He was assailed at home for his stand in this matter, as his constituents considered that he had voted for a measure which provided for the admission of a state whose constitution excluded the negro from all political rights. As a direct result of his stand in this matter, the district failed to send him as a delegate to the national convention in 1860, which placed in nomination Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.
Together with Horace Greeley, however, he was a member of the convention, representing Oregon, the state for whose admission he had so earnestly worked, and whose people appreciated his services in its behalf. He worked with Greeley for the nomination of Lincoln in a convention which was replete with startling incidents, not the least of which was the motion of Joshua R. Giddings, aiming at the admission of a clause in the platform providing that all men are free and equal.
On account of this outspoken stand in several important measures, it was apparent to Mr. Thayer that he would fail of a renomination, and in the spring of 1860 he announced himself as an independent Republican candidate. As the campaign developed, a candidate in opposition to Mr. Thayer was found in the person of Goldsmith F. Bailey of Fitchburg, but no speaker in the state could be found who was willing to meet the arguments on important questions advanced by Mr. Thayer. Such men as Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner refused to meet him on the stump in joint debate, and he was obliged to fight it out alone. The result was that he was defeated by a very small majority. So great was his popularity throughout the country during his second term that he was prominently spoken of as a possible senator from Massachusetts.
Bailey, who defeated him for Congress, was in advanced stages of consumption when he was nominated and was unable to take the stump against Mr. Thayer. The voters of Worcester at last became so vigorous in their demands to see the candidate that to quiet them a meeting was arranged at which he was to be presented to them from the platform. When Bailey arrived in the city he was such a haggard and ghastly spectacle that it was feared by the party managers that if seen by the voters as he was, it would make votes for Thayer.
It is maintained by those who seem to know that Bailey was taken into George R. Spear’s drug store before the meeting. There his face was painted and touched up with cosmetics until he looked like a thing of life instead of a specter. He sat in Congress but one day, and then returned to his home and died.
In 1856 Mr. Thayer originated a southern colonization scheme, which had for its object the settling of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and the border states and driving the slaves toward the Gulf. He enlisted the services of James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald, and William Cullen Bryant of the New York Evening Post in his project. He went South at the head of the colonists and founded the town of Ceredo in Virginia, now a sizable place.
At the time he was charged by the Southerners with coming down into the South to interfere with slavery, but he and his colonists disclaimed any such purpose, saying that he neither intended to interfere nor have any part in the slavery movement. He said further that he could support the negro power and a steam engine for $10 a year, while it was costing the southern slaveholders $150 a year, and that at the time he came into Virginia land was worth but 50 cents to $1.50 an acre, but that his free settlement had made it worth $50 an acre.
A man named Jenkins, afterwards a rebel officer, appealed to Gov. Henry A. Wise to exterminate this colony of abolitionists, but the governor said that they came into the state in a peaceful way and that anything which tended to increase the wealth should be protected. Considerable progress with the colonization scheme was made in other states, especially in North Carolina, but the John Brown raid and the opening of the rebellion brought the enterprise to an end. After the war Charles B. Hoard, a member of Congress with Mr. Thayer, came into possession of the property at Ceredo. The project caused Mr. Thayer a loss of $118,000.
Mr. Thayer was appointed a special and confidential agent of the treasury department and served as such in 1861–’62. In 1862 he proposed to Secretary Stanton a plan for the military colonization of Florida, which was approved by President Lincoln, all of the members of the president’s cabinet excepting Seward, and by nearly every Republican member of Congress, as well as by Generals Hunter, Hooker and Garfield. According to the plan, Mr. Thayer was to go as military governor and General Garfield as commander of the forces.
This plan was under consideration for several months by the president’s cabinet and was sustained by great meetings in New York City and Brooklyn by such speakers as William Cullen Bryant and Cassius M. Clay and others of equal note. Capitalists came forward with offers of steamships, and other means and regiments were offered from several of the states, but, like other notable plans which were never carried out, this plan was prevented from being put into operation by exigencies of the times.