Advertiser,_ and
induce it to suspend its attacks. This he did, I presume, as that
paper made no further allusion to the subject. As for myself, I
remained silent, following a rule that I had formed early in life, to
avoid public controversy concerning my own acts. This rule, however,
was not an inflexible one.

Mr. Winthrop was then a candidate for the Senate against Mr. Sumner.
He was sensitive, no doubt, and he may have felt that it was his duty
to present Mr. Rantoul's credentials without delay. That was the
proper course, probably, and the question whether his term in the
Senate was continued a few days was of no public or personal
consequences whatsoever. Up to that point Mr. Winthrop's career had
been one of uninterrupted success. He was the favorite of Boston, 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