James G. Blaine

James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893) was born on January 31, 1830, in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He would attend Washington College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1847. He would then move to Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1848, where he would teach in the Western Military Institute as a mathematician. Residing in Henry Clay’s home state, Blaine would become an admirer and enthusiastic supporter of Clay. Blaine would later return to Pennsylvania, where he studied the law, and would teach at the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind. He eventually decided, however, to pursue a career in journalism, and in 1853, he would accept an offer to become editor and part owner of the Kennebec Journal in the state of Maine. The Kennebec Journal was staunchly Whig, but Blaine’s involvement with the publication would coincide with the collapse of the Whig Party. Blaine would quickly transform the publication into a Republican newspaper.

Blaine was an early and active member of the Republican Party, serving as a delegate to the first Republican National Convention in 1856. In 1858, Blaine would then be elected to the Maine House of Representatives and would retain the seat until 1862. That same year, he would run successfully for the federal House of Representatives. Blaine would remain in the House of Representatives until 1876, and would also serve as Speaker of the House between 1869 and 1875. In 1876, he would then be appointed to the Senate, where he would remain until 1881, when he resigned to become the Secretary of State under James A. Garfield. Blaine would then go on to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1884, but would lose the election to the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland.

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Blaine’s contribution to American Protectionist thought is rather fragmented. His arguments for protection can be found littered throughout his speeches and addresses as a statesman, some of which would be pamphletized or compiled and published as part of collected volumes. One popular speech was that given on September 29, 1888, which was later circulated by the Home Market Club under the title Condensed History of the American Tariff Acts and Their Effects Upon Industry. Blaine’s most important work, however, is his two volume treatise Twenty Years of Congress, which, despite being a general political treatise, contains numerous discussions on economic questions. In addition to the above, any discussion of Blaine’s economic views would be incomplete without mentioning his debate with the English statesmen William E. Gladstone on the subject of protection versus free trade. This debate was conducted in article format and was published in The North American Review in 1890. In terms of Blaine’s doctrine, it should be noted that whilst Blaine was a committed protectionist, in practice, he rejected the more traditional isolationist stance of the broader American Protectionist School. Instead, Blaine sought a moderately expansionist foreign policy through the use of reciprocal trade agreements, albeit ones of limited scope and with reference to non-competing imports. Blaine would pass away on January 27, 1893, in Washington, DC.