~^ HI LAD A THE LIFE -^"i.;' OP SCHUYLER COLFAX. BY REV. J^. Y. MIOORE, OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA. WITH A PORTRAIT, (S>^ PHILADELPHIA: ^« T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS; No. 30 G CHESTNUT STREET. t.'fiS 8 Ms HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Clerk's Office, Washington, D. C, June 2Sd, 1868. Dear Sirs: The portrait of Mr. Colfax, engraved for your edition of his Life, has been framed and hung up in the Clerk's office, where many Members have seen it. All concur in saying it is the best likeness of him they have ever seen, and I agree with them in regarding it as strikingly life-like. Respectfully yours, EDWD Mcpherson, Clerk of the Rouse of Bepresentatives. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 806 Chestnut JSt.j Philadelphia, Entpred accnrding to Act of Congress, in the year 186S, by T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. MRS. GEORGE W. MATTHEWS, THE MOTHER OF JffOJ^. SCHUYLER COLFAX, WnoSK TRCST IW HIM AS A MAW HAS ONLY BEKN EQUALLED BY HER AFFEmOM FOB HIM AS A SON. THIS VOLUM e ^S s hespectfully dedicated BY THE AUTHOR. South Bbhd, Ihdiaka, JiT«E, 1868. PREFACE. In view of the prominence of Schuyler Colfax before the American people in his past history, and now as candidate for the Vice-Presidency, this biog- raphy has been prepared, that they may become more thoroughly familiar with his character and worth. It largely embodies the editorials, letters and speeches of Mr. Colfax, setting them in the narrative of personal incident and national history. This method was adopted as more valuable than any other. It does not simply tell of Mr Colfax, but introduces the reader to personal intercourse with him. The writer as a resident of South Bend for many years, has been intimately acquainted, both as pastor and citizen, with the private life as well as public career of Mr. Colfax. He has had access to the files of the paper, which Mr. Colfax founded, and for twenty years conducted. He has also enjoyed other sources of information of great value. These providential opportunities suggested several years 26 Preface, ago the preparation of such a volume as the present. It is now given to the public with the consent of Mr. Colfax, as expressed in the following letter: Washington, D. C, May 30, 1868. My Dear Mr. Moore : As your prediction of a year ago has been realized, I have no further objection to your publishing any sketch, more or less full, of my life, you may have prepared. As you were, for a dozen years, a fellow-townsman of mine, and valued friend, I suppose you know as much about my history as the public would care about know- ing ; and although my engrossing duties here leave me no time to revise the manuscript, I have no fear that your work will not be a faithful one. Yours, very truly, SCHUYLEK COLFAX. Rev. a. Y. Moore, ^ouih Bend, Indiana, CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Schuyler Colfax — His Birth — Ancestry — Early Life — Removal to Indiana — Senate Reporter — St. Joseph Valley Register 33 CHAPTER H. Earnest Whig — Persevere — General Taylor — Biographical Sketch — Advocated for Preadency — National Convention of 1848 38 CHAPTER HI. New issues — Wilmot Proviso — Knell of the Peculiar Institution — Indiana State Convention — Bank Question — Opposition to the separate Article of Constitution 45 CHAPTER IV. Nominated for Congress — Competitor — Stumping — Tarrying at Jericho — Congressional Chair and Conscience — Defeat — Dele- gate to National Convention of 1852 — Stirring Scenes 51 CHAPTER V. General Scott — Whig Party — Cause of its Defeat — Hope for the Future — Steadfastness — Thirty-third Congress — Senate Terri- torial Committee — Repeal of Missouri Compromise Reported. 59 CHAPTER VI. Nebraska Bill — Origin of Missouri Compromise — Injustice of its Repeal — Action of Senator Douglas — Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky — Enlisting under the Banner of Repeal 66 (»7) 28 Contents, CHAPTER VII. Final Passage of Nebraska Bill — Earnest Protest — Refusal of Nomination to Congress in 1852 — Acceptance upon the Nebraska Issue in 1854 — The Majority of 1776— Thirty- fourth Congress— Unrivalled Contest for Speaker — Worth of Parliamentary Skill — N. P. Banks, Speaker 75 CHAPTER VIII. Editorial Correspondence — Closing Scenes of the Long Contest — Happy Result — Letter from Mr. Colfax in reply to an Invi- tation to Address the Republicans of New York City — A Golden Truth 79 CHAPTER IX. Speech of Mr. Colfax upon " The Bogus Laws of Kansas" — Alexander H. Stephens — Holding the Ball and Chain — Re- nominated for Congress — Re-elected — Election of Mr. Buchanan Predicted 89 CHAPTER X. Lecompton Convention — Lecompton Constitution — Senate Ac- cepts it — Opposition of Senator Douglas — House of Represen- tatives rejects Lecompton — Committee of Conference — Proposition Submitted to Kansas — Proposition Rejected — Speech of Mr. Colfax in behalf of Kansas — Interesting Letter 93 CHAPTER XI. Administration Defeat— The Pure Republican Vote — Coalition — Ringing Ayes — Mr. Keitt, of South Carolina — Crittenden Amendment — Horace F. Clark — Vote of Mr. Harris, of lUiaois , 102 Contents, 29 CHAPTER XII. Mr. Colfax Re-nominated in 1858 — Thirty-sixth Congress — Mr. Colfax Chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads — Service to the Emigrants to Pike's Peak — Over- land Mail — Overland Telegraph — Republican Success in i860 a Duty — The Famed Motto of Augustine — Mr. Lincoln's Nomination and Election — Mr. Colfax urged for Postmaster- General 109 CHAPTER XIII. Home Again — Historical Retrospect — Deeds of Violence- Treachery in High Places — No Offensive Ultraism in the Triumphant Party — Essential Change of Constitution Re- jected — Waiting the Development of Mr. Lincoln's Policy. .. 115 CHAPTER XIV. The Opening of the War — The Die is Cast — The Heroic Defender of Fort Sumter — His Interesting Conversation — From Washington to Philadelphia via Annapolis and Perry- vilie — Speech of Major Anderson 123 CHAPTER XV. Civilians and Military Service — Duties of Congress — Labors out ** of Congress — The Death of Mrs. Colfax — Her Estimable Character , 133 CHAPTER XVI. The Thirty-eighth Congress — Mr. Colfax Elected Speaker — The Inauguration — Inaugural Address — Opinions of the Press 137 JO Contents, CHAPTER XVII. Press Dinner to Mr. Colfax — Speech of Mr. Wilkeson — Response of Mr. Colfax 141 CHAPTER XVIII. Kindness of Mr. Colfax — Homily for the Thoughtful — Obliga- tions of Journalists — Use of Experience — Social Duties — Inci- dent from Arnold's ** Lincoln and Slavery" — Lasting Friend- ship 153 CHAPTER XIX. Lecture — Education of the Heart — The Teacher's Vocation — Elements of Worth in Character — Eloquent Plea for Things Pure and Good 161 CHAPTER XX. Firmness and Boldness — Testimony of Colonel Forney — Motion for Mr. Long's Expulsion — Presentation of Silver Service to Mr. Colfax — Speech by Mr. M'Culloch — Response by Mr. Colfax — A Friend's Sonnet 178 CHAPTER XXI. Re-election of Mr. Lincoln Pending — Mr. Colfax not permitted to withdraw from Nomination for Congress — Opening Speech of the Canvass at Peru, Indiana 190 CHAPTER XXII. Important Military Events of 1864— Political Events—Union Victories at the Polls — Mr. Colfax Re-elected — His. abound- ing Labors — Banquet to him at Philadelphia 237 Contents. 3 1 CHAPTER XXIII. The First Entrance upon Slave Soil — The Constitutional Amend- ment Abolishing Slavery — Important Events during the Second Session of the Thirty-eighth Congress — The Speaker's Vale- dictory 243 CHAPTER XXIV. The Contemplated Overland Journey — The Last Good-bye oi Mr. Lincoln — The President's Assassination — Mr. Colfax's Eulogy upon the Martyred President 250 CHAPTER XXV. Mr. Lincoln's Message by Mr, Colfax to the Miners of the West —The Overland Journey— Visit at Salt Lake City — Plain Talk- ing with Brigham Young — Speech at Salt Lake City 277 CHAPTER XXVI. Return of Mr. Colfax — Many Alarmed at Indications of Change in President Johnson — Mr. Colfax in the quiet of his Home Determines his Duty — Serenade Speech at Washington — The President not Pleased — Mr. Colfax Re-elected Speaker — Inau- gural — Presides at Final Anniversary of United States Chris- tian Commission « , 283 CHAPTER XXVII. Breach between the President and Congress — The Civil Rights Bill Passed over the President's Veto — Serenade Speech of Mr. Colfax on that Occasion 289 CHAPTER XXVIII. Letter of Mr. Colfax, July, 1866, to Convention of Ninth Con- gressional District of Indiana — His Re-nomination — Reception at Home — Re-election — Response at Washington to the Wel- come Back given to the Thirty-ninth Congress 295 32 Contents, CHAPTER XXIX. Assembling of the Fortieth Congress — Valedictory for Thirty- ninth Congress — Elected Speaker of Fortieth Congress — Inau- gural — Testimonials to Mr. Colfax as Speaker — B. F. Taylor — ** History of Thirty-ninth Congress" — Thaddeus Stevens — Ex-Governor Thomas, of Maryland — Popularity of Mr. Col- fax — Estimate of Ability and Character in Cincinnati Gazette — G. A. Tov^rnsend's Genial Letter — Portrait from Putnam's Magazine 31a CHAPTER XXX. Speech of Mr. Colfax before the Union League of New York — Serenade Speech at Washington upon July Adjournment of Fortieth Congress 327 CHAPTER XXXI. Fall Elections of 1867 — Speech of Mr. Colfax at Cooper Insti- tute, New York 333 CHAPTER XXXII. Letter to Governor Baker — Nominated by Indiana Republican Convention for Vice-President — Chicago National Union Re- publican Convention— Platform of the Convention — Nomina- tion of Grant and Colfax 374 CHAPTER XXXIII. Reception of the Nominations by the Country — Filial Regard — Serenade Speech of Mr. Colfax, May 22, 1868 — Response to Committee of Convention — Letter of Acceptance — Pillars in our Temple of Liberty — Our Country's Future — Conclusion.. 383 THE LIFE OF SCHUYLEK COLFAX. CHAPTER I. SCHUYLER COLFAX — HIS BIRTH — ANCESTRY — EARLY LIFE — REMOVAL TO INDIANA — SENATE REPORTER — ST. JOSEPH VALLEY REGISTER. Schuyler Colfax was born in the city of New York, March 23d, 1823. The death of his father, and also of a young sister, preceded his birth. He thus became the only child of his widowed mother, and maternal care had a double part to perform in moulding his character. His grandfather was General William Colfax, who was born in Connecticut in 1760. William Colfax was commissioned lieutenant in the Continental army at seventeen, and was soon after selected by General Washington as captain commandant of the commander- in-chief's guards. This position Captain Colfax held till the disbanding of the army of the Ke volution in 1783. At the close of the war Captain Colfax married Hester Schuyler, a cousin of General Philip Schuyler. General (33) j4 Life of Schuyler Colfax, Washington stood godfather of their first child, holding him at the baptismal font, and conferring on him his own name. The third son of this marriage bore the honored name of Schuyler. He grew up to be a quiet business man, and became teller in the Mechanics' Bank of New York city ; but died in early manhood, transmitting his name as his sole legacy to his son, the subject of the present sketch. The early years of the life of Schuyler Colfax were passed amid the stir and din of the city of New York. He had, however, occasional sight of other scenes beside the great buildings, thronged streets, and wharves, and beautiful bay of New York. Frequent visits by his widowed mother to friends far up the Hudson, as it was then esteemed, in the famous region of Saratoga, gave him frequent views of the scenery along the North river, and of the beauty and glory of the country. His school days, which were in the public schools of the city, were not numerous. They were ended by his tenth year. In his eleventh year he was employed as a clerk in a store. At this time his mother, who had been a widow for nearly eleven years, was again married. Two years afterward, at the age of thirteen, as a member of that new household, which had sprung from his mother's marriage, he was upon the tide of emigration that was flowing to the great West. St. Joseph county, in North- ern Indiana, was the haven sought, and there, in a new village named New Carlisle, he was again occupied with the duties of a clerk in a store; but under very different circumstances from those that surrounded him in the = commercial emporium of the nation. At that day Northern Indiana was a new country with sparse settle- ments. Much of the wild prairie was in its unmarred Life of Schuyler Colfax, 35 beauty, and tlae oak openings were like continuous parks. The deer fed in herds, and now and then a prowling bear was shot by the skilful hunter. The red man of the forest still traversed the woods. The Indian trader still bartered for furs. The habitations of the new settlers and the germs of villages and cities were scattered over the surface of the wild, level country, like Virgil's shipwrecked mariners, "here and there upon the vast expanse." In a few years another change of greater importance occurred. Mr. Matthews, his step-father, was elected County Auditor, and he naturally appointed young Colfax his deputy. This took him, at the age of eighteen, to South Bend, upon the banks of the beautiful St. Joseph, where has grown up since a very pleasant and thriving western city, and where from that day to this, for twenty -seven years, has been the home of Mr. Colfax. Here, with other young men, he was the member of a moot legislature for two years, and laid the foundations of his knowledge of parliamentary law. Here, in "the county town," he was brought into the focus of politics, and also within the realms of newspaperdom. Frequent contributions from his pen found their way into the columns of the county paper. "The boy is father of the man." "Schuyler" had always been fond of news- papers and politics. When a little fellow rolling around on the floor, he would love to get a newspaper and spread it out and pore over its contents. When a clerk ill New York at the age of eleven, upon the day of an important election, going home after