Return To Private Life
Ray returned to his law practice which he moved to Indianapolis, after his term as governor. He found it difficult to find clients and public dislike for him did not fade. He ran for Clerk of Marion County in 1831 but was overwhelmingly defeated. He ran for Congress in 1837, but was soundly defeated by William Herod, 5,888–9,635. He attempted to run again in 1833, but dropped out after his inability to win became apparent.
His treatment led him to become even more firm in his views, which further hurt his standing. His behavior only worsened the situation; he was known to walk with a cane, for appearance only, and stop in the street and write in the air with it for no apparent reason. He ran advertisements in the newspaper offering to sell a "tavern-stand", a farm he did not own, and offering to construct a railroad from Charlestown, South Carolina to Indianapolis. He attempted a business venture and opened what he called at "Law, conveyancing, writing, abstract-making, land-agency, general and emigrants' intelligence and counsel office." The business soon folded for lack of customers. He had few friends and most people believed he had become mentally deranged. He took a trip to Wisconsin in 1848 and stopped in Cincinnati, Ohio, before returning home. There he developed cholera and he died on August 4, 1848, aged 54, and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: James B. Ray
Famous quotes containing the words return, private and/or life:
“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.”
—Ralph J. Cudworth (1617–1688)
“The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)