First International Conference of American States And so, as Secretary of State, Blaine sent invitations to all the nations of the Hemisphere to come to Washington in November 1881 with the principal goal of considering and discussing methods to prevent war between the nations of the Hemisphere. But destiny intervened: President Garfield was assassinated on 19 September 1881 and the new President Chester A. Arthur, who was no friend of Blaine's, quickly removed him from the State Department. Shortly afterward, the Conference invitations were withdrawn on the grounds that the unsettled situation at home and abroad would make such an event impossible. Now a private citizen,
SS Coptic (1881) SS Coptic (1881) SS "Coptic" was a steamship built in 1881, which was successively owned by the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the Japanese Oriental Steam Ship Co. ("Toyo Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha") before being scrapped in 1926. She was filmed by Thomas Edison in 1897 in one of his early movies. The movie is currently stored in The Library of Congress, archive.org and other internet archives. A sister ship to , "Coptic" was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, for service with the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company's White Star Line. Launched