his duties at the store were done, he stopped at the polls of the third ward, where had been the great struggle of the day, until the vote was announced. In the formation of a 3 6 Life of Schuyler Colfax, habit so important to an editor and politician, described by Eobbie Burns as ''taking notes," he put down the ballot, and hastened on to Brooklyn, and was at the polls there when the result was made known. Some in the anxious crowd immediately inquired if the third ward in New York had been heard from, knowing that the issue of the day's conflict would be determined thereby, and when no one else responded, the youthful clerk, to their surprise and gratification, read from his memoranda the official announcement. Before he was twenty-one, Mr. Colfax had passed two winters in attendance at Indianapolis upon the Legislature as Senate reporter for the State Journal. This was not a very lucrative posi- tion, as it yielded but two dollars a day. It had, how- ever, other advantages highly esteemed by the proprietor of the Journal, though not so highly prized by the reporter ; for seeking an increase of his per diem, the proprietor demurred. He thought that the acquaintance- ship which the reporter's berth gave with public men, and the prospects it affiDrded one of becoming ultimately a successful candidate for Congress, made it a good thing. The young reporter humorously offered to sell out all his chances for Congress for an additional dollar added to the per diem, but the proprietor of the Journal was immovable. In 1845 Mr. Colfax became editor and proprietor of the St. Joseph Valley Register, a paper which he founded. Already he had acquired no little reputation as a ready writer, an able politician, and a young man of sterling worth and integrity. The contemporary press in his own and adjacent States spoke of his paper in the high- est terms, " as one of the very best in the State," and of its editor as having "a thorough acquaintance with Life of Schuyler Colfax, 37 political subjects," as being " one of the best writers in the State," '^ clear, sound, pointed and sensible ; besides having a big and an honest heart." With quick perceptions, warm and generous heart, finely constituted social nature, and inflexible conscien- tiousness, Mr. Colfax had indomitable energy and un- tiring industry. The Register, under the management of such an editor, steadily grew from a patronage of two hundred and fifty subscribers, which it possessed at the beginning of its existence, until it became the largest paper, and one of the most widely circulated weekly journals of the State. The Register was a pure paper. It did not carry the delineations of the revolting and demoralizing scenes of crime into the households it visited. It was the advocate of good things; an earnest, ardent advocate of temperance, and the things that build up society. Many a fine essay worthy of a better fate than " alms for oblivion," is found in its old files. Its selections were of high character, made from the best popular, historical, scientific and literary productions of the press. Sprightly effervescence of genial, intellectual power, gleamed in its editorials. Innumerable letters from its ever jour- neying editor, gave the geography, statistics, politics and history of different portions of the country. Its letters from Congress will give fine illuminations of the past to some future historian. In politics it was first Whig and then Republican. There was always a frank and out- spoken expression of opinion on the questions before the American public. It was wise and it was honest, and in the judgment of a veteran editor of a New York daily, " always communicated to a daily political writer a valuable political impression." 2 38 Life of Schuyler Colfax. CHAPTER II. EARNEST WHIG — PERSEVERE — GENERAL TAYLOR — BIO- GRAPHICAL SKETCH — ADVOCATED FOR PRESIDENCY — NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1848. How earnestly Mr. Colfax was a Whig, at tlie age of twenty-two, may be inferred from the following editorial in the Register, of September, 1845 : '' Eeverses may and will dampen the ardor and zeal of any party; but the true man speedily recovers from such mortifications, and labors on steadfastly and ear- nestly, knowing that the gloom of the present will be superseded by the ultimate triumph of his principles and his cause. What tliough one may not be able to win success next year, or the next, or the next? Even though we could scan no ray of hope in the political horizon, should we then despair or yield ? Far from it. Such thoughts are the counsel of treason, the prompt- ings of indolence ! Expediency as well as honor and right, forbid that we should listen to them. The page of history is full of records of victory won by untiring perseverance, after frequent defeats. It tells of none gained by apathy or despair. The patriots of the Eevolution were themselves driven almost to the grave during their unyielding resistance to the armies of the British despot. Ever faithful to their cause amid the winter snows as well as the summer heats ; when full of fears and doubts as well as when victorious ; when en- compassed by enemies, as well as when not; when futigued, destitute of clothing or ammunition, betrayed by traitors, outlawed as rebels, with odds of a hundred Life of Schuyler Colfax, 39 to one against them, they labored on fearlessly, reso- lutely, earnestly, hopefully. A Yorktown came at last, and their trials and devotion were repaid by victory decisive and complete. '' 'Persevere' is indeed a glorious word. It has been a talisman to the oppressed. It has given fortune and honors to the poor and lowly. It will yet give success and triumph to the 'beaten, but not conquered' Whig party." Mr. Colfax was a very ardent admirer of Henry Clay. He felt that the country was dishonored when, in 1844, Mr. Clay was defeated in the contest for the presidency. The October and November elections of 1846 gave hope to the Whig party that in the next Presidential contest they would be victorious. Mr. Colfax, in the ardor of his love for the " man that would rather be right than be President," would gladly have given his influence for Henry Clay, but with the keenness of perception for which he has always been distinguished in reading the political signs of the times, he saw in General Zachary Taylor the available candidate and the coming man, and more than a year before the nomination of General Taylor as the candidate of the Whig party for President, and upon the ground that we are to seek the advance- ment and triumph of principles, not of men, he became the earnest advocate of General Taylor for the presi- dency. Mr. Colfax thus wrote of him for the Register in a brief sketch, which is of permanent interest, not only because of the fine setting in which is placed bio- graphical truth, but also because of its analysis of the military character upon whom the highest civil honors of the great republic are worthily bestowed. 40 Life of Schuyler Colfax, GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR. "'Some men are born great — some achieve greatness — and some have greatness thrust upon them.' Thus reads, in substance, a pithy apothegm, penned by a writer who never missed his mark and never said a foolish thing. The history of the world furnishes ex- amples of each of the three classes thus sketched. An hereditary king in Europe rises before our mind as we think of the first division; his excellency, President Polk, as we turn to the last; and brave 'old Rough and Ready,' as we look for those who, with their own right arm, ' achieve greatness.' " Truly may it be said that General Taylor has been the architect of his own fortunes — the winner, by his own merit, of his just and deserved popularity. Since the first brevet given him by Madison in 1813, for his successful defence of Fort HarrisoD, with a handful of men against four hundred British and Indians, bestowed upon him, not as a mark of favor, but as a just award to cool and unflinching bravery, no adventitious cir- cumstances — no favoritism — no watchful friends in high places — have assisted him in his upward stoppings to the present distinguished position in rank that he has re- ceived. Every battle that he has fought he has won, in spite of all odds; and never yet has he fought a battle in which the weight of numbers has not been largely, often immensely, against him. Triumphing over every difficulty — victorious over all opposition — he has proven himself to be the great Captain of the age, and, at the same time, America's most unassuming citizen. Life of Schuyler Colfax, 41 " We are not of that class who believe that merely military talents, pre-eminent though they may be, will of themselves alone qualify their possessor for the highest civic office in the gift of our Republic. Far from it. Their tendency we believe rather toward the reverse. The fitness of the most of military chieftains for such a post is marred, first, by the fact that their education upon bloody battle-fields makes them too careless of life and blunts the finer feelings of humanity and mercy in their character ; and second, because the imperious power of commanding-generals too often en- genders habits of proud dictation and self-will, and renders them restless and violent at any attempted thwarting of their desires. But, almost universal as are these faults in the character of military officers, General Taylor has proved that they have no abiding place in his. Plain and unassuming as he is in his manners, unostentatious as he is in his deportment and daily life, his soldiers feel that they can approach him as a comrade with no fear of meeting the stern bearing or arrogant rebuke of the proud and haughty General. Ever careful of the lives of his own soldiers, the humanity of his kind and merciful heart extends also to those of his enemy. Witness his acceptance of the capitulation of Monterey, partly to save the lives of the conquered, and in relation to which he has, for that very reason, been so unsparingly censured. Wit- ness his message to a regiment of Mexican troops at Buena Vista, whom our soldiers were cutting to pieces, that, if they would surrender, they should not be harmed. Witness how, in every battle, the tide of bloodshed is promptly arrested at the very moment of surrender. Witness how speedily medical aid is sent 42 Life of Sckuyler Colfax, by him to the wounded of the enemy. Witness how, after the last battle, he drammed out of the camp those retaken deserters, who, according to the articles of war, he could have had hung or shot. His humanity is one of the finest attributes of his character. Fearless and bold as he is in conflict, resolute and determined as he is for victory, no man springs more quickly to arrest the flow of blood than he does the moment it can safely be done. Within the bosom of no man throbs a heart more full of mercy and of kindness. Bright and beauti- ful as are his other finely developed traits of character, this one, in our eyes, viewing him as a man brought up to war, far outshines and outranks them all. It is indeed his crowning excellence. " The military career of General Taylor has truly been a brilliant one. Not a single defeat — not even a repulse mars its constant succession of victories. We have spoken above of his opening one at Fort Harrison in this State, by which he obtained the first brevet ever given in the army. Serving afterwards in the Black Hawk war, without mixing in any actual fighting, he remained in command of the garrison at Prairie du Chien from 1832 to 1836, when he was called to Florida. Amid all the defeats which disgraced the annals of that war, Taylor, in the only battle in which he partici- pated, achieved a most decisive victory at Okee-cho-bee over a large force of Indians, strongly posted in a dense hummock — a victory which virtually ended the war, and which attained for him the brevet rank of Brigadier- Greneral. His triumphs in Mexico, despite every disad- vantage and the odds constantly arrayed against him, are fresh in the minds of our readers. And while on this point, we would say that though Palo Alto, Resaca and Life of Schuyler Colfax, 43 Monterey are victories worthy of any general, the battle of Buena Yista, considering all the circumstances, will stand out on the page of History as the greatest achievement of American arms since Washington led its soldiers to the bloody fields of Yorktown. '' At New Orleans, where Jackson achieved so much glory and renown, the opposing forces were almost equally matched — our army was defended by a strong and ball-proof rampart; they were on their own soil, fighting for their homes, their property and the honor of their wives and daughters; for 'beauty and booty' was the British watchword — they had every thing in their favor. At Buena Yista the little army of Taylor was crippled by the withdrawal of nearly all his regulars; it was in the heart of an enemy's country, four hundred miles from the national border. It was attacked by an army oy ex four times its size; an army fighting for their homes, and fighting, too, in that desperation which makes brave men even of cowards ; an army led on by the ablest General Mexico possessed; and yet, though hundreds deserted him in the crisis of the action, though the over- whelming cloud of Mexicans seemed certain to over- whelm him by the weight of numbers, if not by fighting, yet did old Rough and Ready again come forth from this fiery trial pre- eminently victorious. Again does he send back the news of a brilliant triumph over an army of Mexican veterans, when his countrymen had at best hoped to hear that his wary prudence, foresight and iudgment had preserved his troops from being cut to pieces. Again does he astonish the nation with the tidings of a victory that vies, considering the odds against him, with any of Napoleon's. Again do his brief and modest despatches recount the details of the battle, as if 44 J^ifc of Schuyler Colfax, his officers and men had fought it all themselves, while he had done apparently nothing. "With all the brilliant and