Schuyler Colfax, 17th Vice President of the United States of America
6th Cousin, five times removed
By Joseph E. Delgatto. This article is from the Depauw University online library archives.
Schuyler Colfax was born on March 23, 1823 in New York City. Both the Schuyler and the Colfax families had lived in New York for a number of years. The paternal grandfather of the seventeenth vice president of the nation was William Colfax, the commanding officer of a special unit whose responsibility it was to protect the life of General George Washington.
Colfax was named for his father, Schuyler Colfax senior, who married Hannah Stryker in New York City on April 15, 1820. The senior Colfax died on October 30, 1822, just five months before the birth of his son. For eleven years after her husband's death, Hannah Colfax remained a widow. In 1834, she married George Matthews, who in 1836 moved the family to St. Louis. As a young man, Schuyler purchased the Saint Joseph Valley Register newspaper.
By 1850, Schuyler was a member of the state constitutional convention which drafted Indiana's present constitution. One provision of the constitution was to state that no blacks could be allowed to settle in the state. However, during the years preceding the Civil War, many Indiana communities were welcoming slaves as free men. Colfax was a leader in the fight against banning blacks from settling in Indiana. In
1852, Schuyler Colfax felt he was ready to run for a seat in congress. He ran and lost by 232 votes but two years later, he ran again and won by more than 2,000 votes. The year was 1854, Schuyler Colfax was 32 years old and he would spend eighteen years in Washington. He served in Congress for 14 years, eight of which were spent as The Speaker of the House. During Abraham Lincoln’s run for the presidential nomination in 1860, Colfax corresponded frequently with Lincoln and advised him of various political developments known to Colfax, letters which today are housed in the archives at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
As a congressman, Colfax did nothing which would mark him as outstanding. He was more concerned with building a power base than with passing legislation. During his 14 years in the lower house he authored no legislation of any kind which would have left its mark on America.
Colfax was appointed to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads and became its chairman and was instrumental in reorganizing the overland mail service and extending it to California.
In 1863, Colfax was elected by his colleagues as The Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was elected primarily because of his loyalty to the Republican Party. He always supported the party, never got out of line and was never controversial. As the speaker he never took a strong stand on any issue except for opposing the admission of the southern states back into the union. In fact, Schuyler Colfax was such a nice smooth operator that his colleagues in Congress had long before his ascension to speaker had nicknamed him "Smiler" Colfax. [Ed. note -- it should be noted that in the 2013 movie "Lincoln," based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Lincoln Team of Rivals, Colfax was involved in the passage of, including voting for, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting slavery.]
Grant and Colfax campaign poster
These same traits of party loyalty, his views on the conquered Confederacy after the Civil War and his affability won him the nomination to the vice presidency in 1868. He won the nomination on the fifth ballot after he had defeated a number of other contenders.
As vice president under Ulysses S. Grant, Schuyler Colfax followed 16 other men who had been Vice President in attempting to find something to occupy himself. Other than presiding over the business of the Senate, there was no other work for the former speaker.
His thoughts then turned to the possibility of running for the presidency in 1872. Colfax mistakenly assumed Grant would not run for a second term. He decided on a strategy. In 1870, he announced he would not be a candidate for public office in 1872. The idea was to force the public to make him change his mind.
The strategy failed. Grant decided to run for a second term. Colfax decided to fight Grant for the nomination. He lost that fight and then was forced off the ticket in favor of Henry Wilson who became the eighteenth Vice President of the United States.
A newspaper headline from the Credit Mobilier scandal.
In addition, Schuyler Colfax had been implicated in the Credit Mobiler scandal. The Credit Mobiler Corporation had been set up by the Union Pacific Rail Road officials to finance the construction of the line. The corporation reaped large profits and the Union Pacific suffered the consequences of not having enough financial assistance to finish construction. Congress was prodded into discussing an investigation of Credit Mobiler activities.
In order to forestall any possible investigation, Credit Mobiler president Oakes Amers distributed 343 shares of Credit Mobiler stock to various government officials. The stock was not free but recipients were allowed to pay for it out of accumulated dividends. In addition, the stock soared in value until it was worth more than 500 times its original price. Schuyler Colfax had accepted 20 shares of that stock.
The former vice president returned to private life. He no longer owned the Saint Joseph Valley Register and turned to the avocation of many former politicians. He became a traveling lecturer. He lectured on Abraham Lincoln and temperance. Colfax was a popular speaker and much in demand. He received $150 for each speech. Reporters liked him and he received good coverage.
On January 13, 1885, he was to have changed trains at Mankato, Minnesota. In order to get from one depot to another he had to walk three quarters of a mile in 30 degrees below zero weather. Five minutes after he arrived at the Omaha depot, he collapsed and died.
After he purchased his South Bend newspaper in 1845, Schuyler Colfax made The Saint Joseph Valley Register the leading proponent of Whig politics in northern Indiana. All during the years he owned the paper (1845-1863) he wrote a weekly column for its pages. The column was political and dealt with Washington affairs.
When Colfax was being considered for the position of editor of The New York Herald, Whitlaw Reid said of him, "There is this to be said about Colfax, that he has always surprised people in every position he has obtained by doing better than they expected."