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.
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