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.