Philip Francis Thomas

Born in Easton, Maryland, he graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in 1830. He studied law and became a lawyer in Easton. Thomas was a delegate to the Maryland's constitutional convention in 1836 and a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1838, 1843, and 1845. He was elected as a Democrat to the 26th Congress in 1838 from , but declined to run again in 1840. He went back to his law practice, but returned to politics eight years later when he was elected the 28th Governor of Maryland, a position he held through 1851. While Governor, in 1849 he commissioned Maryland's contribution to the Washington Monument, a marble building stone upon which the colonial Sparrow Seal of Maryland was engraved. From 1851 to 1853, he was Comptroller of Maryland and then collector of the port of Baltimore from 1853 to 1860, and United States Commissioner of Patents for a fragment of that year (February through December). == Secretary of the Treasury ==

Thomas was appointed United States Secretary of the Treasury in the Presidential Cabinet of President James Buchanan and served from December 12, 1860 until his resignation on January 14, 1861. His letter of resignation reprinted in the New York Times states that his reason for doing so was President Buchanan's reply accepting the resignation in that same New York Times edition of January 17, 1861—six days after the event—stated that Thomas in his brief tenure as Secretary of the Treasury had discharged "duties in a manner highly satisfactory to myself." == Later political career ==

Two years later, he again became a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1863. He presented credentials as a senator-elect to the United States Senate for the term beginning March 4, 1867, but was not seated as a person "who had given aid and comfort" to the Confederate cause by way of giving money to his son "to aid him in joining the rebel army." The charge against him was contested in The New York Times as "partisan intolerance," and in The Chicago Times as "lawless despotism." As his reason for resignation on January 11, 1861, Thomas cited "the purpose of the Cabinet and President to enforce the collection of the customs in the port of Charleston." He was then elected as a Democrat to the 44th Congress from the 1st Congressional district of Maryland, serving from 1875 to 1877, and declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1876. == Death and burial ==

He died in Baltimore in 1890 and is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Easton. ==References==