Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/154

Rh and he belonged to an old and venerated family. His talents were of a high order, his education the best that the times afforded, his character without a blemish, and there was no reason arising from personal conditions why he should not have become the representative man of the State. With the event mentioned, his public life ended. Mr. Sumner was elected to the Senate. The next year the Whig Party nominated Mr. Winthrop and I was brought into direct competition with him. Again he failed.

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 with Choate. In learning he was of the three the