Blaine, James Gillespie

Blaine, James Gillespie (1830-1893), American legislator, who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives (1869-1875) and Secretary of State (1881 and 1889-1892) 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 United States House of Representatives (1863-1876)—becoming Speaker—and then in the US Senate (1876-1881). 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 centre of controversy within the party; he had been denied the nomination in 1876 and 1880 because his reputation was tarnished by charges of corruption in a railway 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.

In 1888 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 Samoan Islands and with Canada over the seal harvest in the Bering Sea, while a revolution in Chile threatened US investment in that country. In each case, Blaine directed a foreign policy shift to increase protection of expanding US commercial interests, thus initiating US 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.