Mr. Raymond was bitterly disappointed. Few members had ever entered the House with greater personal _prestige_ or with stronger assurance of success. He had come with a high ambition--an ambition justified by his talent and training. He had come with the expectation of a Congressional career as successful as that already achieved in his editorial life. But he met a defeat which hardly fell short of a disaster. He had made a good reply to Mr. Stevens, had indeed gained much credit by it, and when he returned home for the holidays he had reason to believe that he had made a brilliant beginning in the parliamentary field. But the speech of Mr. Shellabarger had destroyed his argument, and had given a rallying-point for the Republicans, so incontestably strong as to hold the entire party in allegiance to principle rather than in allegiance to the Administration. If any thing had been needed to complete Mr. Raymond's discomfiture after the speech of Mr. Shellabarger, it was supplied in the speech of Mr. Voorhees. He had been ranked among the most virulent opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, had been bitterly denunciatory of the war policy of the Government, and was regarded as a leader of that section of the Democratic party to which the most odious epithets of disloyalty had been popularly applied. Mr. Raymond, in speaking of the defeat, always said that he could have effected a serious division in the ranks of Republican members if he could have had the benefit of the hostility of Mr. Voorhees and other anti-war Democrats. Three weeks after Mr. Shellabarger's reply Mr. Raymond made a rejoinder. He struggled hard to recover the ground which he had obviously lost, but he did not succeed in changing his _status_ in the House, or in securing recruits for the Administration from the ranks of his fellow Republicans. To fail in that was to fail in every thing. That he made a clever speech was not denied, for every intellectual effort of Mr. Raymond exhibited cleverness. That he made the most of a weak cause, and to some extent influenced public opinion, must also be freely conceded. But his most partial friends were compelled to admit that he had absolutely failed to influence Republican action in Congress, and had only succeeded in making himself an apparent ally of the Democratic party--a position in every way unwelcome and distasteful to Mr. Raymond. His closing speech was marked by many pointed interruptions from Mr. Shellabarger and was answered at some length by Mr. Stevens. But nothing, beyond a few keen thrusts and parries and some sharp wit at Mr. Raymond's expense, was added to the debate.