1884 James G. Blaine Campaign Medal DeWitt JGB 1884-21 Gilt

An 1884 campaign medalet for James G. Blaine, struck in gilt at 25 mm, cataloged as DeWitt JGB 1884-21. Gilt pieces were a gold wash laid over a base metal planchet, the presentation finish of the campaign trade. The wash is thin and goes first at the highest points of the portrait, so an example that still carries it across the cheek and the hair is a good deal harder to find than the mintage would suggest. Blaine came to the 1884 race as the most magnetic Republican of his generation: Speaker of the House, senator from Maine, secretary of state, and the man Robert Ingersoll had christened the Plumed Knight. He was also the most distrusted. Reform Republicans who would not swallow him bolted as Mugwumps and voted for Cleveland, and Blaine lost New York by 1,047 votes, and with it the presidency. Ex J. Doyle DeWitt. DeWitt built the reference collection of American political material, some seventy thousand pieces, while rising from claims investigator to president of the Travelers Insurance Company, and his 1959 catalog A Century of Campaign Buttons is the source of the numbering used here. Edmund B. Sullivan revised and enlarged it in 1981. Graded Mint State in hand. Offered raw, without certification.