pre-eminent talents of Gen- eral Taylor as a military man, his plans of policy, the language of his military despatches, and all his corre- spondence both with the Government and his friends, stamp him a civilian of the highest rank, and prove that though he has so successfully studied military tactics, he is possessed of other talents that would cause him to adorn any station that he might be called on to fill. The signs of the times are plainly indicating that no action, save his own positive refusal, can prevent him from being elevated, by a grateful people, to the chief magistracy of the republic. He will go there, a man of the people, desirous only to administer their affairs as judiciously in the cabinet as he has led their armies in the field, conscious that the measure of his fame is full, and only anxious that no act of his as President may mar his honor or impair the confidence of his countrymen. Entirely estranged as he has been by his military position from the conflicts of politics, he will go to Washington as the President of the people, and not like his prede- cessor, the President of a party ; and will aim so to act, that our whole nation may again, as in the days of the brave Washington and the good Monroe, be united in one, and its citizens dwell together in harmony. Happy indeed for the whole country will be the day when he will stand in front of the Capitol, having taken his last step of promotion upward, to swear fidelity to the Con- stitution and to the interests of that people whose votes' of almost acclamation have called him to their head. That that oath will be faithfully and impartially fulfilled, the whole records of his past life amply testify, and it Life of Schuyler Colfax, 45 requires no prophet's vision to foretell that the adminis- tration of President Taylor will be as happy aid as prosperous as any of its predecessors in any era of our republic's history." Mr. Colfax was a member and one of the Secretaries of the National Convention of 1848, that nominated General Taylor for the Presidency. The sanguine hopes, however, that were founded upon his election, were doomed to disappointment. Death entered the White House for the second time, and took away the head of the nation. The administration of the government by Mr. Fillmore, the succeeding Yice- President, was very different from what it would have been under General Taylor, and its history need not be recounted here. CHAPTER III. NEW ISSUES — WILMOT PROVISO — KNELL OF THE PECU- LIAR INSTITUTIOxN — INDIANA STATE CONVENTION BANK QUESTION — OPPOSITION 'rO THE SEPARATE ARTICLE OF CONSTITLTION. The Mexican war and its issues had introduced new elements into American politics, or at least had so en- larged the sphere of old elements, and had so increased their intensity, that they were as new. A large area of territory had been added to the United States. Was slavery to be introduced into the new territory ? When, during the Mexican war, the President, in a special message to Congress, asked for a considerable sum of money to be placed at his disposal for the sake 46 Life of Schuyler Colfax, of securing, in tlie peace that would soon be made with Mexico, a large portion of the territory of Mexico to be added to the United States, and a bill was intro- duced in the House of Representatives for the purpose of placing this money at the President's disposal, a hasty consultation among Democratic members from the North resulted in a motion by Mr. Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, to add to the first section of the bill the following : " Provided, That, as an express and fundamental con- dition to the acquisition of any territory from the re- public of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropri- ated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted." This became the famous Wilmot Proviso. For the admission of slavery into the southwestern territories there had been claimed the fact that over some of them the jurisdiction of the original slave States had at first extended, and also that the others that came to us by purchase from France and Spain, and from Texas by annexation, had been previously occu- pied by slavery. Slavery was engrafted upon Florida and Louisiana and also upon Texas before they were parts of the United States. But slavery did not exist in the territory to be acquired from Mexico. Twenty years before, Mexico had entirely abolished slavery. The object of the Wilmot Proviso was that slavery might be shut up within the States already occupied by it, and that the free soil acquired from Mexico might remain forever free. The Proviso met with strong op- position in the House, but it finally [lasscd. The Senate, Life of Schuyler Colfax. /\rj however, was not permitted to vote upon it, as it was amoDg the last things passed upon by the House ; and previous to its being acted on by the Senate, Mr. John Davis, of Massachusetts, rising for debate, persisted in talking against time until the hour which had been concurrently fixed for adjournment. The telegraph communicated to the country the pas- sage of this proviso by the House of Eepresentatives, and it was expected to pass without difficulty through the Senate. Of this proviso, and its passage through the House, Mr. Colfax thus wrote, and it will be remembered that this was twenty years ago : " The whole power of the President has been exer- cised to defeat this movement. His patronage, his in- fluence, his offices have been thrown into the scale against it. Thanks to the firmness, the integrity, the fidelity of Northern Congressmen, his counsel has been spurned. True to the impulses of freedom, the popular branch of Congress has, by its action, given embodiment and form to that public opinion of the Northern States which declares: 'Not another inch of slave territory.' It is, indeed, a manly stand. It makes the pulse of those who hope yet to see the day when the chain of human bondage shall be broken, beat quicker and more gladly. It sounds in the ears of those, who prefer an- archy and dissolution to a gradual emancipation, as the knell of 'the peculiar institution.' And like those Christmas chimes, which Dickens so beautifully por- trays, as constantly repeating the same language to the poor Briton, so, wherever throughout the whole South this news shall speed, it will seem to every ear, con- stantly, in expressive language, to ring forth: ^ It must fall! It must fall!' 48 Life of Schuyler Colfax, "We cannot believe that, after this noble stand has been deliberately taken, in full view of the shrewish scolding of the organ, and of the stern indignation of sincere but mistaken Southrons, in defiance of the thun- ders of Executive anger and the blandishments of Ex- ecutive favor, that those who have thus publicly and before the gaze of the world committed themselves, will recede from their determination. " It cannot be that any of them who have thus earned the honor and praise of their constituents will voluntarily prefer, by an abandonment of their position, the disgrace and shame, the reproach and dishonor that would be in such case their only reward. If they do not, there will be a bow of hope to the friends of peace spanning over the miseries of our present war. If it is positively known that all the territory our army can wrest from Mexico is to come into the Union as free States, thus girding the slave States with a belt of freedom, our Southern President will himself begin to consider the war as useless ; and the advice of Dargan of Alabama, and of Calhoun, great, even in his errors, will be heeded. A treaty of peace will soon be signed and ratified, and the country again become contented, prosperous, and happy, with no clash of arms to mar its quiet, no tales of horror to thrill through all its borders." In 1849 the revision of the constitution of Indiana was brought before the people of that State. Since 1816, the time the State was admitted into the Union, the constitution had remained unaltered. At every period when the Legislature sent down the cjuestion of convention or no convention to the people, the answer had come back, " We desire no change ; we would rather Life of Schuyler Colfax. 49 bear what errors there may be in the constitution than hazard it being made worse by amending." In 1828 the political world was agitated by the contest between Jackson and Adams, and the people then most wisely resolved that their constitution should not be touched at such a time of bitter party -strife. In 1840 the question was again submitted to the people, but the country was rocking with that fiercely -fought contest, that most ex- citing conflict, acrimonious on both sides, between Van Buren and Harrison, and again the people wisely said * iVo.' In 1844 the question was again put. The waves of party strife had measurably subsided, when compared with the tempest of the previous national struggle, and though a majority of those who thought upon the question at all voted for a convention, but one-half of the people alto- gether voted, and the popular verdict was too equivocal to warrant the important step of calling such an important body together. In 1849 party strife seemed to have lost much of its bitterness ; it seemed a propitious time for revising the State constitution. The subject was again brought before the people, and a convention for the revision of the constitution determined upon. Mr. Colfax had taken an active part, editorially, in the advocacy of such convention, and by a large majority of votes was elected a delegate to the convention. In this convention Mr. Colfax won for himself no little reputation as a ready debater and fine speaker, a man of generous impulses, of conscientious character and decided ability. He had written a number of articles previous to the calling of the convention, advocating a number of changes; such changes, too, as would make the consti- tution an instrument of principles rather than of laws, leaving to the Legislatures and Courts their appropriate 50 Life of Schuyler Colfax, duties. These articles were very generally copied by the papers of the State. In the convention he was the suc- cessful advocate of several of its most imporant measures. Previous to his election he had advocated a general banking law for the State, in opposition to exclusive chartered monopolies; a general banking law, however, which should provide the amplest guarantees for the security of the bill-holder; a general law, too, which should not in its turn become a monopoly, but which should be open to such improvements as "experience, a great teacher in political as well as social life," might point out as safer and better. In the convention the bank question was one of its most exciting questions. Mr. Colfax was the author of a compromise section, authorizing a general banking law, that harmonized con- flicting views. "To have been the pacificator of this important measure," said the 8taie Journal of Indianap- olis of that date, " is certainly creditable to Mr. Colfax, and is evidence of his high standing and influence in the convention." Mr. Colfax took very decided ground in the conven- tion against a section in the constitution prohibiting the further immigration of negroes and mulattoes, and pro- hibiting those in the State from purchasing real estate. The old constitution contained at its opening this decla- ration: "That the general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government may be recognized and unalterably established, we declare that all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights; among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, and of acquiring^ possessing and obtaining happiness and safety." The change proposed was certainly ''not a step forward but Life of Schuyler Colfax. 51 backward; not a step impelled by tbe out-gushing "heart of humanity, but a stride backwards into the 'iarkness of past prejudice and oppression." Mr. Colfax inew he was arguing before men whose minds were possessed by a strong prejudice against a particular sub- ject and a particular class and race ; he knew, too, that it would be in vain to change the expressed will of a very decided majority of the convention, but he felt it his duty, and his heart prompted him to make a speech as able as he could " against the proposed measure, and in favor of equal and exact justice to all men, regardless of creed, race or color." But the effort proved fruitless. The convention submitted it in a separate article to the peo- ple, and they adopted it by an overwhelming majority. To the honor of the present Supreme Bench of Indiana, they have annulled it as in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, thus afl&rming as just Mr. Colfax's arguments against it sixteen years before. CHAPTER IV. NOMINATED FOR CONGRESS — COMPETITOR — STUMPING — TARRYING AT JERICHO — CONGRESSIONAL CHAIR AND CONSCIENCE — DEFEAT — DELEGATE TO NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1852 — STIRRING SCENES. In 1851, when but three years past the constitutional age necessary for a seat in Congress, Mr. Colfax was nominated by the Whigs of his district as their candidate 52 Life of Schuyler Colfax, for Congress. This nomination was unsought, unex- pected and unanimous. His competitor was Dr. Graham N. Fitch, then incumbent of the Congressional chair of the district. Dr. Fitch was an able and experienced politician and "a good stumper." According to the custom from the beginning of the Hoosier State, the candidates stumped the district together. In company, they traversed the sixteen counties constituting the dis- trict — rode together, ate together, sometimes slept to- gether, but attempted to slash each other most savagely on the stump. Seventy appointments for speaking were kept, requiring more than a thousand miles travelling. The candidates rode sometimes forty or fifty miles a day, besides making two speeches, sometimes taking supper at midnight, and sometimes not at all. The candidates began their canvass in the southern part of the district, where Dr. Fitch was at home and Mr. Colfax was a stranger. Dr. Fitch made the opening- speech. Just before sitting down, hoping to overwhelm his youthful competitor with ridicule, he advised him, instead of attempting to get a seat in Congress, to tarry at Jericho till his beard should be grown. The Doctor had been artful and unfair in his speech, hoping to use up his competitor at once. This allusion to the tarrying of his beardless competitor at Jericho called out the vociferous yells and derisive laughter of his partisans. Before that derisive laughter had died away, Mr. Colfax was called upon to come forward and begin his first speech in his first canvass for Congress. Stepping forward quickly, and glancing around with his keen, searching eye, he took the hearts of the audience captive, as with the readiness of a practised debater, and with a just indigna- tion; that made his words sound like the twang of a bow Life of Schuyler Colfax. 