Schuyler Colfax

In 1844, Colfax married Evelyn Clark, his childhood friend, but unfortunately she passed away childless in 1863.

In 1868, two weeks after Colfax became the Vice President, he married Ella M. Wade. The couple was blessed with a son, Schuyler Colfax III.

In 1885, on one of his lecture trips in the Midwest, he walked nearly a mile in extremely cold weather, from one depot to another, intending to change trains so as to reach South Bend on a speaking visit.

Schuyler Colfax was born on March 23, 1823, in New York City, to Schuyler Colfax Sr., a bank clerk, and his wife, Hannah Delameter Stryker. Unfortunately, his father died five months before the son’s birth, in October 1822, due to tuberculosis. Colfax also had a sister who died in July 1823.

Until the age of 10, he studied in the public schools of New York when family’s financial crisis forced him to take up a job as a clerk in a store. Colfax worked there until 1836, when his mother married again and the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana.

In 1841, he was appointed the deputy auditor of St. Joseph County, where he served for the several years. Between 1842 and 1844, he worked as assistant enrolling clerk of the state senate and senate reporter for the Indiana State Journal.

Colfax wrote articles on Indiana politics for the New York Tribune and established his reputation as a promising young Whig. Subsequently, he was appointed the editor of the pro-Whig South Bend Free Press.

In 1845, Colfax founded the St. Joseph Valley Register, which later emerged as one of the most influential papers in the state during its 18-year run, initially a powerful Whig and later as a Republican journal.

In 1848, Schuyler Colfax served as a delegate to the Whig Party convention and the following year, he represented his party at the Indiana Constitutional Convention.

In 1850, he was made a member of the state constitutional convention and two years later, he attempted to receive nomination for the U.S. Congress on the Whig Party ticket but was unsuccessful.

In mid 1850s, during the changing political situation, he shifted from the Whig Party to the Know-Nothing Party and finally to the Republican Party. In 1854, Colfax was again nominated for the U.S. Congress and this time, he won as an Indiana People's Party candidate in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Subsequently, he became a member of U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana’s 9th district. From 1855 to 1869, he served as a U.S. Congressman and was elected as the Speaker in 1863. Thereafter, he also served as speaker of the House of Representatives during the last six years, until 1869.

In 1868, he was nominated by the Republican Party as the running mate of Ulysses S. Grant. Subsequently, Colfax was elected and became the Vice President of the United States, serving from March 1869 to March 1873.

During his service as a Congressman, Colfax strongly opposed slavery while United States went through the tribulations of the American Civil War. After the war, during the Reconstruction Era, he was a leader of the Radical Republicans and advocated the disfranchisement of all the former prominent officials of the Confederate States of America. An anti-slavery promoter, Colfax strongly supported the Freeman's Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction Acts.