nce, confined to a single term, added
nothing to his fame. He delivered clever speeches, his wide
intelligence and courteous manner won him popularity, and to some
extent he probably influenced public opinion; but his brief career
left no opportunity to live down his fatal alliance with Johnson.
Indeed, it may well be doubted if longer service or more favourable
conditions would have given him high standing as a legislator.
Prominence gained in one vocation is rarely transferred to another.
Legislation is a profession as much as medicine or law or journalism,
the practice of which, to gain leadership, must be long and
continuous, until proposed public measures and their treatment worked
out in the drudgery of the committee room, become as familiar as the
variety of questions submitted to lawyers and physicians. The
prolonged and exacting labour as a journalist which had given Raymond
his great reputation, must, in a measure, have been repeated as a
legislator to give him similar leadership in Congress. At forty-five
he was not too old to accomplish it. Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio, who
made his greatest speech in reply to Raymond, began his congressional
life at forty-nine, and Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the House, at
fifty-seven. But the mental weariness, already apparent in Raymond's
face, indicated that the enthusiasm necessary for such preparation had
departed. Besides, he lacked the most important qualification for a
legislative leader--the rare political sagacity to know the thoughts
of people and to catch the tiniest shadow of a coming event.

Seward shared Raymond's unpopularity. Soon after assuming office
President Johnson outlined a severe policy toward the South, violently
denouncing traitors, who, he declared, must be punished and
impoverished. "The time has arrived," he said, "when the American
people should be educated that treason is the highest crime and those
engaged in it should suffer all its penalties."[1062] These sentiments,
reiterated again and again, extorted from Benjamin F. Wade, the chief
of Radicals, an entreaty that he would limit the number to be hung to
a good round dozen and no more.[1063] Suddenly the President changed
his tone to one of amnesty and reconciliation, and in answering the
question, "who has influenced him?" Sumner declared that "Seward is
the marplot. He openly confesses that he counselled the present fatal
policy."[1064] Blaine also expressed the belief that the Secret