James Gillespie Blaine biography

Dromo's Den

James Gillespie Blaine Biography

BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE (1830-93). One of the most brilliant, resourceful, and popular of American party leaders. He was born, of Scotch-Irish parentage, at Brownsville, Pa., on Jan. 31, 1830, and graduated in 1847 at Washington College in his native State. He began his career as a teacher in the Western Military Institute, Georgetown, Ky. (1848-51), and in the Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind, Philadelphia (1852-54), when he removed to Augusta, Me., where he became one of the editors of the Kennebec Journal (1854-57). In 1857-60 he undertook the editorship of the Portland Advertiser an influential daily newspaper. The prominence which he soon acquired led to his election to the State Legislature as a Republican. He served from 1859 to 1862 in the Lower House of that body, was Speaker in 1861 and 1862, and in 1859-81 was chairman of the Republican State Committee. Rising rapidly to a commanding place, he was elected in 1862 to the House of Representatives, where he served until 1877 and distinguished himself both as an eloquent debater and as a master of parliamentary law. He was Speaker of the House in 1869-75. He vigorously supported the administration of President Lincoln during the Civil War; opposed the "greenback" movement of 1867-68, and later he succeeded in modifying some of the most radical measures proposed by Thaddeus Stevens at the time of reconstruction. (See Reconstruction; STEVENS, THADDEUS.) While Speaker he was most successful, showing readiness and nerve, and also personal courtesy to his opponents both within and without the Republican party. The only exception to this statement is to be found in his withering retort to Roscoe Conkling, whom he likened to a turkey gobbler, thereby incurring an enmity which in after years helped to mar his own political ambitions. (See CONKLING, ROSCOE. )

So pronounced a personality as Mr. Blaine's very naturally led to many controversies that were acute and of which the effects were seen when, in 1875, the Democrats gained control of the House for the first time since the close of the Civil War. A measure to grant complete amnesty to all ex-Confederates was opposed most vehemently by Mr. Blaine, who in a series of passionate and able declamations sought to strike from the list of those to whom this amnesty was to be granted the name of Jefferson Davis. In the course of this debate Blaine showed remarkable power in reviving the smoldering resentments that dated from the days of the war, and he provoked the Southern leaders to utterances which gave Blaine a chance to fan the embers of sectional hatred into a fierce flame. On June 5, 1876, not long before the National Republican Convention was to nominate a candidate for the presidency, there occurred the highly dramatic incident which has to do with what are known in American political history as the "Mulligan Letters" (q.v.). - On this occasion Mr. Blame, after denying the right of the House to compel him to produce his private correspondence, did nevertheless, after a brief pause, produce a packet of letters and, saying that he invited "the confidence of forty-four millions of his countrymen," read them one by one, making comments on them and explanations of them. In the brief debate which followed Mr. Blaine completely routed his adversaries, and an adjournment of the House was taken amid a scene resembling pandemonium. Mr. Blaine had won a brilliant triumph for the moment and had apparently made of his enemies his footstool. Such, however, was not the unanimous opinion even of his own party. The letters written to James Mulligan and to Warren Fisher showed that the writer of them had at the time (to use his own words) been "crippled and deranged" in his finances, and that he had sought pecuniary assistance because of his own influence as a member of the House of Representatives. One of them ended with the significant words, "Burn this letter." It was also made clear by a letter dated Oct. 4, 1869, that Blaine, while Speaker, had helped to thwart a measure which would have been unfavorable to his own financial associates. Therefore, when the Republican Convention met, although Blaine on the seventh ballot received 351 votes, a combination of all his opponents upon Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, effected Blaine's defeat and made Hayes the Republican candidate against that very able Democratic statesman, Samuel J. Tilden, of New York. The result of the election was disputed, and an Electoral Commission (q.v.), created by Congress to canvass the returns, seated Mr. Hayes with a majority of only one electoral vote.

