HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX.
The universal popularity of Mr. Colfax, and the thorough confidence felt by all classes in his integrity, intellectual ability and capacity to fill the highest position in the gift of the nation, should he be called to it, are among the most remarkable circumstances of his life-history. He is not a military hero. His fame, wide-spread as it is, was not won on the tented field, nor in the fierce strife and din of battle. His triumphs have been of a more peaceful character.
Though of a good and honorable lineage, he owes nothing to the accident of birth or hereditary fortune, and though a man of cultivated intellect and extensive general knowledge, he has not the eclat of honors won in college or university to make him conspicuous.
Still less is his fame dependent on exalted political station, long and ably held. He has been indeed a representative of the people in Congress, and for five years past Speaker of the House of Representatives, and his abilities have been fairly and fully proved in both capacities, but other men have presided over the House of Representatives, and been for years members of that body, or of the Senate, and yet no one has thought of them for the Vice-Presidency, or the Presidency.
Whence then comes this universal esteem in which this man is held; this almost brotherly attachment which leads all who know him personally, and tens of thousands who do not, to speak of him, not as Mr. Colfax, but as Schuyler Colfax, just as men used to say Abraham, or “Abe” Lincoln, and not coldly, Mr. Lincoln?
We propose to answer this question by a brief sketch of his life, which will we think, give us the best key to this personal magnetism which draws all men to him.
In 1822, there lived in North Moore Street, then a quiet, home-like street running westward from West Broadway, New York, a young couple by the name of Colfax. The husband, named like his illustrious son, Schuyler Colfax, was a bank clerk. The child-wife, for she was then but little more than fifteen years of age, looked up confidingly and tenderly to the brave, noble-hearted young man on whom she had bestowed her heart’s affections, and both anticipated a long and joyous future. But ere the new year of 1823 dawned, that young husband was taken from life, and the girl-wife was a widow.
In the early spring, (on the 23d of March, 1823), a son, destined to cheer and comfort her in her subsequent earthly pilgrimage was given her, and though poor and widowed, the young mother felt that she was not alone. The boy grew up, a slender, delicate, bright, loving boy, flaxen-haired, and seemingly too frail to struggle with the rough world with which he was brought in contact; but though poverty pressed hard upon mother and child, they were all in all to each other. The boy attended the school of the Public School Society, for in those days, Ward Schools were undreamed of, till he had reached his tenth year, and made good proficiency, being always, as one of his schoolmates testifies, at the head of his class. When he was ten years old his mother married again, and this time a merchant by the name of Matthews, who was very fond of Schuyler, and in whose store he became thus early, a younger clerk. In 1836, the fever for emigration, then so prevalent, seized the Matthews family, and they removed to what is now the garden of the west, the valley of the St. Joseph’s river, in Indiana. It was then, much of it, an unbroken wilderness, though South Bend and two or three other villages were beginning to attract emigrants. In one of these villages, New Carlisle, the family made their new home, and Mr. Matthews engaged in trade. Schuyler Colfax was for four years more his clerk. In 1840, Mr. Matthews was chosen Auditor of St. Joseph’s County, and for convenience in his official duties, removed to South Bend, the county seat, which has ever since been the home of the family. Mr. Matthews made his step-son deputy auditor, and the boy, who had diligently improved every leisure moment in study, now a tall, flaxen-haired youth, soon became so thoroughly familiar with the law in all questions relating to the auditor’s duties, that he was ere long the standard authority for the region about, on these subjects. But his reading of law at this time was not confined to that required for exercising an auditor’s duties; he found time to make himself master of its great principles, rather however for the sake of the general culture it would afford him, than with the view of adopting it as a profession. During this period too he was practicing himself in that facility for putting his thoughts on paper which was afterwards of so much advantage to him. A gentleman, well known in the philanthropic circles of New York and Brooklyn, who had been a schoolmate of Mr. Colfax in that Crosby Street School, which was the last one he attended in New York city, kept up a correspondence with him during these years of his service as deputy auditor, and says:
“Schuyler’s letters in those days were very interesting; they were filled with details concerning his studies, knotty questions which he wanted me to aid him in clearing up, and brilliant thoughts, often expressed with the same felicity which now marks his writings.”
To such a youth, writing for the newspapers was almost a necessity. There had been a paper in South Bend edited for some years by John D. Defrees, since then a Member of Congress and Government printer. To its columns Schuyler contributed often, and he was but little more than twenty-one years of age, when he became editor and proprietor of the St. Joseph’s Valley Register, his friend Defrees having removed to Indianapolis to take charge of the State Journal. Previous to this, however, he and Mr. Defrees, with some other enterprising young men of South Bend, had organized a debating society, and by a happy thought had modeled it after the House of Representatives, whose rules they adopted for their governance. Mr. Defrees was for the time the “Speaker” of this Village House of Representatives, and Colfax, yet a youth under age, was “the gentleman from Newton.” Parliamentary rules were insisted upon, and the pages of Jefferson’s and Cushing’s Manuals were carefully and thoroughly conned, till “the gentleman from Newton” became as conversant with the rules and usage of “the House,” as any presiding officer in our State legislatures. This, and the habit of off hand debate, were of great advantage to him in after years, and contributed much to make him, as he is acknowledged to be, by all parties, the best presiding officer the House of Representatives has had for many years.