Blaine, James Gillespie

BLAINE, James Gillespie, a Representative and a Senator from Maine; born in West Brownsville, Washington County, Pa., January 31, 1830; graduated from Washington College, Washington, Pa., in 1847; taught at the Western Military Institute, Blue Lick Springs, Ky.; returned to Pennsylvania; studied law; taught at the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind in Philadelphia 1852-1854; moved in 1854 to Maine, where he edited the Portland Advertiser and the Kennebec Journal; member, State house of representatives 1859-1862, serving the last two years as speaker; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth and to the six succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1863, to July 10, 1876, when he resigned; Speaker of the House of Representatives (Forty-first through Forty-third Congresses); chairman, Committee on Rules (Forty-third through Forty-fifth Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for nomination for President on the Republican ticket in 1876 and 1880; appointed and subsequently elected as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Lot M. Morrill; reelected and served from July 10, 1876, to March 5, 1881, when he resigned to become Secretary of State; chairman, Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Forty-fifth Congress), Committee on Rules (Forty-fifth Congress); Secretary of State in the Cabinets of Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur, from March 5 to December 12, 1881; unsuccessful Republican candidate for President of the United States in 1884; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison 1889-1892, when he resigned; aided in organizing and was the first president of the Pan American Congress; died in Washington, D.C., January 27, 1893; interment in Oak Hill Cemetery; reinterment at the request of the State of Maine in the Blaine Memorial Park, Augusta, Maine, in June 1920.

In 1854 Blaine moved to Maine, where he became a newspaper editor and, in the political turmoil of the 1850s, served as one of the "founding fathers" of the new Republican party. More than any other political figure of his time, Blaine seemed to symbolize the success--and occasional failure--of the Republican party in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. He launched his political career in 1858, winning a seat in the state legislature, and became chair of the Republican State Committee in 1859. He chose, as many others did, to hire a substitute when drafted for the Civil War. Instead, Blaine was elected to the House of Representatives in 1862, beginning what has been described as a "long, colorful, and controversial national record" (Marcus, p. 7). After three terms in Congress, at the age of thirty-nine, he became Speaker of the House in 1869. Blaine served in that capacity until 1875, when the Republicans lost control of the House. This six-year term in a powerful and rewarding position represents the least controversial phase of his career on the national scene in what has been called "probably . . . the happiest period of Blaine's life" (Muzzey, p. 63).

Over and over again, contemporaries spoke of Blaine's "magnetism," the nineteenth-century equivalent of charisma. Many of the most sophisticated Republicans of the time indeed were drawn to him and devoted much of their political lives to a continuing crusade to put Blaine in the White House.