Return To Congress and Later Life
After his term as Governor, Thomas served as a member of the Maryland State Constitutional convention in 1850. He was again elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress as a Unionist, as an Unconditional Unionist to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses, and as a Republican to the Fortieth Congress, serving from March 4, 1861 until March 3, 1869. He served as a delegate to the National Union Convention at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1866, and as collector of internal revenue for Maryland from 1870 until 1872.
Thomas was selected to serve as the United States Minister to Peru, and did so from March 25, 1872 to July 9, 1875. Afterwards, he retired from public and professional life and devoted his time to agricultural pursuits.
On January 22, 1876, while overseeing improvements on his estate near Frankville, Maryland, Thomas was killed instantly when he was struck by a locomotive. He is interred in a vault in Rose Hill Cemetery of Cumberland, Maryland, above which reads: "The author of the measure which gave to Maryland the Constitution of 1864 and thereby gave freedom to 90,000 human beings". The statement is believed to have been written by Thomas before his death, and refers to the Maryland Constitution of 1864, which emancipated the slaves in Maryland.
Read more about this topic: Francis Thomas
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, congress and/or life:
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)