53 that had sent forth a well-sped arrow, he said, " I was not aware, my fellow-citizens, that brass and beard were the necessary qualifications of a Congressman. If, in your judgment, it is so,. I must renounce all hopes of your votes, as I confess, what you cannot but see, that my competitor has a superabundance of both." The cries of " Good, good," and the ringing cheers th-at greeted this opening, told the Doctor that if he was a Goliath, he had, in the stripling before him, a David to contend with. Upon another occasion during this canvass the follow- ing noteworthy incident occurred : The new constitution, framed by the convention of which Mr. Colfax had been a member, was then before the people for their adoption or rejection. The clause prohibiting the immigration of free colored persons into the State was to be submitted to the people separately. This provision of the constitution %[r. Colfax had warmly and strenuously opposed, though in vain, as unjust, op- pressive, and opposed to the supreme law of the land. The competing Congressional candidates had agreed, however, beforehand, that the issues before the people, upon the adoption of the constitution and of this sepa- rate clause of the constitution, were not to be brought into their canvass, as they had nothing at all to do with Congressional matters. But Dr. Fitch, knowing the character of the crowd before him, and that many in it had strong prejudices against the negro, and were strongly opposed to the course which Mr. Colfax and those with him had pursued in the convention, in answer to a public question from one of his friends, replied that he was heartily in favor of the adoption of this separate clause of the Constitution. Mr. Colfax met the unexpected issue fairly and frankly. He stated 54 Life of Schuyler Colfax. the previous agreement of the candidates; he showed the matter had no relevancy to the Congressional can- vass, and then fully and fairly and boldly stated his views. " These/' said he, " are my conscientious convic- tions. If you ask me to sacrifice them for a seat in Congress, I tell you frankly I cannot do it. I would not act counter to my convictions of duty, if you could give me fifty terms in Congress." His bold, manly course lost him no friends from among those whom his competitor had hoped to gain, and who voted so over- whelmingly for the article Mr. Colfax so inflexibly and boldly opposed. Mr. Colfax far surpassed the expectations of all his friends in the canvass which he made. He was defeated, however, as his friends claimed, through illegal votes along the line of a railroad, then in process of construc- tion, through the district. The majority against him was about two hundred. In 1852 Mr. Colfax was a delegate to the National Convention that nominated General Scott for the Presi- dency. He was also one of the secretaries of the con- vention. The following editorial photograph of the convention in the Register presents us with a vivid picture of the times : STIREING SCENES OE THE CONVENTION. " The Whig National Convention at Baltimore was not only 2ifull convention, but a monster one. Every State in the Union — far-distant California not excepted, and Texas included — was fully represented, and many of them more than fully. One delegate for each electoral vote would have made a convention of two hundred and Life of Schuyler Colfax, 55 ninety-five members — certainly as large a body as conld be kept in order by one presiding officer. But a large majority of tlie Soutbern States bad sent far more tban tbis number, to wbicb, bowever, every Nortbern State, witbout exception, bad limited itself. For instance, Virginia, witb fifteen electoral votes, bad about forty regular delegates, most of ber districts baving tbree delegates eacb. Kentucky and Tennessee, witb twelve electoral votes eacb, bad twice tbat number of delegates. Louisiana, six votes, bad twenty-five delegates on tbe ground, baving really cbosen one bundred and sixty at ber State convention. Tbus tbere were fully five bundred delegates upon tbe platform, all interested, all excited, and, we were going to say, sometimes almost all talking at once. Tbe very fact tbat tbe division on tbe prominent rival candidates was to a great extent a sectional one, (Scott's one bundred and tbirty-one votes on tbe first ballot being every one Nortbern men, unless Delaware may be considered a Soutbern State,) added to tbe excitement of tbe occasion. Tbe tbousands of spectators wbo filled every place in tbe galleries and on tbe floor wbere a buman being could sit or stand, and wbo were not cbary in expressing tbeir feelings also by applause, bisses, and parentbetical remarks, did not tend to lessen tbe ' noise and confusion.' Wbile tbe ladies — God bless tbem ! — wbo by bundreds tbronged tbe gallery allotted to tbem, could not be expected to restrain murmurs of approbation, tbougb tbey always bad tbe good taste, wbicb tbeir worser balves did not, of never manifesting dissent in an offensive manner. Witb all tbese con- comitants, so agreeable at mass meetings, but so noise- provoking at conventions, it is not to be wondered at tbat tbe tumult often exceeded tbat of tbe Pbiladelpbia ^6 Life of Schuyler Colfax. convention of 1848, which we supposed then could never be surpassed. Congressmen looked on in amazement to see the convention throwing even their scenes of excite- ment into the shade ; and we were ourselves reminded of Ik Marvel's description of the clamor which so often reigned supreme in the French Legislative Assembly of nine hundred members ; and looked to see if our presi- dent would not, like Dupin, endeavor to restore order by putting on his hat and ringing a bell till its tongue should silence all the others. But, happily, every storm is suc- ceeded by a calm, and the rainbow of promise spanned the horizon long before the convention had closed its labors. "We must allude to two or three of the stirring scenes of this eventful assembly. The first was when Botts replied to a speech of Choate's, in which that dis- tinguished gentleman, in an eloquent effort, which, how- ever, did not meet public expectation, not content with eulogizing Mr. Webster, had gone out of his way to sneer at General Scott as ' having a letter in every man's breeches pocket.' The indignant reply of the fearless Virginian raised a perfect whirlwind of applause amongst the friends of General Scott, and his cool disregard of all attempts to cross-question or confuse him, heightened our former opinion of his ability. We need scarcely add that Mr. Choate took it all back. " But decidedly the wildest scene of excitement during ^ the whole session was during an encounter between Cabell, of Florida, and Eaymond, of the New York Times. The former, who had been ofhciously interfering in every thing during the convention, and who is well- known as one of the Southern Hotspurs, took occasion, daring some remarks of Mr. Raymond, to ask him some Life of Schuyler Colfax, 57 questions, whicli, in their language and inferences, were slanderous. The prompt reply of the latter, but thirty years of age, and so slender that he weighs but one hun- dred and twenty pounds, was, that the statement of the gentleman from Florida contained such a bald untruth that he was surprised he would make it. Cabell rose instantly, pale with rage at the imputation, talked about vindicating his character without the aid of the conven- tion, and declared that he would not submit to such language from any person whatever. Raymond as coolly as if sitting in his editorial chair, though the co]i- vention swayed to and fro with excitement, promptly turned and facing Cabell, who was about ten feet distant, repeated all that he had said with special emphasis, and v/ith a clear, ringing voice that was heard to the remotest corner of the vast hall, added, 'and let me assure the gentleman from Florida that whenever he utters untruths with regard to me, he shall submit to whatever I may say in repelling them.' This fearless braving of South- ern chivalry, so unusual amongst Northern men, caused the whole convention apparently to rise as one man and give vent to their feelings in prolonged applause — bouquets showered down from the daughters of the sunny South in the galleries upon the head of the brave young Northerner — even South Carolina and Louisiana dele- gates congratulated him personally on his fearlessness. Cabell took back the offensive question, and Eaymond 'accepted the explanation as satisfactory.' " Another stirring scene was when Colonel Williams, of Kentucky, declared, on the forty-seventh ballot, that though his delegation persisted in voting for Mr. Fillmore, his first choice was the heroic Winfield Scott. Every sentence of his eloquent speech was applauded to the 58 Life of Schuyler Colfax, eobo, and when he first mentioned the name of our great General, the bouquets poured upon him from the galleries without stint. His concluding eulogy upon the old soldier left the convention in a perfect v/hirlwind of excitement. " But the most gratifying of all was, after the fifty- third decisive ballot, when the president had declared General Scott duly nominated as the Whig candidate for the Presidency of the United States. A resolution was. offered that the nomination be made unanimous. And State after State, whose delegates, it had been de- clared, would secede from the convention if he was nominated, gave in their cordial adhesion, pledging all their Whig constituents to an enthusiastic support of the ticket. The whole convention would sometimes be upon their feet, and North Carolina, Louisiana, Yirginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were specially cheered. The scene was one worthy of the painter's pencil, if he could only transfer the exuberant enthusiasm upon the canvas. " Finally the convention, after five days' session, ad- journed, with hearty good feeling prevailing in every section of it, and with an union and harmony in behalf of the ticket, presenting a strong contrast with the closing scenes of the conventions of 1840 and 1848." Life of Schuyler Colfax, 59 CHAPTEE V. GENERAL SCOTT— WHIG PARTY — CAUSE OF ITS DEFEAT — HOPE FOR THE FUTURE — STEADFASTNESS — THIRTY- THIRD CONGRESS — SENATE TERRITORIAL COMMITTEE — REPEAL OF MISSO-URI COMPROMISE REPORTED. General Scott^ however, did not prove the victorious leader of the Whig party that he had been of the armies of his country. Of the defeat of the Whigs in that con- test and the future of their party, Mr. Colfax thus wrote : THE WHIG PARTY. " The official returns of the late Presidential election are not yet fully made up, California, Texas, etc., being be- hind ; but their summing up will be in round numbers about as follows : Pierce, 1,500,000 votes ; Scott, 1,300,- 000; Hale, 150,000; Troup, Southern Rights, 5,000; Broome, Native American, 2,000 ; Webster, Union, 8,000. The total vote of the nation will foot up about 3,000,000; of which General Pierce will have about one-half, or more probably, a very small fraction over half. " We dissent in the furthest degree from those in our ranks, who, since the defeat last month, speak of the Whig party as ' dead! It is galling, we know, to see, as Mr. Greeley saw, thousands of men, who called them- selves Whigs, vote directly for Pierce and the ascend- ancy of Locofoco principles, in order, as they openly avowed, to revenge themselves for their defeat at the 6o Life of Schuyler Colfax. National Convention. But this shameless recreancy does not in the least impair the value of genuine Whig principles, the necessity for a Whig party, or the duty of Whig voters. A great party, a great cause, may be stricken down by foul treachery. But the sleepless clock of time ticks on, and brings around at last the hour of retribution. "The Whig party has passed through bitterer re- verses than the one which has just overtaken it. When its champions declared manfully their resistance to Executive power, and the popularity of General Jackson rolled like a huge wave over the country, destroying nearly all who opposed him, those fearless defenders of principle quailed not, faltered not, yielded not. In those days, as no'A^, the office-seekers, the camp-followers of the party, deserted to the ranks of the victorious chief- tain; but the faithful champions of Whig principles, undismayed by the cheerless prospect, stood fast. " That dynasty passed away. Its powerful and pop- ular head, whose iron will had bound his party together in unity and in triumph, issued his farewell address to his countrymen, declaring that he left this great country free, prosperous and happy, designated his successor, and retired from the Executive chair. In that campaign of 1836, the prospect was even more forbidding. The members of the Whig party, almost disbanded, certainly disunited and hopeless, fought in different sections of the country, like the Bunker Hill riflemen, on their own hook. The Southwest rallied under Hugh L. White, the Northwest under Harrison, the Northeast under Webster, and Martin Van Buren came in by a large majority over all. The State of New York he carried by over 28,000 majority, larger than she gives now to Life of Schuyler Colfax, 6i Pierce, who lias but one thousand votes