Return To Public Life
To those who felt that the Reconstruction was unduly harsh, his prescience was hailed—he became known as the "Old Roman," a Texas Cincinnatus. He was part of the successful effort to remove Republican Edmund J. Davis from the governorship in 1874, after Davis attempted to illegally remain in office after he had lost the election. That year Reagan returned to the Congressional seat he held before the war, serving from March 4, 1875 to March 4, 1887. In 1875, he served in the convention that wrote a new state constitution for Texas. In Congress, he advocated federal regulation of railroads and helped create the Interstate Commerce Commission. He also served as the first chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. Though he had been elected to the Senate in 1887 (serving March 4, 1887 to June 10, 1891), he resigned to become chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas at the behest of his friend, Governor James Stephen "Jim" Hogg, who had run on a platform of state regulation of railroads, and chaired it until 1903.
Conscious of the importance of history, he was a founder of the Texas State Historical Association and attended reunions of Confederate veterans in his state. He wrote his Memoirs, With Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War, published in 1905, and died of pneumonia at his home in Palestine in Anderson County later that year, the last surviving member of the government of the Confederacy. Reagan was laid to rest in East Hill Cemetery Palestine Anderson County in Texas.
Historian Ben H. Procter included Reagan in his list of the "four greatest Texans of the 19th century," along with Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, and James Stephen Hogg. Reagan County, Texas is named in his honor. Several schools are also named after him, including John H. Reagan Elementary School in Dallas, and Reagan High School in Houston and Austin.
Read more about this topic: John Henninger Reagan
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, public and/or life:
“The house waited on your private beach
each day,
when you had the time to return to her.
And you so often had the time,
even when fury blew out her chimney,
even when love lifted the shingles....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“Chippenhook was the home of Judge Theophilus Harrington, known for his trenchant reply to an irate slave-owner in a runaway slave case. Judge Harrington declared that the owner’s claim to the slave was defective. The owner indignantly demanded to know what was lacking in his legally sound claim. The Judge exploded, ‘A bill of sale, sir, from God Almighty!’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“In this world there’s room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goosestepped us into misery and bloodshed.”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)