James G. Blaine

James G. Blaine was an American Republican politician who served as speaker of the House, senator and secretary of state. A major presidential contender in the Gilded Age, he promoted commercial expansion and closer relations across the Western Hemisphere but lost the disputed and bitter election of 1884.

The wider career recorded for James G. Blaine also included service as United States representative, member of the Maine House of Representatives, United States Secretary of State, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. In dynastic and political terms, James G. Blaine was associated with United States. The biographical record places the beginning of James G. Blaine’s life at West Brownsville and the end at Washington, D.C., giving the career a geographical span that is not apparent from the headline events alone.

Gore Vidal’s 1876 places James G. Blaine among the Republican leaders manoeuvring to succeed Ulysses S. Grant. Blaine enters the novel as the convention front-runner whose presidential ambitions are damaged by allegations of railroad corruption, helping Vidal connect the private calculations of politicians and journalists to the disputed Hayes–Tilden election that dominates the book’s political world.