Year: 1868

Putnam Monthly for June publishes the
following sketch of Schuyler Colfax, Speak
er of the House of Representatives, whom
the National Union Republican Convention
nominated as its candidate for Vice
President of the United States:


Schuyler Colfax was born at a house in
North Moore street, near West Broadway,
in the city of New York, March 23d, 1928
His mother is but sixteen years his senior
He received a good common school educa-
ton; was bred printer, and settled in In
diana in 1896. He soon became foreman
and assistant editor of the village paper of
South Bend 1t was then a very small
sheet, such as every Western settlement
issues, as a sort of flyer to a job printing
business as soon as it has got its school
house. grocery, hotel, and blacksmith shop,
and begins to think about having a meet
ing-house. The type" out West frequent
Is gets the start of the preacher, though the
race is close. Those who saw Coliax then
"at the case describes him as a light,
spindling, faxen- haired, boyish-looking
youth-cever rather in the Yankee than
the English sense-with delicacy of tenn
perament which suggested doubt whether
he had the stamina to live to manhood,
without the faintest suggestion that in his
mature years he would be Speaker of the
House, and the second choice of the country
for President The news then came to
South Bend by stage from Detroit, or up the
St 10 river from the Lake. There was but
little Of it, and though Mr. Colfax became
the editor aud publisher Of the South Bend
Register as soon as he became of age, other
and subsequent evidences were required to
establish his claim to intellectual superior
ity


In 1913 he was a delegate to and Secre-
tary of the Wing National Convention. In
1850 he was member Of the National Con-
stitutional Convention. In 1852 he was
again Secretary of the Wing National Con;
vention He was elected TO the Thirty
fourth Congress- and has been regularly re-
elected to every subsequent Congress- He
was elected Speaker of the Thirty eighth
Congress, and has been reelected Speaker
of the Thirty ninth and Fortieth. He was
urged but he declined to accept a seat in
the United States Senate, preterIing his
presiding chair in the House His open,
pleasant face, has become familiar to large
audiences throughout the country who
have listened to his addresses upon politi-
cal topics, upon the late President Lincoln


by whom he was warmly loved, upon
his tour across the continent to the Pacific,
or upon subjects connected with the work
Of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions.
He is pure in his personal and moral
habits, has broad, outspoken, and catholic
sympathy with every good work of reform,
whether political, moral, intellectual, or re-
ligiOus, and has the warm aud enthusiastic
confidence of Christians and temperance
reformcrs throughout the country. He at
tends, and we believe is a member of the
Reformed Dutch Church, and is thorough
teetOtalist.


Without being educated as scholar, in
dustrious reading has given him much Of
what is valuable in scholarship unalloyed by
its pedantry, its clannishness, or its egotism.
Without being bred a lawyer, practical
familiarity with legislation has taught him
all that is most valuable in law, freed from
tfe conservatism aud inaptitude for change
and reform which rest like an incubus on
so many of those minds which are bred by
the habits of the legal profession to look for
precedents which show what the law has
been, rather than to broad principles which
settle what the law ought to be. Yet Mr..
Colfax has frequently shown the happiest
familiarity with precedents, especially in
questions of parliamentary practice As
presiding officer he is the most popular the
House has had since Henry Clay. His mar
velous duickness of thought, and talent for
the rapid administration of details, enables
him to hold the reins of the House of Rep
resentatives, even in It's most boisterous
and turbulent mood, land with the excep-
ton of the New York Board of Brokers, the
British House Of Commons, or a Fair at
Donnybrook, it is the most uproarious body
in the world with as much ease and grace
as Mr. Bonner would show the PAGES of Dex-
ter in Central Park, or as Gottschalk would
thread the keys of a piano, in a dreamy
maze of faultless, quivering melody.


AS an orator, Mr.. Colfax is not argumen.
tative, except as clear statement and sound
Judgment are convincing He rides no
erratic hobbies He demands few policies
which the average sense of intelligent men
cannot be made to assent to on a clear
statement of his position. He is emf
nently representative A glance at his broad,
well balanced, practical brain, indicates
that his leading faculty is the sum of all
she faculsies--judgment, and that what he