over half the total number of her electors, and yet the defeated Whig party stood fearless, resolute as ever. A single year passed by : the Conservatives, incensed at the destructive policy of the administration, forsook it, and the more readily because they saw that the great Whig party maintained its organization and would stand by them effectively in the position Avhich they took. The over- whelming majority of New York was reversed in a single year — the Empire State repudiated her own 'favorite son,' as he had been called, and struck a blow, that paved the way for the triumph of 1840. '• The fruits of the victory of that celebrated year were turned into ashes as the body of Harrison mouldered in its tomb; and his successor, like the viper, stung the party which had warmed him into political life and power. But despite that signal treachery, with all the official patronage of the administration they had elected turned malignantly against them, and recreant Congressmen aiding the defection by going over to the enemy, this noble party rallied again, purged as it was of its camp-followers, and would have elevated its chosen leader, Henry Clay, to the Presidency, but for the fatal influence of his own Texas letters to Alabama. "Mr. Polk entered the Presidential mansion. The Mexican war followed. The Whig party generally took the ground that it was unnecessary and could have been avoided. For this they were unjustly denounced in Congress and out of it, as trait6rs to their country, as preferring the triumphs of the Mexicans to those of our own arms ; and every attempt was made, in every way, from the message of the President to its echoes on the stump and in the press, to array public prejudice against 62 Life of Schuyler Colfax, it. Yet in 1848, with all the prestige of that war, and of its annexation of California, New Mexico, etc., against ns, it again achieved a national triumph, and the admin- istration of Mr. Polk was succeeded by one thoroughly Whig in all its departments. "If others can see no hope in the future, we, with this retrospect before us, confess that our vision is more sanguine. There is yet work for the Whig party to accomplish — there are yet victories for it to achieve, if it remains faithful to its principles and its organization. In the hey-day of prosperity the name of Democracy is potent, and its candidates ride on the topmost waves of popularity. " * Each petty hand can steer a ship becalmed.' But when the horizon is overcast with clouds, when experi- ments upon the currency or the peace of the country cause revulsions or disasters, financial or national, the people look instinctively to the Whig party and its conservative policy for relief. When the Democracy in power are tested by their acts rather than by their name, the contrast enures to Whig success. Thus was it from 1836 to 1840— thus was it from 1844 to 1848— and thus it will be again. "The Democratic party has triumphed at the recent election because, aided by divisions in our own ranks, it has drawn to its embrace the most discordant mate- rials ever leagued together to achieve a triumph over a common foe. Thus we have seen the Wilmots and Van Burens of the North, and the Soules and the South Carolinians of the South, regardless of the vast differ- ence in the views they professed to hold on slavery, leagued together in the same party. Thus also the Pro- tective Tariff Democrats of Pennsylvania and the pro- Life of Schuyler Colfax. G';^^ tection -haters everywhere have united ; and thus also the Harbor Improvement Democrats of Wisconsin, Michigan, etc., crossed palms with those who denounce such appropriations as both unconstitutional and inex- pedient. While free soil warred against us on account of our ' platform,' cotton stabbed us on account of our candidate ; and when the State elections of August and October proved adverse, those in our ranks who cared more for spoils than principle, forsook us for the party that they foresaw was to be victorious. " It seems impossible that a party thus constituted shall hold together, with its numbers unimpaired. It seems impossible that the administration can justify the hopes, either in principle or patronage, of all the dis- cordant factions which have brought it into power. But if it does, rather than we should, like cravens, desert in adversity those principles which we professed to esteem and support under more favorable circum- stances, we would rather go down to a certain defeat in 1856, with banners flying, than to abandon our national organization. With a leader of whom we will have a right to be proud, let us strike for what we believe to be right, and deserve success, even if we fail to attain it. Thus alone can we prove ourselves to be worthy to bear the name honored by the Whigs of the Eevoiu- tion, who preferred to stand by the right, amid reverses and gloom, rather than by laying down their arms to purchase a lifetime of inglorious ease. There are Arnolds now as then, but the party is purged of them. Our ranks may be thinned by the desertion of the timorous and the recreant. We may feel politically the snows and the trials of Valley Forge. Bat, faithful to duty and principle, the darker hours will pass away, 64 I^'^fs of Schuyler Colfax, and the rays of a Yorktown sun will yet sliine brightly upon our banners." The great Whig party, however, was destined soon to pass away. The principles and policy for which it had contended ceased to be the paramount questions of the land. Other issues, greater and more vital, came before the people, which not only caused the abandonment of the organization of the Whig, but a grand upheaval in the Democratic party. The Thirty-third Congress, the first under the admin- istration of Mr. Pierce, made itself famous by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Early in the session a bill was introduced into the Senate for the organization of the Territory of Nebraska. This bill was referred to the committee on territories, of which Senator Douglas, of Illinois, was chairman. The first bill that was reported to the Senate by the committee, through their chairman, left undecided all the disputed questions respecting the entrance of slavery into the territories. Its language was : '' Your committee do not feel themselves called to enter upon the discussion of these controverted ques- tions. They involve the same grave issues which pro- duced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850. As Congress deemed it wise and prudent to refrain from deciding the matters in contro- versy then, either by afiirming or repealing the Mexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of the Constitution, and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slave property in the territories, so your com- mittee are not prepared to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either by affirming or repealing the eighth section of the Mis- Life of Schuyler Colfax, 65 souri act, or bj any act declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute." At the request of Senator Douglas the bill was recommitted in consequence of opposition made, and especially because of notice given, by Mr. Dixon, of Kentucky, that when the bill came up he should move, as an amendment to it, that so much of the eighth sec- tion of an act, approved March 6, 1820, entitled " An act to authorize the people of the Missouri territory to form a constitution and State government, and for the admis- sion of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit slavery in cer- tain territories,' as declares, ' That, in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, slavery and involun- tary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly con- victed, shall be forever prohibited,' shall not he so con- strued as to apply to territory contemplated hy this act^ or to any other territory of the United States ; but that the citi- zens of the several States or territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the terri- tories or States to be formed therefrom, as if the said act, entitled as aforesaid, and approved as aforesaid, had never been passed." Mr. Douglas reported his new bill January 23d, 1854. It differed so much from the previous bill that it hardly resembled it, save that it contemplated the same region . of country. Its essential feature was that it embodied the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 66 Life of Schuyler Colfax, CHAPTER VI. NEBRASKA BILL — ORIGIN OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE — ^IN- JUSTICE OF ITS REPEAL — ACTION OF SENATOR DOUGLAS — THOMAS F. MARSHALL, OF KENTUCKY — ENLISTING UNDER THE BANNER OF REPEAL. The introduction of the Nebraska bill into the Senate by Senator Douglas was the inauguration of a grand political era. ' The hearts of all the people were stirred. Mass conventions were held throughout the North ; old political differences were obliterated ; old parties were disintegrating and new parties were forming for the new issues that were coming before the people. Of the Ne- braska bill, Mr. Colfax thus wrote in the Register at that time: THE NEBEASKA BILL. *' Thirty years had passed away after the adoption of the Federal Constitution before the first serious struggle between the North and the South agitated the country. Louisiana had been peacefully acquired from France ; and that part of it known as the State of Louisiana had been peacefully admitted as a slave State without ques- tion or conflict. At the earliest period, 1808, when Con- gress could constitutionally prohibit the slave trade, it had done so ; and instead of its former acquiescence in its horrors, had placed it under the ban of the law as piracy. Legislation on both sides of the slavery ques- tion had been tranquilly enacted. But when Missouri, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 67 all of whose territory was north of 36° 80', applied for admission as a slave State, the whole North with one voice said 'No.' During two sessions her claim for admission was resisted by almost a geographical vote ; the North, being a majority, voting against it, and the South, the minority, for it. The public excitement increased as the discussion was prolonged. Every Northern State, through its Legislature, protested against its admission ; the South complained with bitterness that their rights were assailed, and the Union rocked to its centre. At last, Henry Clay, anxious for peace, proposed, as a com- promise, that Missouri should be admitted with her slave constitution, but that in the remainder of the territory acquired from France, stretching over what were then considered desert plains, to the crests of the Eocky Mountains, slavery should be forever prohibited. It was no wonder that the South joyfully acceded to this. A few Northern members, wearied out with the pro- longed contest, joined them and secured its passage by a close vote. John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, Wil- liam Wirt, of Virginia, and William H. Crawford, of Georgia, gave to the President written opinions in favor of the constitutionality of the bill ; and James Monroe, a Virginia President, affixed to it his signature. The South were victors of the sharply-contested battle-field. They obtained all the then present advantage ; while the share of the North in the compromise was to be enjoyed perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty, perhaps not till one hun- dred years afterward. The South rejoiced — the North mourned — but the contest was over. " For thirty-four years this compromise has been held sacred. During that long term, longer than the existence of a generation of men, the South has enjoyed, without 68 Life of Schuyler Colfax, fear of molestation, the great benefit whicli slie gained by its passage. Missouri's slaveholding delegations in both Houses have assisted in shaping the legislation of the country — her votes aided to pass the Compromise Measures of 1850 — on one or two of them, her members turned the doubtful scale against the North, and her number of slaves has increased from ten thousand to eighty-seven thousand. Propositions of various kinds have been made, during that time, to amend the Consti- tution, but no statesman, no Senator, no Congressman, no President, from the North or the South, has ever proposed an amendment to the Missouri Compromise, in any of its features ; much less its abrogation or repeal. It was considered a compact which the plighted faith of the South required should be faithfully fulfilled. They had secured by it a State, having an equal vote in the Senate with the teeming millions of New York's popu- lation. The North, as its share, had obtained only an unpeopled territory, with no voice or vote in the Na- tional Councils. " At last, a Senator representing a free State, though said to be the owner of a plantation in a Southern one — Senator Douglas, of Illinois — proclaims himself the champion in the United States Senate of a bill for the organization of this vast territory, extending from the borders of Missouri and Iowa to the boundaries of California, Oregon, and Utah, which declares that this sacred, time-honored compact is null and void — that it is inconsistent with the principles of the Compromise of 1850, and is therefore abrogated — and, we regret to say, this unjust act is certain to pass the Senate, and almost certain to pass the House by a large majority. Trampling under foot the noble invocation of the states- Life of Schuyler Colfax, 69 man-philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, to the first Ameri- can Congress — ' Step to the very verge of power vested in you to discourage every species of traffic in the per- sons of our fellow-men' — an American Congress, in this noon of the nineteenth century, prepares the way for the entrance of slavery, with all its blight and evil, into a vast expanse of territory, larger in its area than all the free States of the Eepublic, before the admission of Cali- fornia. And this, too, at the sacrifice of honor and of plighted faith. 