When, in 1855, the Republican Party was organized, a committee waited upon Mr. Winthrop, and invited him to join the movement. His public record was satisfactory upon the slavery question, that is, it was better than that of many others who became Republicans. He declined to take a position, and gave as a reason that he was unwilling to act with the men who were leading the movement. He named Sumner, and Wilson. If his decision had been otherwise, it is quite doubtful if his nerve would have been equal to the contests through which the Republican Party was destined to pass. Mr. Winthrop had in him nothing of the revolutionary spirit. In England, in the times of Cromwell he would have followed the fortunes of the Stuarts, and it is difficult to imagine him as the associate of Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, in Revolutionary days. Mr. Rantoul appeared in the Senate after a few days, and his term lasted about twenty days, giving him an opportunity to make one speech. He was afterwards elected to the House of Representatives from the Essex District, and died while a member at the age of forty-seven years. His death was a serious loss to the anti-slavery Democrats of Massachusetts and the country. He was one of the three distinguished men that the county of Essex has produced in his century: Choate, Cushing and Rantoul. In oratorical power he could not be compared to Choate. In learning he was of the three the least well equipped. In logic he was superior to Cushing, and he was more direct, and more easily comprehended than either Cushing or Choate. He had not much imagination, and his illustrations were simple and rather commonplace. As a debater he has had but few equals in our State. He was a radical, a reformer by nature. He was opposed to capital punishment, an advocate of temperance, of prison reform, and a zealous free trader. He made war upon the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 contending that the Constitution imposed upon the States the duty of returning fugitives from labor. This theory seemed to me at the time, as the result of a violent construction of the Constitution, and so it seems to me now. Nevertheless it satisfied many who wised to oppose the Fugitive Slave Law, and sustain the Constitution at the same time. During the Senatorial contest I was urged by the supporters of Sumner to aid his election, and by the "hunker" wing of the Democratic Party --I was urged to bring the influence of the administration to bear against Mr. Sumner. To all I made the same reply. I said: "I am not pledged to elect Mr. Sumner, I am not pledged to defeat him. The subject is in the control of the Legislature." I did, however, delay making removals and appointments and upon the ground that the election or defeat of Mr. Sumner would affect the appointments to office in the State.