A Picture of the Desolated States, and the Work of Restoration. 1865-1868

by J. T. Trowbridge

He entered upon the work of editing and managing the St. Joseph’s Valley Register with but two hundred and fifty subscribers. It was a small sheet, and for some years, it required all his exertions, often protracted far into the night, to make it pay. He had not been bred a printer, but in these years he learned enough of the art to be able to render material service in setting up the paper. His friend Defrees, who knew his abilities, secured his services for two successive sessions of the legislature as Senate Reporter for the State Journal, and this helped him to relieve himself of the burden of debt, which for a time threatened to crush him.

From the first, he made the Register a good paper. He was a Whig and his sympathies were with his party, and he ably defended its principles; but though often attacked personally and with scurrilous abuse by the Democratic papers of that section, he never allowed a discourteous or abusive word in his paper. He was too thoroughly a gentleman in word and thought and nature to stoop to scurrility, and his opponents soon found that they injured themselves in their efforts to injure him.

In South Bend every body liked him and believed in him; the magnetism of his genial face, his kindly nature, and his cordial hand-grasp won all hearts. He was, the villagers said, a remarkable man, especially for a newspaper editor; he paid his debts; he drank no whiskey; he was prudent and economical; he never uttered an oath; and though it was only by careful management that he avoided debt, he always seemed to have something to give to the poor.

He was, during this period, steadily gaining reputation as a political writer and speaker. In 1848, he was chosen as a delegate to the convention which nominated General Taylor for the Presidency, and on taking his seat in the convention, was elected its principal secretary. In 1850, he represented St. Joseph’s County in the convention which formed the present constitution of Indiana. In that convention he opposed with all his ability, the adoption of the clause preventing free colored men from settling in the State. The next year he was nominated by his district for Congress, and had for a competitor Dr. Graham N. Fitch, an old, wily, and experienced Democratic politician, subsequently the colleague of Jesse D. Bright, as Senator, and in a district which for years had been Democratic by some thousands majority. Dr. Fitch used his opposition to the black laws, mercilessly, against him, but defeated him by only two hundred and thirty-eight votes.

In 1852, Mr. Colfax was again a delegate to and secretary of the National Convention which nominated General Scott for the Presidency. In the spring of 1858, he was urged to accept another nomination for Congress, but declined, and Dr. Fitch was re-elected by a majority of more than a thousand votes.

It was the era of the Kansas-Nebraska swindle, and though the district which he represented was strongly opposed to this measure, and his constituents used all their influence to dissuade him from supporting it, yet Dr. Fitch was so mole-eyed, and so wedded to slavery, that he advocated and voted for it steadily.

This was too much for the good people of St. Joseph county; a majority of them had voted the Democratic ticket regularly, but they were determined to do so no longer. The young editor of the St. Joseph’s Valley Register was urged to accept the nomination for Congress, and was elected in 1854, a representative in the XXXIVth Congress, by seventeen hundred and sixty-six majority. This result was due in part to the great reaction, but it was aided by the efforts of Mr. Colfax, who took the stump, and discussed with his competitor, through the district, the political questions of the canvass with such ability and spirit as to carry all hearts with him.

He entered Congress at the time of the protracted struggle in regard to the election of a Speaker, which terminated in the choice of Nathaniel P. Banks, and he gallantly plunged into the contest. His maiden speech took the whole House by surprise. It not only demonstrated that he was even then one of the ablest debaters in the House, but its eloquence, its logical power, and its graphic portrayal of the real condition of Kansas, and of the iniquity of the Border-Ruffian movement, made it the most effective campaign document of the season, and of the Presidential conflict of that year. Over five hundred thousand copies of that speech were printed and circulated by the National Committee—a compliment we believe never before paid to any member of Congress, certainly not to the maiden speech of one of the youngest members of the House.

Into the Presidential contest of 1856, the first of the Republican party, Mr. Colfax entered with all his zeal and enthusiasm. The banner of Fremont and Dayton was borne aloft in his paper, and his eloquent appeals in its behalf rang through all the States of the West. Victory was perhaps hardly to be expected for a new party at its first trial, but never was a fight more gallantly conducted.

The people of northern Indiana knew and honored the talents and worth of their Representative. By that personal magnetism which he possesses, in larger measure than most men, he had drawn all hearts to him, and they have kept him in Congress from 1855 to the present time, and always by large majorities. In 1860 he received thirty-four hundred more votes than his competitor, and in 1866 nearly twenty-two hundred more.