Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860Blaine, James Gillespie
History
Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860
Blaine, James Gillespie
United States -- History; United States -- History -- 1865-1898
Mr. Raymond never rallied from the defeat of January 9th. His talents
were acknowledged; his courteous manners, his wide intelligence, his
generous hospitality, gave him a large popularity; but his alliance
with President Johnson was fatal to his political fortunes. He had
placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace
retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his
hopes of promotion in his party. It was an extremely mortifying fact
to Mr. Raymond that with the power of the Administration behind him
he could on a test question secure the support of only one Republican
member, and he a colleague who was bound to him by ties of personal
friendship.
The fate which befell Mr. Raymond, apart from the essential weakness
of the issue on which he staked his success, is not uncommon to men
who enter Congress with great reputation already attained. So much is
expected of them that their efforts on the floor are almost sure to
fall below the standard set up for them by their hearers. By natural
re-action the receive, in consequence, less credit than is their due.
Except in a few marked instances the House has always been led by men
whose reputation has been acquired in its service. Entering
unheralded, free from the requirements which expectation imposes, a
clever man is sure to receive more credit than is really his due when
his is so fortunate as to arrest the attention of members in his first
speech. Thenceforward, if he be discreet enough to move slowly and
modestly, he acquires a secure standing and may reach the highest
honors with the House can confer.
If, ambitious of a career, Mr. Raymond had been elected to Congress
when he was chosen to the New-York Legislature at twenty-nine years of
age, or five years later when he was made Lieutenant-governor of his
State, he might have attained a great parliamentary fame. It has long
been a tradition of the House that no man becomes its leader who does
not enter it before he is forty. Like most sweeping affirmations this
has its exceptions, but the list of young men who have been advanced
to prominent positions in the body is so large that it may well be
assumed as the rule of promotion. Mr. Raymond was nearly forty-six
when he made his first speech in the House. While he still exhibited
the intellectual acuteness and alertness which had always been his
characteristics, there was apparent in his face the mental weariness
which had come from the prolonged and exacting labor of his profession.
His parliamentary failure was a keen disappointment to him, and was not
improbably one among many causes which cut short a brilliant and useful
life. He died in 1869, in the forty-ninth year of his age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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