James G. Blaine

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James G. Blaine
Blaine's signature
James Gillespie Blaine

James Gillespie Blaine (born January 31, 1830 in West Brownsville , Washington County , Pennsylvania , †  January 27, 1893 in Washington, DC ) was an American Republican politician , who was Secretary of State for a few months in 1881 and was a candidate for his party the presidential election of 1884 Grover Cleveland was defeated. From 1889 to 1892 he was foreign minister again.

Life

James G. Blaine was the son of a wealthy landowner of Scottish-Irish descent and the great-grandson of Colonel Ephraim Blaine , who played an important role in the War of Independence . He graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania in 1847 and moved to Augusta , Maine in 1853 , where he found a job as an editor at the Kennebec Journal .

politics

From 1859 to 1862 he was a member of the House of Representatives from Maine . Blaine quickly rose to become a leader in the Republican Party . From 1862 he became a member of Congress and stood out as a skilled speaker. He was then elected by the House of Representatives as its chairman (speaker) . In 1877, the Maine government sent him to the US Senate . In 1876 and 1880 he was put up by the moderate section of his party as a candidate for the presidential election, but did not achieve a majority at the Republican National Convention . James A. Garfield , who was a close friend of his, appointed him to his cabinet as Secretary of State on March 4, 1881 .

As Secretary of State, he worked to expand the influence of the United States in the rest of the American continent . However, his interference in the saltpeter war between Chile , Peru and Bolivia was unsuccessful, and Blaine therefore resigned under the new President Chester A. Arthur in December 1881. In 1884 he was appointed to the nominating convention in Chicago for presidential candidates nominated; but he was defeated in a fierce and aggressively led election campaign by the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland with a result of 48.9% to 48.3%. Above all, the remark of a prominent campaign employee that the Democrats are the party of " rum , Romanism and rebellion " damaged Blaine's reputation among Irish Catholic voters in the important state of New York . His bon mot Down with British Free Trade and Up with the Irish Flag did not help either. Under President Benjamin Harrison he was again Secretary of State from 1889 to 1892.

Honor

The following places in the USA were named after James G. Blaine: Blaine County (Idaho) , Blaine County (Montana) , Blaine County (Oklahoma) and Blaine County (Nebraska) as well as the city of Blaine in Washington state and Blaine in Maine .

literature

Web links

Commons : James G. Blaine  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kerwin Swint: Mudslingers: The twenty-five dirtiest political campaigns of all time. Union Square, New York, 2006 ISBN 1-4027-5736-0 p. 210
  2. ↑ Poultney Bigelow in a letter to the editor to the London Times of September 13, 1887, p. 3
personal data
SURNAME Blaine, James G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blaine, James Gillespie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH West Brownsville , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1893
Place of death Washington, DC