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:
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)