Though he did not secure the nomination "The Plumed Knight," as Col. Robert Ingersoll had styled him in his nominating speech, was elected, in the same year, to the United States Senate. As a Senator, he opposed the Bland Silver Coinage Act (see BIMETALLISM), supported ship subsidies, spoke and voted against the unrestricted immigration of the Chinese, and strongly favored a high protective tariff and a subsidy for various American industries. In spite of his defeat in 1876 he was still the unquestioned leader of his party; so that in 1880 he was once more a candidate in the Republican Convention in opposition to Grant. The Convention, after taking 36 ballots gave the nomination to a "dark horse" in the person of James A. Garfield, of Ohio, upon whom the adherents both of Blaine and of John Sherman united. Garfield defeated Gen. W. S. Hancock in the ensuing election and in March, 1881, appointed Blaine to be Secretary of State, an office which he held for only eight months. After the death of President Garfeld the presidency devolved upon Vice-President Arthur, then a close friend of Conkling, who, as already stated, was inimical to Blaine. During these eight months as Secretary of State, Blaine attempted to bring about a modification of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, advocated a Pan-American Congress, and also aroused criticism by his determination to prevent the transfer of territory from Peru to Chili. This was charged to be due to his alleged interest in the so-called Shepherd claims; public opinion, however, did not sustain this assertion. His resignation was inevitable, and he now found himself relegated to private life for the first time in very many years. He turned his attention to the preparation of a work entitled Twenty Years of Congress, of which the first volume appeared in 1884 and had a favorable reception.

In this same year, however, he was once more a candidate for the presidential nomination, and this time successfully. Nevertheless, the opposition to him within his own party was very bitter, so much so that large numbers of independent Republicans, who were popularly known as "Mugwumps" (q.v.), voted against him, especially in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, of New York, who had been elected Governor of that State by the enormous plurality of 192,000 votes two years before. The political campaign of 1884 was unparalleled in American political history for the malignity with which both candidates were assailed and for the outrageous indecency of the stories that were circulated concerning their private lives. (See CLEVELAND, GROVER.) Blaine made extensive tours throughout the country, during which he showed all of his characteristic adroitness and fervid eloquence; but the issues by which he hoped to win had ceased to interest the country. Sectional animosity was dying out. People were tired of what was known as "waving the bloody shirt," and the Democratic platform had been so ably drawn as to subordinate the tariff question. The result, therefore, turned chiefly upon the respective merits of the two candidates, and here Cleveland was held to be superior to Blaine in political integrity and civic virtue. Various reasons have been assigned for the defeat of Blaine, but they may be probably summed up as resulting, first, from the hostility of Mr. Conkling and his adherents; second, from the defection of the independent Republicans; and third, from the fact that, although Mr. Blaine was himself friendly to the Catholic voters, and though his own sister was the Mother Superior of a convent, he had allowed the Rev. Samuel D. Burchard (q.v.), the spokesman of a number of Protestant clergymen, to style the Democratic party (October 29, 1884) "the party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." This inadvertence of Blaine was accounted for by the fact that he did not notice the famous phrase and took "Romanism" for Mormonism.

Betaking himself once more to literary labor, he completed the second volume of his Twenty Years of Congress (1886) and also wrote a volume called Political Discussions (1887) . He also visited Europe and was in Florence at the time when the Republican Convention met in 1888. Blaine's name was again mooted as that of a candidate, but it was withdrawn at his own request, and his adherents secured the nomination of Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, who was elected. President Harrison appointed Blaine Secretary of State, in which office he served until 1892. As Secretary of State he secured a favorable treaty with Germany concerning the Samoan Islands (q.v.); assembled and presided over the first Pan-American Conference (q.v.); and engaged in a controversy with Lord Salisbury over the Bering Sea fisheries (see BERING SEA CONTROVERSY); compelled the Chilean government to admit the inviolability of the American legation at Santiago, to dismiss its Foreign Secretary for having made public a letter which spoke of President Harrison and Secretary Blaine in terms of insult, and to pay an indemnity to the families of certain American sailors who had been wantonly killed by a mob in the streets of Valparaiso; and took a firm stand in the matter of the lynching at New Orleans of the 11 Italians accused of assassinating the chief of the police of that city.

In 1892 Blaine's relations with the President became difficult, owing, it is said, to a falling out between Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Blaine. In June, just before the Republican Convention was held at Minneapolis, he resigned from the cabinet, and his name was unsuccessfully presented to the convention which renominated Harrison. Blaine had, in fact, become broken down in health. He retired to his home in Maine and there died on Jan. 27, 1893.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. III (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 367-369.