"...the summer of 1883 thus in many ways would come to be seen as the high-water mark of the Blaine Presidency, even as he had his successful landslide reelection ahead of him in only a year. It was the fourth straight year in which the government operated at a surplus, and Blaine deferred to Garfield's proposal to use the surplus for internal improvements, in a victory for the throwback Whigs dotted throughout the Liberal Party. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1883 [1] was thus passed with an eye towards improving inland waterways, canals (in particular the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in order to avoid having to route ship traffic to Baltimore or Washington through the Hampton Roads) and harbor dredging, with a large number of Democratic votes as well (conspicuously without the votes of Pendleton or Bayard, however), but the negotiations for the act were based largely around discussions within the Liberals themselves; Blaine insisted on tariff reductions to partner with the act, in order to reduce future surpluses, which he viewed as inappropriate for the Treasury to so consistently run. The tariffs wound up being "adjusted" rather than reduced, with an overall reduction of only 2.1% in the overall rates while some products in fact had their duties raised, most prominently on coal. 1883 saw one of Wall Street's best years on record, unemployment declined sharply coming out of the 1880-82 recession, and America seemed to be on the verge of boom times rivaling those of the late 1860s again. The years 1883-86, indeed, would see as much new railroad track laid as in the entire 1870s during the Long Depression..
The partnership between Blaine and Garfield was at its strongest in other ways; the Speaker of the House defied custom by introducing legislation in Congress to ban polygamy [2] and campaigned publicly for it, becoming the first Speaker to serve not just as a presiding officer but as a public figure. The Garfield Act was aimed squarely at the Latter Day Saints, better known as Mormons, a religious sect most concentrated in Utah Territory who enjoyed markedly little popular support in the East. Despite an act specifically targeting their practice of polygamy not being particularly controversial for the mainline Protestant majority, Garfield nevertheless took it upon himself to speak at Liberal gatherings in Philadelphia and New York to promote the act, gave a well-received address at a temperance rally where he put his talents as an orator to use in firing up the crowd against polygamy in addition to their opposition to drink, and was interviewed in multiple newspapers over the course of the summer. By the time the Act came up for a vote in Congress, the Speaker had independently driven popular support for the previously obscure issue. It passed overwhelmingly in the House; however, it was passed only narrowly in the Senate, on a party-line vote, a surprise to Garfield after a majority of House Democrats had voted for the measure banning polygamy in federal territories as a felony, forbidding polygamists or "unlawful cohabitants" from serving on juries, voting or holding public office, and disincorporating the LDS Church. [3] In tandem with the Blaine Amendments spreading throughout states forbidding state funds for parochial schools, the Garfield Act can be understood as part of a broader assault on minority faiths by the Protestant Liberals. It certainly was by Mormons, who would sue the government and who became a reliable Democratic vote in future years.
In 1883 Blaine also made several moves with an eye towards foreign affairs, as always spearheaded by the spirited John Hay, who many came to describe as "Blaine's brain." After years of tensions, enhanced due to Blaine's well-known Anglophobia, the Hay-Granville Agreement began efforts to arbitrate, with the help of Spain as a neutral country friendly to both states, disputes over Canadian seal hunting in Alaskan waters, the boundary disputes of the Yukon, and American fishing rights in the North Atlantic. The negotiations would continue for half a decade, largely due to the sticking point of Canadian desires for reparations for the damages of Fenian raids in the 1860s. Nonetheless, it was a minor thaw in the long-frosty tensions outside of commercial matters between London and Washington. Blaine similarly took Hay's advice on a domestic matter than had foreign impacts; the Chinese Immigration Act of 1883 was passed with large majorities in Congress, with every Western Senator and Representative in favor from both parties and the Democrats nearly lockstep in support as a party. The Act would have banned all Chinese women (who were often dismissed as disease-ridden prostitutes) from entering the United States unless they could prove, from Hongkong or Canton, that their husbands were already in the United States. It would have also banned "coolie labor," which appealed to many Liberals who viewed the importation of Chinese workers as akin to slavery that the 13th Amendment had abolished, and would have severely restricted the number of non-diplomatic Chinese persons allowed to enter every year. Hay, worried about how such an act would go over in China, lobbied aggressively against the bill's passage; when it succeeded in the House, with half of the Liberal caucus voting in favor, he spent much of the autumn personally imploring Senators not to pass it "lest China slam her doors to us for the next fifty years over this betrayal of our treaty obligations," asking instead to be allowed to renegotiate treaties with China to reduce arrivals. The bill barely passed the Senate and Blaine vetoed it after personal intervention by Hay. He was praised for the move in Eastern newspapers, even Democratic ones; in the West, Blaine was pilloried. When his veto could not be overcome in either house after Garfield's aggressive whipping against a veto override by Liberals, California Representative William Rosecrans - a Catholic who loathed Blaine and a Union Army veteran of some renown - declared from the floor of the House, "With this veto, Blaine assigns himself the same role in the West as Abraham Lincoln assigned himself in the South." The comment outraged and polarized Washington society, but also made the previously obscure Rosecrans a star with Democratic supporters in his home state.
Blaine's penchant for attracting scandal only escalated in tandem with the affair over the veto. The Star Route scandal, in which postal officials were found to be engaging in graft and bribery in awarding western delivery routes, had already affected his administration despite their aggressive pursuit of the investigation and prosecutions. The close relationship of Hay to Robert Ingersoll, the attorney defending many of the accused (most of whom were acquitted, only further fueling public outrage and conspiracies about the Blaine administration), did not help, [4] and Democratic newspapers spun every rumor of discontent within Cabinet, particularly the salacious idea that Attorney General Evarts wanted Hay fired, with New York's Sun newspaper openly speculating that Hay was personally involved in securing acquittals. The "Golden Boy" image of Hay, who was seen as Blaine's clear protege, was the target, and another matter that emerged in late 1883 added to the public case - the construction of lavish mansions on what is now known as Dupont Circle in Washington by members of Blaine's Cabinet as well as Congress, including - perhaps most prominently - the President himself, who lived in the half-finished manor, being built at his own expense, while the Executive Mansion, in need of serious repairs, was remodeled for most of his Presidency. That Hay and his friend Henry Adams had built an even more audacious mansion nearby just a year earlier, and now Treasury Secretary Sherman, Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln and several Senators were constructing similar homes for themselves, led to an obvious question for inquiring Democrats: where was the money for these ostentatious homes coming from? Though it would not metastasize in time for the 1884 elections, the image of high-living Liberals, in hoc to the wealthy and the influential, caring little for the common man, had its origins in the Dupont Circle Controversy of the early 1880s. For a party founded in opposition to the corruption of the Chase Presidency and the "tainted legacy" of John T. Hoffman's time in New York, the image of impropriety was profoundly damaging..."
- Titan: The Life and Presidency of James G. Blaine
[1] Internal improvements combined with minor tariff adjustments is true to history; it was one of Chester Arthur's acts in office, though Blaine here is a little more in favor of the matters than Arthur was (having read about Arthur and this period of the Gilded Age researching this project I can see why he was so forgettable but he also wasn't that bad of a President. He embraced civil service reform despite being a Conkling crony originally and passed some good measures. It probably doesn't help that Republican Presidents of the period OTL were very CTRL+V and interchangeable overall)
[2] IOTL the Edmunds Act; here Edmunds is on SCOTUS and, perhaps more importantly, anti-polygamist James A. Garfield wasn't killed by his doctors after being shot
[3] All real impacts of the Edmunds Act
[4] Much like IOTL, this Star Route scandal is part of what drives the impetus for the Civil Service Reform Act