'A single paragraph will suffice to show the fallacy of the weak subterfuge, under the cover of which the slavery-prohibition of the Missouri Compromise is sought to be repealed. The Territorial Compromises (Utah, New Mexico, etc.) passed in 1850. During all the de- bates upon them, not the slightest whisper was heard of any intention thereby to repeal the Missouri Compro- mise. No speaker, no committee, no report, no press took that ground then or since. In no discussions upon the subject afterwards was it ever adduced by friend or foe. Every one understood that the Compromise of 1850 re- lated to the territory acquired from Mexico, not to the territory legislated upon in 1820, which had been ac- quired from France. Three years after 1850, no longer ago than last March, Senator Douglas himself urged upon Congress the passage of a bill, already adopted by the House, for organizing Nebraska, wliich was silent on the slavery question, silent on the repeal or supersedure of the Missouri Compromise. In his speech he never even hinted that the Freedom clause of that Compromise had been in the slightest degree affected by the legisla- tion of 1850, nor did any other Senator. On the con- trary, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, now the acting Vice- yo Life of Schuyler Colfax, President of the United States in the Senate, in Lis speech, March 3d, 1853, declared that he had thought of opposing the bill, but that he saw ' no prospect, no hope of a re- peal of the Missouri Compromise,' that 'that great error was irremediahle,'' and that 'we mig;ht therefore as well agree to the admission of this territory now as next year, or five or ten years hence 1' (Cong. Globe, Yol. 26, p. 1,112). And no Senator, not even Douglas, rose to inform him that it had been superseded three years before. Not even the Washington Union^ with its eyes so intent on the interests of slavery, ever discovered this alleged repeal, until Senator Douglas, in his bid for the Presidency, avowed it as the pretext for his recre- ancy to the interests of freedom. " Nay, more. At the opening of the present session, Senator Dodge, of Iowa, now one of Douglas' followers, introduced a Nebraska bill, copied from the one of last session, again silent on slavery, and Douglas himself, in reporting on it from the Committee on Territories, on the 4th of January, though desiring and intending to open the door to slavery, dared not then declare the Compromise repealed. He said, on the contrary, that as the framers of the Compromise of 1850 deemed it * wise and prudent ' not to attempt, in their bills, to de- cide that the Mexican anti-slavery laws were in force or abrogated, so he deemed it equally wise and prudent not to affirm that the Missouri Compromise was or was not in force in Nebraska. But the South asked more than this ; if his bid was to be considered by them at all. Accordingly, on the 10th of January^ another sec- tion was added to the bill, declaring that all slavery questions should be left to the settlers in the territory, which would certainly be a virtual repeal of the decla- Life of Schuyler Co fax, 71 ration in the Missouri Compromise, that 'slavery should be forever prohibited' there. Still the South asked more. There were fears that this might not be sufficient. And on the 23d of January, Mr. Douglas offered a new bill, which, in the very teeth of his report, made but nineteen days previously, declared that ' the Missouri Compromise was superseded by the principles of the Compromise of 1850, and is therefore declared inopera- tive,' language which he has again changed since, so as to read that it is 'inconsistent ' therewith, and therefore null and void. And this bill is, in all probability, to become the law of the land. " We pass over, for want of space, the point raised by the opponents of the bill, and already alluded to and explamed in our columns, that the very language of one of the Com.promise acts of 1850, aflQ.rms the spirit of the Missouri Compromise relative to the absolute prohibi- tion of slavery north of 36° 30', and will make a brief comment on the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which the friends of the bill pretend to defend. " It is republican, says Senator Douglas, to let the people of the territory legislate on their institutions for themselves; it is unconstitutional to restrict them by such a prohibition as was contained in Mr. Clay's Com- promise of 1850. The answer is a plain one. Congress, by the national Constitution, is their supreme legislature, clothed even with the power of dissenting from the acts of a territorial legislature on the merest local questions. And the Constitution itself vests in Congress, in the most explicit language, the authority 'to make all need- ful rules and regulations respecting the territories.' If it is so anti-republican for Congress to regulate their institutions until they become matured into States, why 72 Life of Schuyler Colfax, does not Senator Douglas give them the power to elect their own governor by their own votes ? Why does he provide that their judges, who have power over their property and lives, shall be appointed by the President and Senate, instead of being selected by themselves ? Why have they not a right, through representatives, to votes on the floor of both branches of Congress, espe- cially on questions affecting their own local interests ? Why cannot they pass their own laws, unfettered by the reserved privilege of Congress to reject or annul them? Simply, because Congress is their higher legislature, possessing the same power over them that State legisla- tures have within their appropriate limits. If the latter can abolish slavery in their respective States, if they deem it expedient or needful, so equally may Congress prohibit slavery in the territories of the United States, whenever they may deem that prohibition a just and ' needful rule and regulation.' The point seems too plain a one to be contested. " Slavery does not now exist on a single foot of Ne- braska soil. There may be a few slaves there, as there may be also a few whisky-sellers to the Indians, in spite of the absolute prohibition against both. And when the question comes up, whether this great evil is to be al- lowed to darken that great basin of our country, between our present frontier and the Eocky Mountains, soon to be densely peopled, with all the accessories of Anglo- Saxon civilization, with growing cities springing up in its valleys, with busy manufactories on the margin of its streams, with the spires of churches and the sight of numerous school-houses gladdening the eye, with long trains of railroad cars bearing the commerce of the world, rushing eastward and westward on their iron Life of Schuyler Colfax, 73 tracks, we should have, all of us, but one answer to give. Eegard for honor and good faith should impel the South, and regard for freedom and liberty should com- pel the North, to remember and to heed the language of that eloquent Kentuckian, Thomas F. Marshall, when, in 1840, he warred with the Wickliffes on the question of the prohibition of further slave importation into Ken- tucky : *' ' I have said that I consider negro slavery as a polit- ical misfortune. The phrase was too mild. It is a cancer — a withering pestilence, an unmitigated curse. I speak not in the spirit of a puling and false philan- thropy. I was born in a slave State. I was nursed by a slave. My life has been saved by a slave. To me custom has made the relation familiar, and I see nothing horrible in it. I am a Virginian by descent. Every cross in my blood, so far as I can trace it, in the paternal and maternal line, is Virginian. It is the only State of the Union in which I ever resided, save Kentucky. I was never north of Chesapeake bay. My friends, my family, my sympathies, my habits, my education, are Virginian. Yet I consider negro slavery as a political cancer and a curse. And she taught me so to consider it. Hear her own early declaration — ponder on her history — look at her present condition.' " Whatever others may do, when Congress, seduced by Executive patronage and trammelled by political dictation, forgetful of plighted faith, passes this bill, we enlist under the banner of Eepeal. Whether successful or defeated, we will go with the opponents of this bill before the people, on an appeal to them from the recreancy of their representatives. Oh! that Henry Clay, the author of this Compromise, now scouted from the coun- cils of our country, were living this day to lead on this 74 Life of Schuyler Co fax, conflict. But, if the grave had not closed upon bim, the men who twice appealed to him to settle agitation by compromise, even at the hazard of his own prospects and popularity, would not have dared to lay their finger on this, which, if undisturbed, would have proved, in its final result, the noblest act of his eventful Ccireer. But in what a position does this place us? When foreigners reproach us with the dark shadow that American slavery casts on our ISTational escutcheon, its inconsistency with our eulogies on freedom, etc., our ready excuse is, ' The institution existed here before our birth as a nation ; it is under the control of States, who think they cannot abolish it without risk of great evil.' But here is a vast territory yet unpeopled. It lies before Congress, like the mind of an infant child before its parents, ready to receive good or evil impressions. Thus far it has been protected by a solemn compact of our fathers against the footsteps of the slave ; and they declared, the N'orth and the South in council together, that this protection should exist forever.^ That never, while time had an existence, and Congress had an au- thority over it, should the clank of the slave's fetters or the crack of the overseer's lash be heard within its limits. But though our National laws condemn the importation of slaves into our borders as piracy, and hang the men engaged in it as worse than murderers, statesmen from the North and South join now with each other to break down the wall of prohibition, which Henry Clay proposed, which the South built, which Monroe and Calhoun, Wirt and Crawford, approved, to make plighted faith but a byword, and fidelity to free- dom a reproach. For one, we wash our hands of it, now and forever." Life of Schuyler Colfax, 75 CHAPTER VTI. FINAL PASSAGE OF NEBRASKA BILL— EARNEST PROTEST — REFUSAL OF NOMINATION TO CONGRESS IN 1852 — ACCEPTANCE UPON THE NEBRASKA ISSUE IN 1854 — • THE MAJORITY OF 1776 — THIRTY-FOURTH CONGRESS — UNRIVALLED CONTEST FOR SPEAKER — WORTH OF PARLIAMENTARY SKILL — N. P. BANKS, SPEAKER. Upon the final passage of tlie Nebraska bill, three months afterwards, Mr. Colfax thus wrote : "The conspirators against freedom are triumphant. At the fitting hour of midnight, on Monday last, in the House of Eepresentatives, the Nebraska bill passed by, a majority of thirteen, and the heart of our continent is thrown open for the free and unrestricted admission of slavery. The compact made by the second generation of American freemen in 1820, whereby that vast region between the Mississippi Valley and the Eocky Mountains, dedicated to liberty forever, has been ruthlessly abro- gated by the representatives of their successors, and the South to-day repudiates what it forced upon the North and bound it to but yesterday. " For one — whatever others may do — we shall neither recommend nor practise submission to this outrage. The North was forced into the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and quietly acquiesced. The South took Missouri and Arkansas as slave States, as their share of the bar- gain, and the North waited patiently thirty-four years for the maturing of its portion. In 1850 the South forced the North again into another compromise, some of the features of which were made specially and, we 76 Life of Schuyler Colfax. believe, purposely distasteful and repulsive to her citi- zens ; and again she acquiesced. After having tested her submissive powers by forcing her into compromises, the new policy is resolved upon of forcing her out of those which do not seem calculated to enure to the benefit of slavery. The Arabs say, ' It is the last ounce that breaks the camel's back ;' and we believe that this last attempt is destined to prove that the North is not to be ridden over rough-shod hereafter — that, in a word, tliere is now a North / But whatever others may resolve upon, we, for one, go back now to the policy of our Eevolutionary forefathers — of Jefferson, who strove to dedicate every foot of the territories of the nation to eternal and irrepealable freedom — to the statesman- philosopher Franklin, who earnestly petitioned the first Congress ' that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men.' We go back to the platform of the united North in 1819, (would that it had 7iever been departed from,) when the Legisla- tures of every Northern State declared that no new State should be admitted in any quarter of the republic on any pretext whatever which tolerates or sanctions the institution of slavery." This was a bold declaration for lourteen years ago. In 1852 Mr. Colfax had been tendered the nomina- tion to Congress by the Whigs of his district, but he positively refused to accept it. The district at that election gave twelve hundred Democratic majority; a Democratic increase since his canvass of one thousand. Dr. Norman Eddy, of South Bend, and fellow-townsman of Mr. Coifax, had been the successful candidate. As a Free Soil Democrat, he had carried the district by Life of Schuyler Co fax, 77 this large majority. Dr. Eddy returned home on a visit while the Nebraska bill was still pending in Congress. While at home he was strongly urged by friends and neighbors to oppose the Nebraska bill. Among those who thus solicited him was Mr. Colfax. To have fol- lowed such a course would undoubtedly have secured Dr. Eddy's return to Congress by an overwhelming majority, and among the most earnest and efiicient laborers for his re-election would have been Mr. Colfax. But Dr. Eddy voted for the Nebraska bill. In August, 1854, a People's Convention of all opposed to the