Twenty Years with James G. Blaine: Reminiscences by His Private Secretary.

SHERMAN, Thomas H.; with Introduction by Nicholas Murray Butler [William T. Sherman].

$500.00

Item Number: 145741

New York: The Grafton Press, 1928.

First edition of this biography of American statesman, Republican politician, and Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, from the observations of his private secretary; from the library of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece portrait of James G. Blaine, illustrated with black and white photographs. P. T. Sherman’s bookplate to the front pastedown beneath his ownership signature. In near fine condition. General William Tecumseh Sherman’s son P. T. Sherman was a lawyer in New York, specializing in labor and insurance, and was elected a member of the New York Board of Alderman in the late 1880s. In the early 1900s, he was appointed the New York Commissioner of Labor. He transferred his library to his niece, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman through his eldest daughter, Maria “Minnie” Ewing Sherman Fitch, before he died. Until now, the book was held at the family estate in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

James Gillespie Blaine was was a prominent American politician who served twice as Secretary of State. He began his political career as an early supporter of Republican Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort in the American Civil War and was a supporter of black suffrage during Reconstruction. As Secretary of State, Blaine was a transitional figure, marking the end of an isolationist era in foreign policy and foreshadowing the rise of the American Century that would begin with the Spanish–American War.