Blaine and Sherman united on Gen. Garfield, who received 399 votes to 306 for Grant, and was nominated. On his election, Mr. Blaine was tendered and accepted the office of secretary of state. He remained at the head of the department less than ten months, and his effective administration was practically limited by the assassination of President Garfield to four. Within that period, however, he began several important undertakings. His foreign policy had two principal objects. The first was to secure and preserve peace throughout this continent. The second was to cultivate close commercial relations and increase our trade with the various countries of North and South America. The accomplishment of the first object was preliminary and essential to the attainment of the second, and, in order to promote it, he projected a peace congress to be held at Washington, to which all the independent powers of North and South America were to be invited. His plan contemplated the cultivation of such a friendly understanding on the part of the powers as would permanently avert the horrors of war either through the influence of pacific counsels or the acceptance of impartial arbitration. Incidentally, it assumed that the assembling of their representatives at Washington would open the way to such relations as would inure to the commercial advantage of this country. The project, though already determined, was delayed by the fatal shot at Garfield, and the letter of invitation was finally issued on 29 Nov., 1881, fixing 24 Nov., 1882, as the date for the proposed congress. On 19 Dec. Mr. Blaine retired from the cabinet, and within three weeks his successor had reversed his policy and the plan was abandoned, after the invitation had been accepted by all the American powers except two.
When Mr. Blaine entered the department of state, war was raging between Chili and Peru, and he sought to exercise the good offices of our government, first, for the restoration of peace, and, second, to mitigate the consequences of the crushing defeat sustained by Peru. Other efforts failing, he despatched William Henry Trescott on a special mission to offer the friendly services of the United States; but this attempt, like the one for the peace congress, was interrupted and frustrated by his retirement from the department. His brief service was also signalized by an important correspondence with the British government concerning the modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, making formal proposal for the abrogation of certain clauses which were not in harmony with the rights of the United States as secured by convention with the Colombian republic, he urged that the treaty, by prohibiting the use of land forces and of fortifications, without any protection against superior naval power, practically conceded to Great Britain the control of any interoceanic canal that might be constructed across the isthmus, and he proposed that every part of the treaty which forbids the United States fortifying the canal and holding the political control of it in conjunction with the country in which it is located should be cancelled. To the answer of the British government that the treaty was an engagement which should be maintained and respected, Mr. Blaine replied that it could not be regarded as a conclusive determination of the question; that since its adoption it had been the subject of repeated negotiations between the two countries; that the British government had itself proposed to refer its doubtful clauses to arbitration; and that it had long been recognized as a source of increasing embarrassment. Throughout the correspondence Mr. Blaine insisted in the firmest tone that “it is the fixed purpose of the United States to consider the isthmus canal question as an American question, to be dealt with and decided by the American governments.”
Upon the retirement of Mr. Blaine from the state department in December, 1881, he was, for the first time in twenty-three years, out of public station. He soon entered upon the composition of an elaborate historical work entitled “Twenty Years of Congress,” of which the first 200 pages give a succinct review of the earlier political history of the country, followed by a more detailed narrative of the eventful period from Lincoln to Garfield. The first volume was published in April, 1884, and the second in January, 1886 (Norwich, Conn.). The work had a very wide sale, and secured general approval for its impartial spirit and brilliant style. When the republican national convention of 1884 met at Chicago, it was clear that Mr. Blaine had lost none of the hold upon the enthusiasm of his party. On the first ballot he received 334½ votes, President Arthur 278, Senator Edmunds 93, Senator Logan 63½, and the rest were scattering. His vote kept gaining till the fourth ballot, when he received 541 out of a total of 813 and was nominated. The canvass that followed was one of peculiar bitterness. Mr. Blaine took the stump in Ohio, Indiana, New York, and other states, and in a series of remarkable speeches, chiefly devoted to upholding the policy of protection to American industry, deepened the popular impression of his intellectual power. The election turned upon the result in New York, which was lost to Mr. Blaine by 1,047 votes, whereupon he promptly resumed the work upon his history, which had been interrupted by the canvass. After the result had been determined, he made, at his home in Augusta, a speech in which he arraigned the democratic party for carrying the election by suppressing the republican vote in the southern states, and cited the figures of the returns to show that, on an average, only one half or one third as many votes had been cast for each presidential elector or member of congress elected in the south as for each elected in the north. This speech had a startling effect, and attracted universal attention, though Mr. Blaine had set forth the same thing in a speech that he made in congress as long before that time as 11 Dec., 1878.
Mr. Blaine took an active part in the Maine canvass of 1886, opening it, 24 Aug., in a speech at Sebago Lake devoted chiefly to the questions of the fisheries, the tariff, and the third-party prohibition movement. The fishery controversy had acquired renewed interest and importance from recent seizures of American fishing-vessels on the Canadian coast, and Mr. Blaine reviewed its history at length, and sharply criticised the attitude and action of the administration. He presented the issue of protection against free-trade as the foremost one between the two parties; and, with regard to prohibition, insisted that there was no warrant or reason for a third-party movement in Maine, because the republican party had enacted and enforced a prohibitory law in that state. His succeeding speeches, continued throughout the canvass, followed the same line.
At the republican national convention at Chicago, in 1888, Mr. Blaine's name was prominently used in connection with the nomination, but he sent from Italy a telegraphic message positively declining to allow it to be so used. On the election of President Harrison, the nominee of the convention, Mr. Blaine was again called to the
