by 107 _ayes_
against 32 _noes_. Mr. Raymond and his colleague, Mr. William A.
Darling, were the only Republicans who voted with the Democrats. The
act was simple in a parliamentary sense, but its significance was
unmistakable. A House, four-fifths of whose members were Republicans,
had refused to pass a resolution expressing confidence in the President
who, fourteen months before, had received the vote of every Republican
in the Nation. From that day, January 9th, 1866, the relation of the
dominant party in Congress to the President was changed. It may not be
said that all hope of reconciliation was abandoned, but friendly
co-operation to any common end became extremely difficult.

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
Hou