Background
Thomas was born in Easton, Talbot County, Md. , in 1810. He was the son of Maria (Francis) and Tristram Thomas, a prominent physician, and a descendant of Tristram Thomas who settled in Talbot County in 1666.
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Thomas was born in Easton, Talbot County, Md. , in 1810. He was the son of Maria (Francis) and Tristram Thomas, a prominent physician, and a descendant of Tristram Thomas who settled in Talbot County in 1666.
After attending the Easton academy he studied at Dickinson College for two years, until his college course was abruptly terminated by a youthful prank.
After the study he returned home to read law in the office of William Hayward and was admitted to the bar in 1831. Defying the political affiliations of his family and neighbors in this Whig stronghold, he declared himself, unsuccessfully, as Democratic candidate for the state legislature in 1834. Undaunted by defeat, he offered himself again in 1836, when he advocated reapportionment of representation in the state Assembly, a most unpopular measure on the Eastern Shore, and yet again in 1837. In 1838, however, he piled up a majority greater than that accorded the governor. In 1838 he was named congressional candidate and defeated his veteran opponent, James Alfred Pearce. For personal reasons he declined a renomination and resumed his law practice. He accepted, however, appointment as judge of the Eastern Shore land office court.
His prominence in the Assembly, to which he returned in 1843 and 1845, won him the Democratic nomination for governor in 1847 and success at the polls. In his inaugural address he undertook a campaign to replace the seventy-year-old constitution by one more modern. It was at this time that the directors of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad offered him the presidency of the road, even urging him to name his own salary. He declined the portfolio of the navy offered by Pierce because of the inadequacy of the salary but soon accepted the post of collector of the port at Baltimore. When a change in administration lost him that position, he practised law for a time in St. Louis, Mo.
President Buchanan offered him, first, the governorship of Utah Territory, then the secretaryship of the treasury, and, finally, the humble post of commissioner of patents, which he accepted. Within a few months he resigned in order to enter the cabinet finally as secretary of the treasury, but he felt obliged to retire within a month, with the southern members of the cabinet.
Though he took no part in the Civil War, it is known that his sympathies were with the Confederacy and that his only son joined the southern army. This attitude cost him a seat in the federal Senate, for, when the conservatives obtained control of the Maryland legislature, to which he had returned in 1867, and chose him senator, he was denied his seat on the charge of disloyalty. The vote of a Democrat against Johnson's impeachment seemed so necessary that Thomas urged immediate choice of a democratic candidate who could not be challenged. However, his loyalty was not questioned when he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1874.
After a single term in Congress, he returned once more in 1878 to the Maryland Assembly in the hope of being elected to the federal Senate but was defeated in caucus. He made his final unsuccessful attempt at the coveted senatorship by allowing himself to be returned to the assembly of 1884.
On February 5, 1835, he was married to Sarah Maria Kerr. After her death in 1870 he was married, January 29, 1876, to Clintonia (Wright) May. Of his thirteen children, three daughters survived him.