His great power as a debater, his strong, clear common sense, quick intuition, and devotion to the best interests of his country, made him a very valuable member of the House of Representatives, and he was early placed on important committees. As chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, he was very efficient in promoting mail facilities with our new territories and the Pacific states, and on other important committees he accomplished a vast amount of labor. He was deeply interested, and is still, in the prosperity of the Pacific Railroad, regarding it as a most important measure not only for the prosperity of the nation, but as a means of bringing together the distant sections of our Great Republic.
Into the Presidential Campaign of 1860, Mr. Colfax plunged with all his energy. Mr. Lincoln had been from the first his favorite as a candidate, and he had foreshadowed his nomination, months before it was made, in his paper. There were many points of resemblance in the character of the two men, and Colfax’s heart warmed toward him as toward a brother. Hardly any man in the United States did so much to secure the election of Mr. Lincoln as this western editor, and this from pure love, and not from any hope or desire of reward. Mr. Colfax could have had, if he had sought it, a place in Mr. Lincoln’s cabinet, as he always had, (a very warm one,) in his heart; but he preferred to remain in Congress, and during the whole period of the war, he was a bosom friend and a trusted adviser of the President. In his sound sense, his practical view of matters, and his freedom from hobbies, Mr. Lincoln could confide, with the assurance that his counsels would never lead him astray.
Hopeful, even in the darkest hours, and ready to cheer and encourage the drooping spirits of those whose duller vision could not pierce the cloud-wrack, and see the clear heavens beyond, his presence and influence were invaluable in the murky and treason-tainted atmosphere of the Capitol.
On the assembling of the XXXVIIIth Congress in its first session, he was chosen Speaker of the House and has been re-elected to the same position twice since, an honor to which no other Representative except Henry Clay has ever attained. At the close of his present term as Speaker, he will probably take his seat as presiding officer at the other end of the Capitol.
It is the testimony of members of all parties, that he is the best presiding officer the House has had since Henry Clay, and in some particulars he excels Mr. Clay. He is always genial and courteous, never betrayed into impatience or vexation, and his marvelous quickness of thought, thorough knowledge of parliamentary usage, and talent for the rapid administration of details, and above all his extraordinary tact, enable him to control the House of Representatives, even in its most boisterous moods, with the skill and grace with which an accomplished pilot would manage the helm of one of our palace steamers on the Hudson. He is never at a loss in deciding a question of order, however delicate or difficult, and the whole array of precedents are at his command. Very seldom indeed are his decisions overruled, and in the rare cases in which they have been, the House have generally found that they and not he, were in the wrong.
It has been said that his talents were administrative and executive rather than deliberative. While this is in itself high praise, we are inclined to doubt its entire truth. He does possess great executive ability, and inherits from his mother that faculty of rapid intuition, which has very properly been denominated “mother wit;” but he has also given indications of the possession of high reasoning and deliberative faculties, and both his editorials and speeches give evidence of fine logical as well as rhetorical power.
He possesses, in a remarkable degree, the power of reading character, and when called upon to select men for special duties he will not make mistakes. While a Radical in his political views he is still cautious, and will adopt sure and safe policies. His mind is well balanced, no undue predominance of any faculty being observable, but all uniting in such proportions as to make a sound, healthy-minded, judicious man; one who will not be a seer far in advance of his age, nor a conservative lagging in the rear of it, but an able leader, to whose position the whole host of patriots will rally, and whose views will meet with a hearty response from all lovers of their country.
He is a courteous man, not proudly or haughtily so, but genial and gentle from the necessities of his nature. The gentleman in his case, as in all others, is not, of necessity, he who is gentle-born, but he who possesses a truly gentle nature. Mr. Colfax never forgets, he remembers rather with peculiar tenacity, the humble circumstances of his early years, and honors with peculiar love those sons of toil, who like himself have by diligent struggle and earnest endeavor wrought their way up to a higher and more extended sphere of action.
A very pleasant illustration of this is contained in a speech which he delivered at a dinner given him by the representatives of the press in December 1866 at which the presiding officer, Samuel Wilkeson, Esq., had alluded to his passing his office at midnight, eighteen years before, while waiting for the change of horses in the stage, and having seen him busily at work. Mr. Colfax replied as follows:—
“I have had to listen to-night to a eulogy from your distinguished chairman, of which I can only wish I was worthy. What he has said has called back to my mind, what is often before it, the years of my early manhood—and I see a friend seated at this table (Mr. Defrees) who knows much of it about as well as myself—when, struggling against poverty and adverse fortune sometimes, I sought in the profession to which you have devoted yourselves, to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family, and a position, humble, but not dishonored, among the newspaper men of America. I cannot remember the exact evening to which he alludes, when, eighteen years ago, a stranger then, as I am glad he is not now, he saw me through a window in my office, with the midnight lamp before me, and heard the commentary on my life from the lips of some too partial friend from among those who from my boyhood have surrounded me with so much kindness and attention. But well do I remember, in the early history of the newspaper that numbered but two hundred and fifty subscribers when I established it, I was often compelled to labor far into the hours of night. And little did I dream, at that time, I was ever to be a member of the American Congress; and far less that I was to be the recipient of the honor whose conferment you commemorate and endorse to-night. I can say of that paper that its columns, from its very first number, will bear testimony to-day that in all the political canvasses in which I was engaged, I never avoided a frank and outspoken expression of opinion on any question before the American people. And that, as these opinions had always been honestly entertained, I could not have hesitated to frankly and manfully avow them. Though the effect of these avowals was, from the political complexion of the district and the State, to keep me in a minority, the people among whom I live will bear testimony that I was no less faithful to them then than I have been when, in later years, that minority has by the course of events been changed into a majority.”