James G. Blaine

Biography

James G. Blaine was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, in 1830. He graduated from Washington College in 1847, taught at the Western Military Institute in Kentucky and at a school for the blind in Philadelphia, and in 1853 became editor and co-owner of the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine, which he used to promote the new Republican Party. He later edited the Portland Daily Advertiser.

He entered the Maine House of Representatives in 1859, was its speaker in 1861–62 and chaired the state Republican committee. Elected to the U.S. House in 1862, he supported the Union war effort and a strong currency, and was Speaker from 1869 to 1875, gaining a reputation as a master of procedure. In 1875 he proposed the Blaine Amendment to bar public funds from religious schools.

The Mulligan letters, which suggested improper dealings with railroads, hurt his bid for the 1876 presidential nomination; he entered the Senate that year and sought the nomination again in 1880. As Secretary of State under Garfield in 1881 he was walking with the president when Garfield was shot. He won the Republican nomination in 1884 but lost narrowly to Grover Cleveland.

Back at the State Department under Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1892, he convened the First International Conference of American States, promoted tariff reciprocity and pressed American interests in the Pacific, including Hawaii. He resigned in 1892 and died in Washington in January 1893.