Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-15T22:14:16.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blaine, Garfield and Latin America: A New Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Allan Peskin
Allan Peskin*
Affiliation:
The Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

IF, as has been suggested, a country without a foreign policy is a happy country, then the United States must have reached the peak of its felicity between the Civil War and the turn of the century. Of all the Secretaries of State in that otherwise obscure progression from William Seward to John Hay only one has managed to escape oblivion and capture the imagination of diplomatic historians. That exception is James G. Blaine. Secretary of State on two separate occasions and under three different presidents, Blaine brought to his office not only his personal dynamism but also an apparently well thought-out conception of foreign affairs. Unlike his contemporaries, who seemed content merely to react to events, Blaine appeared to have a policy. The genesis of that policy has been a source of controversy ever since.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , July 1979 , pp. 79 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Tyler, Alice Felt The Foreign Policy of James G. Blaine (Minneapolis, 1927), 17.Google Scholar

2 Bastert, Russell H. “A New Approach to the Origins of Blaine’s Pan-American Policy,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 39 (August 1959), 375–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Blaine, James G. “Foreign Policy of the Garfield Adminstration,” Chicago Weekly Magazine, September 16, 1882 Google Scholar; Blaine, , Political Discussions: Legislative, Diplomatic, and Popular, 1865–1886 (Norwich, Connecticut, 1887).Google Scholar

4 Pletcher, David M. The Awkward Years: American Foreign Relations Under Garfield and Arthur (Columbia, Missouri), 1962).Google Scholar

5 Hamilton, Gail [pseud., Mary Abigail Dodge], Biography of James G. Blaine (Norwich, Connecticut, 1895), 182.Google Scholar

6 Clement Hugh Hill to James A. Garfield, November 18, 1880, James Abram Garfield Papers, Library of Congress.

7 John Sherman to Garfield, January 23, 1881, ibid.

8 Luke Poland to Garfield, January 6, 1881, ibid.

9 Clement Hugh Hill to Garfield, January 1, 1881, ibid.

10 Diary, April 14, 1880, ibid.

11 Ibid., November 27, 1880.

12 Barrows, Chester Leonard William M. Evarts: Lawyer, Diplomat, Statesman (Chapel Hill, 1941), 347.Google Scholar

13 Blaine, , “Foreign Policy,” 2.Google Scholar

14 Blaine to L. P. Morton, September 5, 1881 in, U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1881 (Washington, 1882), 426–427.

15 Blaine to Philip H. Morgan, June 21, 1881, ibid., 768–770.

16 Ibid., 643.

17 Blaineto L. P. Morton, September 5, 1881, ibid., 426–427.

18 “Blaine to Edward F. Noyes, July 23, 1881, Diplomatic Register, State Department Archives.

19 Blaine to P. H. Morgan, June 21, 1881, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1881, 768–770.

20 Blaine, , “Foreign Policy,” 3.Google Scholar

21 BlainetoJ. R. Lowell, November 19, 1881, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1881, 555.

22 Blaine to P. H. Morgan, June 21, 1881, ibid., 768–770.

23 Open letter of Blaine to President Chester Alan Arthur, New York Tribune, February 4, 1882, in Muzzey, David Saville James G. Blaine, A Political Idol of Other Days (New York, 1934), 219.Google Scholar

24 See, “Chile-Peruvian Investigation,” House Reports, No. 1780, 47 Congress, 1 session.

25 Foreign Relations of the United States: 1881, 549.

26 Tyler, , Foreign Policy of Blaine, 16.Google Scholar

27 Blaine, “Foreign Policy”; “Chile-Peruvian Investigation,” 205.

28 Muzzey, Blaine, 220n.

29 See, for example, Blaine to Garfield, December 13, 1880, Garfield Papers, LC.

30 Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 sess., 1168. February 21, 1872.

31 Diary, February 3 and 6, 1876, Garfield Papers, LC.

32 Hinsdale, Burke Aaron (ed.), The Works of James Abram Garfield (2 volumes: Boston, 1883), 2, 277–278.Google Scholar

33 See, for example, Horace N. Fisher to Garfield, October 28, 1878, Garfield Papers, LC.

34 Congressional Record, 45 Cong., 2 sess., 2127.

35 Garfield, , Works, 2, 281.Google Scholar

36 Cong. Globe, 42 Cong., 2 sess., 1620. March 12, 1872. See also, Diary February 24, 1872, Garfield Papers, LC.

37 See, Garfield, , Works, 2, 320–323.Google Scholar

38 Garfield to Isaac Demmon, December 30, 1870, Garfield Papers, LC.

39 Garfield, , Works, 2, 320 Google Scholar; see also “Speech on Public Expenditures, January 23, 1872,” Ibid., 4–5.

40 Blaine, , Political Discussions, 176–185.Google Scholar

41 Garfield, , Works, 2, 573 Google Scholar; Diary, June 18, 1878, Garfield Papers, LC.

42 Garfield, , Works, 2, 325.Google Scholar

43 See, for example, entries for June 7, 13 and 14, 1881, Diary, Garfield Papers, LC.

44 “Chile-Peru Investigation,” 205.

45 Gerry, Margurita Spalding (ed.), Through Five Administrations. Reminiscences of Colonel William H. Crook (New York and London, 1910), 262–263.Google Scholar

46 “Chile-Peru Investigation,” 205.