Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Colfax, Schuyler

Died: 1885-01-13 Mankato, Minnesota

Flourished: Indiana

Schuyler Colfax, newspaper editor and politician, was born after the death of his father and grew up with his mother and grandmother. He attended local schools in his native New York City and began working at age ten as a clerk. Following his mother’s remarriage, Colfax moved with his family to New Carlisle, Indiana in 1836. There he worked in his stepfather’s store until the latter won election as county auditor and the family relocated to South Bend, where Colfax served as his stepfather’s deputy until 1849. Colfax became active in Whig politics and campaigned for Henry Clay in 1844. About the same time he purchased a half interest in a local paper, which he edited and published as the St. Joseph Valley Register for nearly twenty years, utilizing it first as a Whig and later as a Republican Party mouthpiece. He participated in Indiana’s 1850 constitutional convention but lost a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives the next year. Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Colfax adopted an anti-Nebraska and pro-Know-Nothing position, and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives that year as a member of the People’s Party, a precursor to the Republican Party. Colfax’s nativist sympathies proved divisive among his constituents in Indiana, and he ultimately ran for reelection in 1856 as a Republican. Colfax remained in the U.S. Congress until 1869, serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1863 to 1866. In the 1860 election he campaigned vigorously for the Republican Party despite not being an early supporter of Abraham Lincoln, and he subsequently advised the administration on Indiana politics. Colfax married Evelyn Clark in 1844. Following her death he married Ellen Wade in 1868, with whom he had one child, a namesake son.

Phyllis F. Field, “Colfax, Schuyler” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5:230-31; Willard H. Smith, Schuyler Colfax: The Changing Fortunes of a Political Idol (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1952); Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 845; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Saint Joseph County, IN, 1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), South Bend, Saint Joseph County, IN, 49; The New-York Times, 14 January 1885, 1:5-6; Gravestone, City Cemetery, South Bend, IN.