prin- ciples of the Nebraska bill was called, to nominate a candidate for Consfress. It was the lar<2fest convention that had ever been held in the district. Mr. Colfax was unanimously nominated as its candidate for Congress, and Dr. Eddy was nominated by the Democracy for re- election. The last of August they began their joint canvass and went over the district together, discussing the great question of the day before all the people. The result was that Mr. Colfax was elected by the memorable majority of seventeen hundred and seventy -six, although Dr. Eddy had carried the district in his previous canvass by about twelve hundred majority. According to the Constitutional provision, the Thirty- fourth Congress met on the first Monday of December, 1855. A majority of the members elected w^ere opposed to the administration and its measures. The opposition, however, was divided. It consisted of Eepublicans, Anti -Nebraska Democrats and Native Americans. As the result proved, it was easier for the Native Ameri- cans and Democrats to form a coalition on pro-slavery grounds than it was for the Native Americans to unite with the Anti-Nebraska men in opposition to the admin- yS Life of Schuyler Colfax, istration. The Anti-Nebraska men felt that it was all- important for them to secure the election of the Speaker. Unless they elected the presiding officer of the House, who through the appointment of the committees wielded so great a power over the legislation of the country, they knew by experience that the committees would be so constituted that no reports favorable to the rights of the North would be made, and could not consequently be brought before the House for its consideration. The Anti-Nebraska men therefore determined not to yield the Speakership, as it was the citadel of their hopes, but to prolong the contest for it until they were successful. The contest was unparalleled. It continued for tv/o months. In it, none perhaps contributed more to its successful issue than Mr. Colfax, by his quickness of perception and readiness in parliamentary knowledge. After the contest had been prolonged for several weeks, Mr. Campbell, of Ohio, who had been for a time in nomination for the Speaker's chair, without consulting with his friends, offered a resolution that Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, should be invited to preside temporarily until a Speaker should be elected. The Republican members with but few exceptions looked upon the reso- lution with great alarm. They argued that if Mr. Orr was once in the chair of the Speaker, it was more than probable that he would remain there permanently. A motion to lay Mr. Campbell's resolution on the table was lost. There was a majority of twenty against tabling the resolution, and it seemed as if the South Carolinian would in a few minutes take possession of the Speaker's chair. At this juncture, Mr. Colfax, with consummate parliamentary skill and wisdom, proposed an amend- ment to Mr. Campbell's resolution. It was to put the Life of Schuyler Co If ax o yc^ three parties that were endeavoring to elect a Speaker upon an equality, by allowing each to select a tempo- rary Chairman, the persons thus selected to preside alternately as they should mutually agree. This amend- ment of Mr. Colfax irresistibly suggests, says Mrs. Stowe, the device of Hushai by which the counsel of Ahitho- phel was defeated. Upon this amendment discussion sprung up, and the House took a recess without any vote on either the resolution or amendment. The next morning Mr. Campbell, yielding to the appeals of his friends, withdrew his resolution. There was freer breath- ing on the Eepublican side of the House, when this peril was past. More than a month longer the contest continued. It was the first week in February when the end of the strife came. N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, upon, the one hundred and thirty-fourth ballot, was elected and declared Speaker of the Thirty-fourth Con- gress, and the Repablican banner waved in triumph over the Speaker's chair CHAPTER VIII. EDITOEIAL COREESPONDENCE — CLOSING SCENES OF THE LONG CONTEST — HAPPY RESULT — LETTER FROM MR. COLFAX IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO ADDRESS THE REPUBLICANS OF NEW YORK CITY — A GOLDEN TRUTH. The editorial correspondence of Mr. Colfax is of per- manent historical value for the vivid and accurate sketches from life, of men and scenes connected with this great contest. The last letter of this series is here given : 8o Life of Schuyler Co fax, ''Washington, Fehruary 6, 1856. ^' The electric wires have long since flashed the news over our whole Union that the protracted struggle for Speaker has resulted in a glorious victory for freedom, and that Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, presides over the House of Representatives. But though this letter will be old news, so far as that event is concerned, it may be expected of me that I should give some of the closing scenes of this unprecedented contest. "■ During the latter part of last week, it was evident that the wall of partition between the Democrats and the South Americans was to be broken down, that a fusion of Administration and Southern Know Nothing members was to take place on some candidate accept- able to both parties, and that this combined array was to elect a Speaker, if possible. On Thursday, therefore, when a proposition was read by Mr. Trippe, of Greorgia, (Know Nothing,) to elect Mr. Smith, of Virginia, it was rejected by but ten majority — ayes, one hundred ; noes, one hundred and ten ; and on Friday, when Mr. Jones, of Tennessee, the chairman of the Democratic caucus, ignored both the party nomination and the platform by offering Mordecai Oliver, of Missouri, an old-line Whig, who had voted for Richardson and Orr on pro-slavery grounds, but had never participated in their caucuses, the nom- ination polled one hundred and one votes. A subse- quent resolution to elect Mr. Banks polled one hundred and three votes, when W. R. W. Cobb, of Alabama, proposed for Speaker Governor Aiken, of South Caro- lina, the largest slaveholder in the House, said to own one thousand three hundred negroes, and to be worth a million of dollars. He had never participated in any Democratic caucuS; did not stand on their platform, and ^ Life of Schuyler Co fax, 8 1 was understood not to be hostile to Southern Know Nothings. Mr. Orr, the Democratic nominee, rose and gave in his adhesion to the proposition, earnestly urging Governor Aiken's election. The vote being taken, the two parties opposed to the Eepublicans, combined nearly their entire vote upon him, and he polled one hundred and three votes, lacking but four of an election. The House immediately adjourned, and all felt that the struggle was to end the next day. " That night Washington city was full of excitement. Some of Mr. Banks' friends felt dispirited, and feared defeat, as Governor Aiken's vote had risen one vote higher than theirs ; but the great bulk stood firm, and by ten o'clock it was unanimously decided that the colors should be nailed to the mast. " Saturday morning the galleries and all the passages to the Representative hall were crowded long before the hour of meeting. As soon as the journal was read, the plurality rule was adopted, and the three ballots, which were to precede the final and decisive vote, were taken. Then the Clerk commenced slowly calling the roll of names for the one hundred and thirty-fourth vote for Speaker, on which the candidate receiving the highest number of votes was to be declared elected. The op- position were sanguine of electing Governor Aiken ; but the Republicans knew that Mr Banks would be chosen. The response of every anti-Banks member was listened to with manifest interest, as well as anxiety, on all sides ; and many, as they voted, took occasion to explain the reasons for their support of Aiken. "At last the roll-call was completed. When all the names had been called through, Banks had one hundred and three votes, and Aiken ninety-three; but the rules 82 Life of Schuyler Co fax. allow members to cliaiige their votes or record their names at any time before the result is announced ; and amid considerable excitement, member after member, who had voted for Fuller, rose, and changed to Aiken. His vote ran up to ninety-four, ninety -five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, and there it stopped, exactly where we supposed it would, while there were three more votes that Mr. Banks could have obtained, if necessary, to defeat the South Carolina candidate. " Before the result could be announced, Mr. Cox, an Aiken man, moved to adjourn, which was not in order ; but Mr. Benson, of Maine, one of the tellers, instantly rose, and, with a loud voice, declared the number of votes cast for each candidate, and announced that, in. conformity with the resolution adopted by the House, authorizing a plurality to elect on this ballot, N. P. Banks, Jr., a Representative from Massachusetts, was elected Speaker of the Thirty-fourth Congress. The scene that followed this defies description. Not a Repre- sentative remained in his seat. The ladies, who had been sitting in the gallery for seven long hours, exult- ingly waved their handkerchiefs, and from hall and gallery rang forth most- enthusiastic applause, mingled with hisses from those who did not approve of the result. When order was restored, Mr. Rust and Mr. A. K. Marshall insisted that Mr. Banks was not yet elected ; that a majority vote was necessary to confirm it. But Governor Aiken promptly rose, and asked permission to conduct the Speaker elect to the chair, and Messrs. Cobb, Clingman and Jones, and other Democrats, insisted that the election was legal, and it was confirmed by a vote of one hundred and fifty-five to forty. Mr. Banks was then Life of Schuyler Colfax, 83 conducted to the chair; delivered a brief and happily- conceived inaugural ; was sworn in by Mr. Giddings, the oldest member; and the House adjourned. " The scattering votes were six for Mr. Fuller, four for Mr. Campbell, cast by Messrs. Dunn, Scott, Moore, and Harrison, and one cast by Mr. Wells, of Wisconsin, for Mr. Hickman of Pennsylvania. Two members who were present did not vote. The vote for Mr. Aiken showed the following singular compound : Orr and Humphrey Marshall, who made an elaborate anti- Catholic speech last winter, and John Kelly, a member of the Catholic church, Howell Cobb and Percy Walker, Glancy Jones and Trippe, A, H. Stephens and Zollicof- fer, and so on through. But the coalition, though a strong one, did not win. " I have but little room for any extended comment on this result, so auspicious to the cause of freedom. Six years ago, when the Fugitive Slave Law first came into this House, there was a decided majority opposed to it ; but one after another, during the two months it was pending, 'conquered their prejudices,' and it finally passed. So also two years ago, when the Nebraska bill was first reported to the House, a majority were opposed to it; but in a month or so it was carried. Now^ I re- joice to say, the aspect of affairs is far different. For two months the Kepublicans have stood fast by thSir cause and their candidate, and have come out of this protracted contest as strong and united as they went in, and what is better still, victorious besides. We have heard for weeks that the Union would be dissolved if Banks was elected ; but he is sitting in the Speaker's chair as I write, presiding over the House, as if it had been the business of his life, and the Union yet survives. 84 Life of Schuyler Colfax, Soutliern men acknowledge frankly that when a Speaker is elected without a solitary Southern vote, and over the opposition of three parties in the North, it is indeed a victory won by inflexible persistence and unyielding backbone." While at Washington, during his first term of service as Congressman, Mr. Colfax received invitations to attend several important political meetings in the neighboring cities of the East. Duty constrained him to remain at his post in Washington. To one of these invitations to address his fellow-citizens of New York city upon the political issues of the day, he wrote the following reply : *' House of Repeesentatives, ''Washington, A])ril 22, 1856. " Gentlemen : — It would afford me more than ordi- nary pleasure if I were able to respond to the compli- mentary invitation you have tendered me, to address the friends of freedom of my native city; but public duties prevent, and I can be with you therefore only in spirit — not in person. "But a few days less than sixty -seven years ago, the Father of our Country, in your very city, and in the presence of your citizens, took that solemn oath of of&ce which made him first President of the United States. And as he looked abroad over the republic, which he was thenceforth to aid in governing and pro- tecting, as he had before in establishing, his clear eye could not have failed to see that in every acre of the national territory outside the limits of the States, slavery was expressly p'ohihited and excluded. No regret for Life of Schuyler Colfax. 