James G. Blaine

James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893) was the 21st President of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885. He was the first Republican president since Abraham Lincoln and he was president during the Second Mexican War. Attempting to prevent the Confederate States from purchasing the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, Blaine declared a war in which the U.S. was soundly defeated, sounding the death knell for the Republican Party.

With many early evidences of literary capacity and political aptitude, James G. Blaine graduated at Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1847, and subsequently taught successively in the Western Military Institute, Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky and from 1852-1854, he taught at the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind in Philadelphia. During this period, also, he studied law.

Settling in Augusta, Maine, in 1854, he became editor of the Kennebec Journal, and subsequently on the Portland Advertiser. Editorial work was soon abandoned for a more active public career. He served as a member in Maine House of Representatives from 1859 to 1862, serving the last two years as Speaker of the House. He also became chairman of the Republican state committee in 1859, and for more than twenty years personally directed every campaign of his party. Among his adoring admirers, he was known as the "Plumed Knight."

Blaine was elected as a Republican to Congress in 1862, an accomplishment in a year when the Confederate States had won the War of Secession and the Republican party was being made to pay. He served for the next 7 terms, earning a reputation as a firey orator and debator in a minority party. However, as the people of the United States grew tired of the concillitory stance the Democrats took towards the C.S., the Republicans soon began regaining seats. In the 1878 elections, following President Samuel J. Tilden's unpopular decision to remove the stars representing the states of the Confederacy from the flag of the U.S., the Republicans regained the congress. Blaine's star rose dramatically, and in 1880, he was the Republican Party's nominee for president. He won on an anti-Confederate platform.

Blaine was immediately put to the test. The Confederacy recoiled at the return of a "Black" Republican to the presidency. Moreover, Confederate President James Longstreet had been counting on the Democrats indifference to successfully purchase the states of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico in 1881. Now, Blaine, backed by the popular will and anger of the American people, moved to block the purchase by threat of war. Longstreet, confident in country's alliances with Britain and France, defied Blaine, and the Second Mexican War began.

It soon became clear that Blaine and the United States were out of their element. The United States Army was woefully unprepared, suffering setbacks on multiple fronts. After just over a year of bloody fighting, the United States sought an armistace. The C.S. successfully took possession of the Mexican states. For the second time in a generation, the United States had lost a war while under Republican leadership. Further humiliating Blaine at a personal level, the only territorial concession the U.S. made was northern Maine, his homestate, which was annexed by Britain into Canada.

Blaine lost the presidency in 1884, although he probably did not mind. The Republican party had split in 1882, with most joining the wayward Democrats. Ironically, Blaine in his military defeat had laid the foundation the United States' eventual victory in the Great War. On April 22, 1882, Blaine declared a holiday to commemorate the US defeat called "Remembrance Day". This day soon birthed a political ideology which the reinvigorated Democrats adopted as their own. It was also Blaine who began political ties with Germany, which eventually led to the alliance known as the Central Powers.

Blaine himself left office, and retired to obscurity. Only truly die-hard Republicans revered him.