and then marry a teacher at a woman’s seminary, Harriet Stanwood, on June 30, 1850. Leaving Kentucky in late 1851, Blaine taught at the Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind from 1852 to 1854. He also pursued legal studies while in Philadelphia.

Harriet Blaine’s family had connections in Maine. When a vacancy occurred for editor of the Kennebec Journal in 1853, her husband was asked to take over the management of this Whig newspaper. Money from his brothers-in-law helped this arrangement succeed. By November, 1854, Blaine was at work in Augusta, Maine, as a newspaperman, not a lawyer. His growing family eventually reached seven children, four of whom outlived their father. From this point onward, he became known as Blaine of Maine.

Over the next decade, Blaine became identified with the young Republican Party in his adopted state. He was elected to the Maine legislature in 1858, was reelected three times, and became Speaker of the House of Representatives during his last two terms. He was named chairman of the Republican State Committee in 1859, a post he held for two decades. Blaine attended the Republican National Convention in 1860 as a delegate. In 1862, he was elected to the U.S. Congress and took his seat in the House of Representatives in 1863.

As he entered the national scene at the age of thirty-three, Blaine had already shown himself to be a gifted politician. He had a charismatic quality that caused some who knew him to be loyal to him for life, becoming “Blainiacs.” His speeches were received enthusiastically in an age that admired oratory. Blaine knew American politics intimately and could remember faces and election results with uncanny accuracy. However, there was another side to him. His health and temperament were uncertain, and his illnesses often came at moments of crisis. In his private affairs, Blaine gained wealth without having a secure income, and he would not reveal information about his finances to the public. Enemies said that he was corrupt. That went too far, but he lacked, as did many of his contemporaries, a clear sense of what constituted a conflict of interest. In fact, James G. Blaine was a diverse blend of good and bad qualities—a truth reflected in the Gilded Age quip that men went insane about him in pairs, one for, and one against.

Life’s Work

Blaine spent thirteen years in the House of Representatives, serving as its Speaker between 1869 and 1875. He was a moderate on the issues of the Civil War and Reconstruction, endorsing black suffrage and a strong policy toward the South without being labeled as a “radical.” He became known as a “Half-Breed” in contrast to such “Stalwarts” as New York’s Roscoe Conkling . Blaine and Conkling clashed on the House floor in April, 1866. His description of Conkling as having a “majestic, supereminent turkey-gobbler strut” opened a personal and political wound that never healed for the egotistic Conkling. His opposition proved disastrous to Blaine’s presidential chances in 1876 and 1880.

By 1876, Blaine had left the House of Representatives to serve in the Senate. He was a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in that year. Then a public controversy arose over whether Blaine had acted corruptly in helping to save a land grant for an Arkansas railroad in 1869. The facts about favors done and favors repaid were allegedly contained in a packet of documents known as the Mulligan Letters, named for the man who possessed them. The letters came into Blaine’s hands, he read from them to the House, and his friends said that he had vindicated himself. Enemies charged that the papers proved his guilt, and the reform element of the time never forgave him.

Shortly before the Republican convention, Blaine fell ill. Nevertheless, his name was placed in nomination as Robert G. Ingersoll called him the “Plumed Knight” of American politics. The Republican delegates decided that Blaine was too controversial to win, and they turned instead to Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Four years later, after Hayes’s single term, Blaine led the opposition to a third term for Ulysses S. Grant and again was seen as a contender for the nomination. Blaine was more interested in his party’s success than in his own advancement in 1880, and he was pleased when James A. Garfield of Ohio became the compromise nominee. In the fall campaign, Blaine stumped widely for the national ticket and developed the arguments for the protective tariff that he would advance during the 1880’s.

After Garfield’s narrow victory, he asked Blaine to be his secretary of state. In his first brief tenure at the State Department, Blaine pursued his concern for a canal across Central America, the fostering of Pan-American sentiment, and greater trade for the nation. Garfield’s assassination in the summer of 1881 ended his presidency and led to Blaine’s resignation at the end of the year. The administration of Chester A. Arthur that followed did not cut into Blaine’s popularity with the Republican rank and file. He received the Republican nomination on the first ballot in 1884. John A. Logan of Illinois was his running mate.

Blaine wanted to make the protective tariff the central theme of his race against the nominee of the Democrats, Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York. Instead the campaign turned on the personal character of the two candidates. Republicans stressed Cleveland’s admission that he had had an affair with a woman who had given birth to an illegitimate son. Democrats attacked the legal validity of Blaine’s marriage and revived the charges of the Mulligan Letters. These sensational aspects overshadowed Blaine’s campaign tour, one of the first by a presidential aspirant. The election was close as the voting neared.

