James G. Blaine in the context of "Radical Republicans"

The Conferences of American States, commonly referred to as the Pan-American Conferences, were meetings of the International American Nation in Conferences for Regional cooperation in 1889.The Pan-American Union, an international organization for cooperation on trade. James G. Blaine, a United States politician, Secretary of State and presidential contender, first proposed establishment of closer ties between the United States and its southern neighbors and proposed international conference. Blaine hoped that ties between the United States and its southern counterparts would open Latin American markets to US trade. The Pan-American Union eventually evolved into the Organization of American States in 1948.

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, serving from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. He was the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms and the first Democrat elected president after the American Civil War.

Born in Caldwell, New Jersey, Cleveland was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and governor of New York in 1882. While governor, he closely cooperated with state assembly minority leader Theodore Roosevelt to pass reform measures, winning national attention. He led the Bourbon Democrats, a pro-business movement opposed to high tariffs, free silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to businesses, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the time. Cleveland also won praise for honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to classical liberalism. His fight against political corruption, patronage, and bossism convinced many like-minded Republicans, called "Mugwumps", to cross party lines and support him in the 1884 presidential election, which he narrowly won against Republican James G. Blaine.

A Pyrrhic victory (/ˈpɪrɪk/ PIRR-ik) is a victory gained at such a cost to the victor that it is tantamount to defeat.

The phrase references a statement attributed to Pyrrhus of Epirus. After his victory against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, Plutarch reports that Pyrrhus exclaimed "One more victory over the Romans and we are completely done for!"

Moderate Republicans were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from the party's founding before the American Civil War in 1854 until the end of Reconstruction in the Compromise of 1877. They were known for their loyal support of President Abraham Lincoln's war policies and opposed the more militant stances advocated by the Radical Republicans. According to historian Eric Foner, congressional leaders of the faction were James G. Blaine, John A. Bingham, William P. Fessenden, Lyman Trumbull, and John Sherman. Their constituencies were primarily residents of states outside New England, where Radical Republicanism garnered insufficient support. They included "Conservative Republicans" and the moderate Liberal Republicans, later also known as "Half-Breeds".

During the 1864 United States presidential election, amidst the backdrop of the ongoing Civil War, moderate Republicans supported merging the Republican Party with the War Democrats (Democrats who supported the continuation of the Union war effort) to form the National Union Party alliance. At the Republican National Convention (which operated under the name of the "National Union National Convention" that year), they spearheaded the effort to replace Lincoln's vice president Hannibal Hamlin with Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson, acting out of the belief that placing a War Democrat on the presidential ticket would solidify support to ensure Lincoln's re-election.

Thomas Nast (/næst/; German: [nast]; September 26, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".

Nast was deeply involved in the political issues of the day, often as a member of the Republican party. He promoted the platform of the Radical Republicans against President Andrew Johnson and supported Republican presidential candidates Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. Despite his attachment to the Republican party, Nast prominently and repeatedly criticized 1884 nominee James G. Blaine, informally joining the Mugwump faction of Republicans who supported Democrat Grover Cleveland's candidacy.

The Mugwumps were Republican political activists in the United States who were intensely opposed to political corruption. They famously switched parties from the Republican Party by supporting the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the 1884 United States presidential election. They switched because they rejected the long history of corruption associated with the Republican candidate James G. Blaine. Despite never formally organizing, the Mugwumps claimed that their influence was the reason that Grover Cleveland won a close election in New York, which in turn gave him enough electoral college votes to win the presidency. The jocular word "mugwump," noted as early as 1832 and applied to these activists derisively, is from Algonquian mugquomp, "important person, kingpin" (from mugumquomp, "war leader"), implying that Mugwumps were sanctimonious or "holier-than-thou" in refusing to be beholden to partisanship.

After the election, "mugwump" survived for more than a decade as an epithet for a party bolter in American politics. Many Mugwumps became Democrats or remained independents, and most continued to support reform well into the 20th century. During the Third Party System, party loyalty was in high regard, and independents were rare. Theodore Roosevelt stunned his upper-class New York City friends by supporting Blaine in 1884; by rejecting the Mugwumps, he kept alive his Republican Party leadership, clearing the way for his own political aspirations.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1884. Democratic Governor Grover Cleveland of New York narrowly defeated Republican James G. Blaine of Maine, ending a streak of six consecutive Republican victories.

Cleveland won the presidential nomination on the second ballot of the 1884 Democratic National Convention. President Chester A. Arthur had acceded to the presidency in 1881 following the assassination of James A. Garfield, but he was unsuccessful in his bid for nomination to a full term. Blaine, who had served as Secretary of State under President Garfield, defeated Arthur and other candidates on the fourth ballot of the 1884 Republican National Convention. A group of reformist Republicans known as "Mugwumps" abandoned Blaine's candidacy, viewing him as corrupt. The campaign was characterized by mudslinging and personal allegations that eclipsed substantive issues, such as civil administration change, and it was marred by exceptional political acrimony and personal invective. Blaine's reputation for public corruption and his inadvertent last minute alienation of Catholic voters proved decisive, as well as voter exhaustion after a generation of Republican rule.

Pan-Americanism is a pan-nationalist movement that seeks to create, encourage, and organize relationships, an association (a Union), and cooperation among the states of the Americas, through diplomatic, political, economic, and social means. The term Pan-Americanism was first used by the New York Evening Post in 1882 when referring to James G. Blaine’s proposal for a conference of American states in Washington D.C., gaining more popularity after the first conference in 1889. Through international conferences, Pan-Americanism embodies the spirit of cooperation to create and ratify treaties for the betterment in the Americas. Since 1826, the Americas have evolved the international conferences from an idea of revolutionary Simon Bolivar to the creation of an inter-America organization with the founding of the Organization of American States.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1892. In the fourth rematch in American history, the Democratic nominee, former president Grover Cleveland, defeated the incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland's victory made him the first U.S. president to be elected to a nonconsecutive second term. It was the first U.S. presidential election featuring multiple current or former presidents as candidates.

Though some Republicans opposed Harrison's renomination, he defeated James G. Blaine and William McKinley on the first presidential ballot of the 1892 Republican National Convention. Cleveland defeated challenges by David B. Hill and Horace Boies on the first presidential ballot of the 1892 Democratic National Convention, becoming the fourth presidential candidate to be nominated for president in three elections, after Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson. Groups from The Grange and the Knights of Labor joined to form a new party called the Populist Party. It had a ticket led by former congressman James B. Weaver of Iowa.