The Worcester of eighteen hundred and ninety-eightFifty years a city . ton, and began to speak afternoonand evening in promotion of his undertaking. But the intense excitementand strong opposition which had followed the announcement of the purposeto repeal the compromise in a great measure subsided after that act wasaccomplished, and Mr. Thayer found extreme difficulty during the nextthree months in persuading a sufificient number of men to join in hisenterprise to form the first colony. The Know-Nothing frenzy so fullyabsorbed the public mind that other considerations were almost entirelyexcl
The Worcester of eighteen hundred and ninety-eightFifty years a city . ton, and began to speak afternoonand evening in promotion of his undertaking. But the intense excitementand strong opposition which had followed the announcement of the purposeto repeal the compromise in a great measure subsided after that act wasaccomplished, and Mr. Thayer found extreme difficulty during the nextthree months in persuading a sufificient number of men to join in hisenterprise to form the first colony. The Know-Nothing frenzy so fullyabsorbed the public mind that other considerations were almost entirelyexcluded, and the Free-Soil vote of 1854 dwindled to a few thousands, theRepublican candidate for governor of the State himself deserting his partyand voting with the native Americans. Mr. Thayer traveled over a wide section and addressed many thousandpeople before he was able to revive the enthusiasm which had greeted hisfirst appeal. But after the departure of the advance colony in July- 854,there was little difficulty, and the South soon awoke to the fact that it had. ELI THAYER. The Worcester of 1898. 771 at last met a formidable power. The unlawful aggression of the slaveelement against the free-state settlers in Kansas soon aroused the North,and the conflict which followed is familiar in history. Mr. Thayer gave allhis strength, his time, his money, to the work of saving Kansas, until theborder ruffians and the powers at Washington abandoned the fight at theend of 1856. He then turned his attention to the colonization of westernVirginia, and founded the town of Ceredo. His Friendly Invasion ofthe Old Dominion had the countenance of Governor Wise and otherprominent men of that section, and the undertaking progressed to consid-erable extent; but the opening of the war suspended the work. In the fall of 1S56 Mr. Thayer was elected to Congress as the representa-tive from the Worcester District, and at once took a leading position in thenational Legislature. His speeches on Centra
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