Later Years and Public Service
Sidney left the assembly in 1852, returning to private law practice, while also serving as a director of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Company. His name was offered as a nomination for Governor of Illinois at numerous conventions, while talk continued of his possible candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, including in 1868, when some thought he could have won for the Democrats.
He rejected a nomination to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1853, and many speculated Breese had ambition to return to the U.S. Senate. However, he was literally forced back into the judiciary of Illinois against his will, accepting an appointment as a Judge on the Circuit Court in 1855, before being elected to the Illinois Supreme Court as a Justice in 1857. He would serve the rest of years on the bench of that court, including stints as the Chief Justice during multiple terms.
Read more about this topic: Sidney Breese
Famous quotes containing the words years, public and/or service:
“In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
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“The story is told of a man who, seeing one of the thoroughbred stables for the first time, suddenly removed his hat and said in awed tones, “My Lord! The cathedral of the horse.””
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)