Schuyler Colfax

Indiana Republican who was Speaker of the House during the Civil War and later Ulysses S. Grant's vice president.

Overview

Colfax, a newspaper editor from South Bend, entered the House in 1855 as an antislavery member and became Speaker in 1863. He presided over the chamber during the second half of the Civil War and the first years of Reconstruction, and in January 1865 he took the unusual step of casting his own vote for the Thirteenth Amendment as it cleared the House. Elected vice president on Grant's ticket in 1868, he was dropped from the 1872 ticket, and revelations that he had accepted stock in the Credit Mobilier scheme ended his political career. He spent his later years as a popular lecturer.