The Partisans: James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling, and the Politics of Rivalry and Revenge in the Gilded Age

The Partisans recounts the two-decade feud between two of the most significant politicians of the post-Civil War era. It began in 1866, when an exasperated Blaine mocked Conkling’s “grandiloquent swell” and “overpowering turkey-gobbler strut” on the floor of the House. The imperious New Yorker never forgave Blaine for the memorable insults.

Over the next two decades, they fought on Capitol Hill, at political conventions, and in the behind-the-scenes struggle for power and influence in the administration of President James A. Garfield that ended after Charles Guiteau fatally shot Garfield in July 1881. Three years later, Conkling sat on the sidelines after Blaine won the Republican presidential nomination but narrowly lost his bid for the White House.

Their story unfolds against the backdrop of one of the most consequential periods in U.S. history, when politicians routinely pandered to nativist bigotry and debated issues such as tariffs, civil service reform, monetary policy, and civil and political rights under Reconstruction. Blaine and Conkling figured prominently as Americans wrestled with these topics, all of which -- in one way or another -- remain live questions in 2026.

"Robert B. Mitchell masterfully brings alive two forgotten characters who defined the politics of the post-Civil War era. He humanizes a House speaker and senator whose careers became intertwined for decades and whose enmity for one another probably kept both out of the White House. It’s a gripping tale of corruption and patronage, with a dash of sex and lots of strife thrown in, plus a tragic story of how the federal government turned its back on the promises of Reconstruction. Mitchell captures the importance of particular personalities as they navigate, and shape, the deeper currents of history. The struggle between reformers and reactionaries is unending. You see glimmers of today’s fights over what kind of country we will become in this conjuring of the battles over who would take America into the 20th century." -- James Hohmann, The Washington Post.