<P> The U.S. looked the other way when Irish activists known as Fenians tried and failed badly in an invasion of Canada in 1871 . The arbitration of the Alabama Claims in 1872 provided a satisfactory reconciliation; The British paid the United States $15.5 million for the economic damage caused by Confederate warships purchased from it . Congress did pay Russia for the Alaska Purchase in 1867, but otherwise rejected proposals for any major expansions, such as the proposal by President Ulysses Grant to acquire Santo Domingo . </P> <P> James G. Blaine, a leading Republican (and its losing candidate for president in 1884) was a highly innovative Secretary of State in the 1880s . By 1881, Blaine had completely abandoned his high - tariff Protectionism and used his position as Secretary of State to promote freer trade, especially within the Western Hemisphere . His reasons were twofold: firstly, Blaine's wariness of British interference in the Americas was undiminished, and he saw increased trade with Latin America as the best way to keep Britain from dominating the region . Secondly, he believed that by encouraging exports, he could increase American prosperity . President Garfield agreed with his Secretary of State's vision and Blaine called for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks on increasing trade . At the same time, Blaine hoped to negotiate a peace in the War of the Pacific then being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru . Blaine sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for renegotiation of the Clayton--Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to construct a canal through Panama without British involvement, as well as attempting to reduce British involvement in the strategically located Kingdom of Hawaii . His plans for the United States' involvement in the world stretched even beyond the Western Hemisphere, as he sought commercial treaties with Korea and Madagascar . By 1882, however, a new Secretary was reversing Blaine's Latin American initiatives . </P> <P> Serving again as Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison, Blaine worked for closer ties with the Kingdom of Hawaii, and sponsored a program to bring together all the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere in what became the Pan-American Union . </P> <P> Before 1892 senior diplomats from the United States to other countries, and from them to the U.S., were called "ministers ." In 1892 four major European countries (Britain, France, Germany Italy) raise title of their chief diplomat to the US to "ambassador"; the US reciprocated in 1893 . </P>

What was the foreign policy of the us in the 1920s