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A comprehensive biography of James G. Blaine, an American statesman and Republican politician who served as Secretary of State under three presidents and ran for president in 1876, 1880 and 1884. Learn about his early life, career, achievements, controversies and legacy.
Learn about James G. Blaine, a leading Republican politician and diplomat who launched the Pan-American Movement in the 19th century. Find out his achievements, controversies, and legacy in this article from Britannica.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn about the life and career of James G. Blaine, who served two terms as Secretary of State under Presidents Garfield and Harrison. Find out his achievements, challenges and controversies in American diplomacy in the late 19th century.
Learn about the life and career of James G. Blaine, a prominent Republican politician in the late 19th century. He served in the Senate, the House, and as secretary of state, and ran for president in 1884.
- Personal Attributes
- "Mulligan Letters" and Other Suspicions
- Secretary of State
- Further Reading
- Additional Sources
Blaine served as Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives during 1861 and 1862. He was then elected to Congress, where he also served as Speaker from 1869 to 1875. In 1876 he was elected to the Senate from the state of Maine and was also a prominent candidate for his party's nomination as president. This rise in politics was due to his party r...
Blaine hoped to be president in 1876 and was nominated as "the plumed Knight" by Robert Ingersoll in one of the most eloquent nominating speeches in the history of American conventions. But the Republicans were sensitive in that year to charges of political corruption, and Blaine's enemies in the party revived an affair which cast a shadow over his...
In 1889 Blaine was named secretary of state by President Benjamin Harrison. He had already served briefly in that post under James Garfield. He was a dynamic foreign minister. He pushed an aggressive attitude toward Great Britain and laid the basis for the Pan-Americanism and United States economic penetration of Latin America that would come to fr...
The most comprehensive biography of Blaine is David Saville Muzzey, James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days (1934). All the standard accounts of the era's politics take note of him. A fair sampling of different points of view would include Matthew Josephson, The Politicos, 1865-1896 (1938); John A. Garraty, The New Commonwealth, 1877-1890(1...
Tutorow, Norman E., James Gillespie Blaine and the presidency: a documentary study and source book, New York: P. Lang, 1989. □
Learn about the life and achievements of James G. Blaine, one of the most prominent politicians of the nineteenth century. He served as a congressman, senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
Career. Blaine was a Republican. He was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1869 until 1875. He was chosen by the 18th United States President Ulysses S. Grant. Blaine would later served as the Senator from Maine from 1876 through 1881.
