James G. Blaine

James Gillespie Blaine (January 31, 1830 – January 27, 1893) was an American politician. He was a U.S. Representative and became Speaker. He was a U.S. Senator from Maine. He was twice the U.S. Secretary of State. He was also nominated as the candidate for U.S. President for the Republican Party.

Blaine was born on January 31, 1830 in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He was the third child of Ephraim Lyon Blaine and his wife, Maria Gillespie Blaine. He was educated at Washington College and later met his wife, Harriet Stanwood. They married in 1850 and had seven children.

He was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1869 to 1875. He was chosen by the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.

Blaine served as a U.S. Senator from Maine from 1876 to 1881. Then, he served as a U.S. Representative from Maine's 3rd district from 1863 to 1876. Next, he was the 28th and 31st U.S. Secretary of State from 1881 to 1881 and then again from 1889 to 1892.

On July 2, 1881, Blaine and President James A. Garfield were walking in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C. when Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the back. Blaine resigned as Secretary of State several months later.

The Republican Party nominated Blaine for President in 1884, but the Democratic Party's candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the election.

Blaine died on January 27, 1893, just four days before what would have been his 63rd birthday, in his Washington, D.C., home from a heart attack, aged 62.^[1] He was later buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., and was later reburied in Blaine Memorial Park, Augusta, Maine, in 1920.^[1] Blaine was a hypochondriac.^[2]

Media related to James G. Blaine at Wikimedia Commons

• "James G. Blaine, Presidential Contender" Archived 2015-03-07 at the Wayback Machine from C-SPAN's The Contenders
• Bastert, Russell H. (March 1956). "Diplomatic Reversal: Frelinghuysen's Opposition to Blaine's Pan-American Policy in 1882". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 42 (4): 653–671. doi:10.2307/1889232. JSTOR 1889232.
• Langley, Lester D. (1974). "James Gillespie Blaine: The Ideologue as Diplomat". In Merli, Frank J.; Wilson, Theodore A. (eds.). Makers of American Diplomacy: From Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger. New York, New York: Scribner. pp. 253–278. ISBN 978-0-684-13786-5.
• Makemson, Harlen (2004). "One Misdeed Evokes Another: How Political Cartoonists Used 'Scandal Intertextuality' Against Presidential Candidate James G. Blaine". Media History Monographs. 7 (2): 1–21. Archived from the original on 2017-11-19. Retrieved 2013-01-20.
• Peskin, Allan (1979). "Blaine, Garfield and Latin America". Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History. 36 (1): 79–89. doi:10.2307/981139. JSTOR 981139. S2CID 147169121.
• Tyler, Alice Felt (1927). The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.