In 1867, Raster accepted A.C. Hesing's offer for the position as editor for the "Illinois Staats-Zeitung" in Chicago, a position he kept until his death. Raster was a delegate to the 1868 Republican National Convention, where he was chairman of the platform committee. In 1869, he was appointed the Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of Chicago. During the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Raster lost his home, and the newspaper building and all of its archives and contents were destroyed. Regardless of the extreme loss, the Staats-Zeitung (under Raster's administration) was the first newspaper in Chicago to print the news of the fire, having gathered enough supplies to resume printing less than 48 hours after the catastrophe. In Later the same year, he was re-appointed the position as Collector of Internal Revenue by President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1872, Raster resigned from the position as Collector of Internal Revenue to save more time for the paper and help campaign for Grant in the upcoming election. That same year at the National Republican Convention in Philadelphia inserted the "Raster Resolution" in its platform which greatly opposed the Temperance movement. Raster held so much influence over the German republican community he once threatened to leave the party if Prohibition was not made an issue and the resolution not passed and with him the entire German-American Republican community. During the Haymarket Affair, Raster was trying to delegate the rioters before he left the scene when he realized any hope for the situation was lost. Once the perpetrators were caught he wrote a letter to the Governor, John Peter Altgeld demanding that the prisoners be put to death. He blamed the recent German "immigrant radicals" for the issues at hand and suggested immigration reforms be made, stating, "Unfortunately it is from the German Reich that these bloody scoundrels, these socialists, communists, and anarchists have come."