All accounts of the election of 1884 note that on October 29, Blaine heard the Reverend Samuel Burchard say in New York that the Democrats were the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” These words supposedly alienated Catholic voters, swung New York to the Democrats, and thus cost Blaine the victory. This episode, however, has been given too much importance. In fact, Blaine improved on Garfield’s vote in the state and ran stronger than his party. The significance of 1884 was not that Blaine lost in a Democratic year but that he revived the Republicans and laid the groundwork for the party’s victory in 1888.

Over the next four years, Blaine continued to speak out for the tariff. He set the keynote for the 1888 campaign when he responded publicly to Cleveland’s attacks on tariff protection in his 1887 annual message to Congress. “The Democratic Party in power is a standing menace to the prosperity of the country,” he told an interviewer. Blaine stayed out of the presidential race and supported strongly the party’s nominee, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. After Harrison defeated Cleveland, it was logical that Blaine should again serve as secretary of state.

Blaine faced a variety of diplomatic issues, including Canadian fisheries and a running argument with Great Britain over fur seals in Alaska. He summoned the initial Pan-American Conference to Washington in October, 1889, sought to achieve the annexation of Hawaii, and was instrumental in obtaining reciprocal trade authority in the McKinley Tariff of 1890. In many ways Blaine foreshadowed the overseas expansion of the United States that occurred later in the decade. His working relationship with President Harrison deteriorated as the administration progressed and Blaine’s own health faltered. The death of two children in 1890 added to his personal troubles.

Shortly before the Republican convention, on June 4, 1892, Blaine resigned as secretary of state. It is not clear whether Blaine was actually a candidate for the presidency this last time. He received some support when the Republican delegates met, but the incumbent Harrison easily controlled the convention and was renominated on the first ballot. Blaine made one speech for the Republicans in the 1892 race as Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland. In the last months of his life, Blaine gradually wasted away. He died of Bright’s disease and a weakened heart on January 27, 1893.

Significance

When Blaine died, a fellow Republican said, “His is a fame that will grow with time.” In fact, he is now largely a forgotten historical figure who is remembered only for a vague connection with “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” That impression does an injustice to one of the most popular and charismatic political leaders of the Gilded Age. Blaine embodied the diverse tendencies of the Republican Party in the formative stages of its development. In his advocacy of economic nationalism and growth, he spoke for a generation that wanted both to preserve the achievements of the Civil War and to move on to the fresh issues of industrial development. He was an important participant in the affairs of the House of Representatives during the early 1870’s, and his tenure as Speaker contributed to the growing professionalism of that branch of government.

Blaine also symbolized the popular unease about the ethical standards that public servants should observe. In the Mulligan Letters episode and in his own affairs, he raised issues about conflict of interest and propriety that clouded his historical reputation. He became the epitome of the “spoilsman” who lived on patronage and influence. Blaine correctly understood these attacks as being to some degree partisan, but he failed to recognize the legitimacy of the questions that they posed.

Despite these failings, Blaine was a central figure in the evolution of the Republican Party during the 1870’s and 1880’s. His conviction that tariff protection offered both the hope of party success and an answer to the issue of economic growth laid the foundation for the emergence of the Republican Party as the majority party during the 1890’s. During the 1884 presidential race, he improved the Republican performance and prepared the party for later success. As secretary of state, he was a constructive spokesperson for the national interest. He educated his party on the tariff issue and, in so doing, fulfilled the essential function of a national political leader. For a generation of Republican leaders and voters, James G. Blaine came to stand for inspiration and commitment in politics. Although he failed to reach the presidency, Blaine was the most significant American politician of his era.

Bibliography

Blaine, James G. Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield. 2 vols. Norwich, Conn.: Henry Bill, 1884-1886. Blaine’s memoir of his service in Congress does not contain any striking personal revelations.

Crapol, Edward P. James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Focuses on Blaine’s tenure as secretary of state, including his relations with Latin America and his attempts to upgrade the merchant marine and U.S. Navy. Crapol maintains that Blaine’s policies aimed to establish U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

Dodge, Mary Abigail. The Biography of James G. Blaine. Norwich, Conn.: Henry Bill, 1895. The inclusion of Blaine’s private letters is the most useful feature of this family biography.

Healy, David. James G. Blaine and Latin America. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. Examines U.S. relations with Latin America during Blaine’s tenure as secretary of state. Healy contends that Latin America was crucial to Blaine’s foreign policy and his vision of America as a world leader.

Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1969. The best analytic treatment of American politics during the heyday of Blaine’s career. Morgan is sympathetic and perceptive about Blaine’s role as a Republican leader.

Muzzey, David S. James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1934. The best and most objective biography of Blaine. Argues that he was not consumed with the desire to be president.

Stanwood, Edward. James Gillespie Blaine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905. A short biography by a scholar who was related to Blaine.

Thompson, Margaret Susan. The “Spider Web”: Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. An innovative and interesting treatment of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the years when Blaine was Speaker. Reveals much about the political system in which he operated.

Tyler, Alice Felt. The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1927. An older but still helpful examination of Blaine as a diplomat and architect of American foreign policy.