ballot to three hundred and fifty-one on the seventh, but he was beaten by a combination against him of the delegates supporting Morton, Conkling, Hartranft, Bristow, and Hayes, who united upon Hayes, and made him the nominee. He was also one of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, in June, 1880. Out of a total of seven hundred and fifty-five he received, on the first ballot, two hundred and eighty-four votes. On the thirteenth and fourteenth ballots he received his highest vote, two hundred and eighty-five, which very gradually declined to two hundred and fifty-seven on the thirty-fifth ballot. On the thirty-sixth ballot General Garfield was nominated by a combination of the elements opposed to General Grant and a third term. As before, Mr. Blaine yielded to the inevitable, remaining true to his party principles, and contributing his aid to the election of James A. Garfield.
When President Garfield made up his Cabinet he offered Mr. Blaine the control of the state department. This is how Mr. Blaine accepted the offer:
WASHINGTON, December 20, 1880.
My dear Garfield,—Your generous invitation to enter your Cabinet as secretary of state has been under consideration for more than three weeks. The thought had really never occurred to my mind until, at our late conference, you presented it with such cogent arguments in its favor, and with such warmth of personal friendship in aid of your kind offer. I know that an early answer is desirable, and I have waited only long enough to consider the subject in all its bearings, and to make up my mind, definitely and conclusively. I now say to you, in the same cordial spirit in which you have invited me, that I accept the position. It is no affectation for me to add that I make this decision, not for the honor of the promotion it gives me in the public service, but because I think I can be useful to the country and to the party; useful to you as the responsible leader of the party and the great head of the government. I am influenced somewhat, perhaps, by the shower of letters I have received urging me to accept, written to me in consequence of the mere unauthorized newspaper report that you had been pleased to offer me the place. While I have received these letters from all sections of the Union, I have been especially pleased, and even surprised, at the cordial and widely extended feeling in my favor throughout New England, where I had expected to encounter local jealousy and, perhaps, rival aspiration.
In our new relation I shall give all that I am and all that I can hope to be, freely and joyfully, to your service. You need no pledge of my loyalty in heart and in act. I should be false to myself did I not prove true both to the great trust you confide to me and to your own personal and political fortunes in the present and in the future. Your administration must be made brilliantly successful and strong in the confidence and pride of the people, not at all directing its energies for re-election, and yet compelling that result by the logic of events and by the imperious necessities of the situation. To that most desirable consummation I feel that, next to yourself, I can possibly contribute as much influence as any other one man. I say this not from egotism or vainglory, but merely as a deduction from a plain analysis of the political forces which have been at work in the country for five years past, and which have been significantly shown in two great national conventions. I accept it as one of the happiest circumstances connected with this affair that in allying my political fortunes with yours—or, rather, for the time merging mine in yours—my heart goes with my head, and that I carry to you not only political support, but personal and devoted friendship. I can but regard it as somewhat remarkable that two men of the same age, entering Congress at the same time, influenced by the same aims and cherishing the same ambitions, should never, for a single moment in eighteen years of close intimacy, have had a misunderstanding or a coolness, and that our friendship has steadily grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength. It is this fact which has led me to the conclusion embodied in this letter; for however much, my dear Garfield, I might admire you as a statesman, I would not enter your Cabinet if I did not believe in you as a man and love you as a friend. Always faithfully yours,
Mr. Blaine's diplomatic career began with his appointment as secretary of state on March 5, 1881, and ended with his resignation on December 19, three months after President Garfield's death. The two principal objects of his foreign policy, as defined by himself on September 1, 1882, were these: "First, to bring about peace, and prevent future wars in North and South America; second, to cultivate such friendly commercial relations with all American countries as would lead to a large increase in the export trade of the United States, by supplying those fabrics in which we are abundantly able to compete with the manufacturing nations of Europe." President Garfield, in his inaugural address, had repeated the declaration of his predecessor that it was "the right and duty of the United States to assert and maintain such supervision and authority over any interoceanic canal across the isthmus that connects North and South America as will protect our national interests." This policy, which had received the direct approval of Congress, was vigorously upheld by Secretary Blaine. The Colombian Republic had proposed to the European powers to join in a guaranty of the neutrality of the proposed Panama Canal. One of President Garfield's first acts under the advice of Secretary Blaine was to remind the European governments of the exclusive rights which the United States had secured with the country to be traversed by the interoceanic waterway. These exclusive rights rendered the prior guaranty of the United States government indispensable, and the powers were informed that any foreign guaranty would be not only an unnecessary but unfriendly act. As the United States had made, in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, a special agreement with Great Britain on this subject, Secretary Blaine supplemented his memorandum to the powers by a formal proposal for the abrogation of all provisions of that convention which were not in accord with the guaranties and privileges covenanted for in the compact with the Colombian Republic. In this state paper, the most elaborate of the series receiving his signature as secretary of state, Mr. Blaine contended that the operation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty practically conceded to Great Britain the control of any canal which might be constructed in the isthmus, as that power was required, by its insular position and colonial possessions, to maintain a naval establishment with which the United States could not compete. As the American government had bound itself by its engagements in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty not to fight in the isthmus, nor to fortify the mouths of any waterway that might be constructed, the secretary argued that if any struggle for the control of the canal were to arise England would have an advantage at the outset which would prove decisive. "The treaty," he remarked, "commands this government not to use a single regiment of troops to protect its interests in connection with the interoceanic canal, but to surrender the transit to the guardianship and control of the British navy." The logic of this paper was unanswerable from an American point of view.
The war between Chili and Peru had virtually ended with the capture of Lima on January 17, 1881. The state department made strenuous exertions to bring about the conclusion of an early peace between Chili and the two prostrate states which had been crushed in war. The influence of the government was brought to bear upon victorious Chili in the interest of peace and magnanimity; but, owing to an unfortunate misapprehension of Mr. Blaine's instructions, the United States ministers did not promote the ends of peace. Special envoys were accordingly sent to South America, accredited to the three governments, with general instructions which should enable them to bring those belligerent powers into friendly relations. After they had set out from New York Mr. Blaine resigned, and Mr. Frelinghuysen reversed the diplomatic policy with such precipitate haste that the envoys on arriving at their destination were informed by the Chilian minister of foreign affairs that their instructions had been countermanded, and that their mission was an idle farce. By this reversal of diplomatic methods and purposes the influence of the United States government on the South American coast was reduced to so low a point as to become insignificant. Mr. Blaine's policy had been at once strong and pacific. It was followed by a period of no policy, which enabled Chili to make a conqueror's terms with the conquered and to seize as much territory as pleased her rapacious generals.
The most conspicuous act of Mr. Blaine's administration of the state department was his invitation to the peace congress. The proposition was to invite all the independent governments of North and South America to meet in a peace congress at Washington on March 15, 1882. The representatives of all the minor governments on this continent were to agree, if possible,
