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 Shortly afterward, the Conference invitations were withdrawn on the grounds that the unsettled situation at home and abroad would make such an event impossible.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,
Warsaw pogrom (1881) occurred in Russian Empire, notably the Kiev and Odessa pogroms), were not a Russia-only phenomena. However historian Michael Ochs disagreed with this explanation, citing insufficient evidence. Ochs calls those explanations conspiracy theories, arguing that they fail to present what the Russian authorities would have gained from the pogroms. He notes that period from 1863 to 1881 was witnessing the increase of anti-Semitism in Poland, with disillusionment among Poles with the idea of assimilation of the Jews was growing, and hence there was less need for the Russian authorities to orchestrate a pogrom, which might have been spontaneous. Warsaw pogrom (1881)