Credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Robert L. Drapkin
One of the most prominent Republican leaders from the 1860s until his retirement as Secretary of State in 1892, James G. Blaine (1830 - 1893) was born and raised in Washington County, PA. After graduating from Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in western Pennsylvania, Blaine taught at the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind in Philadelphia before earning a law degree and moving to Maine, in 1854. A congressman from 1863 to 1876, Blaine also served as a senator, Secretary of State, and as the unsuccessful Republican nominee for President in 1884.
