[4] At age 17, he entered negotiations with his enslaver to buy his freedom; a price of $400 was decided, to be paid in installments.
[1] After obtaining his freedom, Thomas lived in New Orleans for a year, working as a servant at the St. Charles Hotel.
[1] He was briefly jailed in 1843 in Louisiana, for breaking a law regarding free Blacks entering the state.
The following year, he became a member of the League of Gileadites, an African-American self-defense group organized in part by John Brown.
Thomas returned to Massachusetts in 1855, after the Illinois hotel closed, and promptly joined a group of men planning to go to California to work.
[1] He had returned to Springfield, Massachusetts by 1862, where he opened a successful saloon and restaurant, which became popular with African-American veterans following the Civil War.