8 5 these enactments ever fell from his lips, for he had him- self, six years before, declared himself averse to the institution, and in favor of its abolition ; and ten years l:iter, on that death-bed, which tests the sincerity of mortal professions, he most solemnly enjoined upon his' executors that his instructions for the ultimate emanci- pation of his slaves should be, to use his own impres- sively anxious words, 'religiously fulfilled, without evasion, neglect or delay.' He, whose right arm had so essentially aided in achieving the liberties we now enjoy, and in consummating our independence by the Union which followed, never appeared to realize that, in order to secure the equality of the States, 'those continental prohibitions against slavery extension should be declared inoperative and void,' and the absolute right of the slaveholder to emigrate into our territories with his human property, enforced and upheld by Presi- dents, legislators and judges; and I confess that, even in these latter days of discoveries like these, I prefer to follow in the footsteps of the revolutionary fathers, and to profit by their example, rather than to be dazzled by the new lights of the present age. "It is eminently fitting, therefore, that the National Committee, in summoning the opponents of slavery ex- tension together at Philadelphia, should remind the country, as they have in their call, that their purpose is to restore the government to the policy of Washing- ton and Jefferson, its most illustrious founders; that instead of being 'abolitionists,' we do not even go as far as they did, when the one in 1783 and 1786, and the other in 1774, declared themselves in favor of the aboli- tion of slavery in States where it then existed ; and that we only strive to bring back our national territories to 86 Life of Schuyler Colfax, the same free condition that existed in similar organiza- tions on the 30th of April, 1789. This is a work in which all patriots can harmoniously unite. It is one which the imminence of the present crisis (when the slave-power demands an absolute reversal of the revo- lutionary precedent, and that all territory shall be slave, not free) forces upon the country as paramount to all other issues. And if any one fails to recognize that it is the overshadowing question of the day, which must be settled before and above all other questions, in one way or another, in favor of liberty or of slavery, by the policy of Washington or of Douglas — the fact that in its presence the bands of old party organizations soap like brittle threads, and are consumed like flax, ought to be sufScient to convince him that the great mass of the people recognize it as the issue of the times, and are already preparing for its final settlement at that court of last resort with American freemen — the ballot-box, " You have not failed to notice that the opening of the present Congress was signalized by the preliminary struggle of this conflict. I will not weary you by alluding to the fact that your representatives here ex- hibited their realizing sense of the magnitude of the contest by standing firm through a prolonged parlia- mentary struggle, unexampled in history, and which could be vindicated only by an overpowering conviction of duty and of right. I need only say, that, at last, after a faithful persistence of months, with ranks as full to the end as when they entered on the contest, a victory for freedom and justice crowned their labors. It remains for you and the people at large to say whether this auspicious success shall be followed up and consum- mated in the national canvass, which is just opening, by Life of Schuyler Colfax, 87 a triumpli of free labor as well as free principles, peace- ful in its character, patriotic in its objectS; republican in its results. With a man of firmness, as well as of patriotism in the presidential chair, the government will be restored to the policy of its fathers ; and the slanders of our opponents will be disproved by his vindicating the eternal truth of our American Magna Charta on the one hand, while opposing all unconstitutional inter- ference with the rights of the slave States on the other. With the country thus happily and justly governed, it cannot fail to go on in a career of prosperity, develop- ment and wealth, which freedom will be certain to bring- in its train, until the efforts now making to blot out the example of our forefathers, and to extend the dominion of human bondage, shall be looked upon from the clearer stand-point of the Hereafter with wonder and regret by all. " In this noble work, with such happy results as must inevitably flow from your labors, you need no words of encouragement from me. With union and concord, you cannot fail. The principles upon which we stand can- not but command success when the public mind is con- centrated on this great issue. Politicians in the Senate may clamor in regard to 'the equality of the States,' which no man denies. But the people will regard it as a higher and nobler principle that we vindicate in our policy, the equality of the American freeman ; and that we demand, as one of the ' needful rules and regulations for the territory of the United States,' which Congress is expressly authorized by the Constitution to enact, that the territories shall be so organized, as in 1789, that all of our citizens, from whatever clime they may come, or whatever may be their pecuniary condition, 88 Life of Schuyler Colfax. shall have equal rights in their settlement ; and that no institution shall prevail in them which shall degrade American labor and press down the mechanic, the day- laborer, the road-builder, or the worker in the fields, towards the social condition of the Southern slave. In" a word, that it shall be the first duty of the Government to see to it, that, wherever it has constitutional authority. LABOR, the primal element of American prosperity, shall be honored, elevated and protected. Then the true policy of the founders of the republic will be vindicated by their successors. And then, as the vanguard of Anglo-Saxon civilization pushes forward and takes pos- session of the wide-spread territories of the West, ever beneath the folds of the national banner, as it greets the morning breeze and reflects the setting sun, the great central truth of the Declaration of Independence shall be recognized and avowed — that all men are endowed by their Creator with liberty, and that it is one of the highest aims and noblest duties of government to protect this God-given and inalienable right, wherever it pos- sesses the power. ^^Yery truly yours, "Schuyler Colfax." One sentence of this letter is an ingot of golden truth. As a motto it should be emblazoned on the political banners of the land. It should forever gleam there in un dimming brightness. '^ Labor, the 'primal element of American prosperity, shall he honored, elevated and pro- tected.^'' This is no narrow creed. It is the sentiment of a heart, that has known the straitened circumstances of poverty, that has known the necessities of toil, and that is all nlive with sympathy for honest, hard-handed industry. Life of Schuyler Colfax. 89 CHAPTER IX. SPEECH OF MK. COLFAX UPON "THE BOGUS LAWS OF KANSAS" — ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS — HOLDING THE BALL AND CHAIN — RENOMINATED FOR CONGRESS— RE- ELECTED — ELECTION OF MR. BUCHANAN PREDICTED. During this session of Congress Mr. Colfax made a speech upon *' tlie bogus laws of Kansas," which stamped him as one of the most effective Congressional orators. Tliis speech was extensively circulated as a campaign document in the Presidential contest of the same year. It was placed in every house in Connecticut by the earnest Republicans of that State. More than half a million copies of it were scattered over the country. Among the laws, which in that speech Mr. Colfax un- earthed, was one providing a ball and chain as a reward for free speech if exercised in denouncing slavery. Mr. Colfax caused such a ball to be procured, and at the de- sired moment, it was brought upon the floor, and he held it up, as he spoke, the splendid ornament devised for a free people. Alexander H. Stephens, who sat near, and who, being on the same Committee with Mr. Colfax, was intimate with him, asked him for the ball, as if to test its weight. Having satisfied his curiosity, he offered to return it; but Mr. Colfax, looking down upon him with a smile, requested him to hold it, until ,he finished his speech, and Mr. Stephens complied. " That globe of iron,'' said one, speaking of the scene after two years of the rebellion had passed, " was a locket of fine gold to the mill-stone that the reluctant, nerve- less Vice-President of rebels hung about his neck." go Life of Schuyler Colfax, We add the following extract from the speech : " In such a state of affairs as this, to talk of going to the polls and having the laws repealed is worse than a mockery. It is an insult. It is like binding a man hand and foot, throwing him into the river, and telling him to swim to the shore and he will be saved. It is like loading a man with irons, and then telling him to run for his life. The only relief possible, if Kansas is not promptly admitted as a State, which I hope may be effected, is in a change of the administration and of the party that so recklessly misrules the land ; and that will furnish an effectual relief "As I look, sir, to the smiling valleys and fertile plains of Kansas, and witness there the sorrowful scenes of civil war, in which, when forbearance at last ceased to be a virtue, the Free State men of the territory felt it necessary, deserted as they were by their Government, to defend their lives, their families, their property, and their hearthstones, the language of one of the noblest statesmen of the age, uttered six years ago at the other end of this Capitol, rises before my mind. I allude to the great statesman of Kentucky, Henry Clay. And while the party, which, while he lived, lit the torch of slander at every avenue of private life, and libelled him before the American people by every epithet that ren- ders man infamous, as a gambler, debauchee, traitor, and enemy of his country, are now engaged in shedding fic- titious tears over his grave, and appealing to his old supporters to aid by their votes in shielding them from the indignation of an uprisen people, I ask them to read this language of his, which comes to us as from his tomb to-day. With the change of but a single geographical word in the place of 'Mexico,' how prophetically does Life of Schuyler Colfax, 9 1 it apply to the very scenes and issues of this year ! And who can doubt with what party he would stand in the coming campaign, if he were restored to us from the damps of the grave, when they read the following which fell from his lips in 1850, and with which, thanking the House for its attention, I conclude my remarks. *' ' But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between the two parties of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one side should be to re- strain the introduction of slavery into the new territo- ries, and upon the other side to force its introduction there, what a spectacle should we present to the aston- ishment of mankind, in an effort not to propagate rights, but — I must say it, though I trust it will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling — a war to propagate wrongs in the territories thus acquired from Mexico. It would be a war in which we would have no sympathies, no good wishes — in which all mankind would be against us ; for, from the commencement of the Eevolution down to the present time, we have con- stantly reproached our British ancestors for the intro- duction of slavery into this country.' " In July, 1856, the Eepublicans of the Kinth Con- gressional District of Indiana again met in convention to nominate a candidate for Congress. It was usual to open with an informal ballot for the nominee. But the manner in which Mr. Colfax had discharged his duty in Congress had met with so warm and cordial an approval, and the enthusiasm in his behalf was so great, that this routine action was forestalled, and Mr. Colfax was renominated by acclamation. An eye- witness wrote : '' The spontaneous, prolonged and enthu- siastic shouts of applause which arose from all that vast 92 Life of Schuyler Colfax. a.sscmblage at the motion to nominate him by acclama- tion, dispensing with a formal ballot as tame and super- fluous, declared, more emphatically than language could do, that Schuyler Colfax, in himself and in the principles which he so ably and faithfully represents, has a deep and firm hold on the affections of a freedom-loving con- stituency. That the people will give him a still more emphatic endorsement on the second Tuesday of October next, by sending him back by an overwhelming majority, we have not the least doubt." Eeturning home upon the adjournment of Congress, after its long session, protracted, notwithstanding the impending Presidential election, to the last of August, he immediately entered upon the canvass of the district in company with his competitor, Judge W. Z. Stuart, of Logansport. The emphatic endorsement that bad been predicted for Mr. Collkx on the second Tues- day of October was given, and he was again triumph- antly elected, notwithstanding the national triumph of the Buchanan and Breckenridge ticket. This reverse Mr. Colfax had expected and distinctly foretold as the result of the third or American party movement, headed by Mr. Fillmore. Immediately sub- sequent to the nomination of Mr. Fillmore, which was several months previous to the nomination of the Na- tional Eepublican Convention, he wrote : " Whether the Kepublican ticket shall be successful or defeated this year, the duty to support it, to proclaim and defend its principles, to arm the conscience of the nation, is none the less incumbent. It is a movement based on justice and right, consecrated to freedom, commended by the teachings of our Revolutionary Fathers, and demanded by the extraordinary events in our recent history. And Life of Schuyler Colfax, 93 thougb its triumphs may be delayed by divisions, noth- ing is more certain to my mind, even while breathing the atmosphere of this city, where slavery reigns supreme in every place except the Speaker's chair, than that the day is not far distant when outside of State limits that institution shall be, as when the Constitution was adopted, seventy years ago, prohibited and condemned in all the territories in the Union." • CHAPTER X. LECOMPTON CONVENTION — LECOMPTON -CONSTITUTION — SENATE ACCEPTS IT — OPPOSITION OF SENATOR DOUGLAS — HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REJECTS LECOMPTON — COMMITTEE OF CONFERENCE — PROPOSITION SUBMITTED TO KANSAS — PROPOSITION REJECTED — SPEECH OF MR. COLFAX IN BEHALF OF KANSAS— INTERESTING LETTER. The pro-slavery Legislature of Kansas, that had been chosen by Missouri invaders instead of the actual set- tlers, called a constitutional convention in 1857. This convention met at Lecompton on the first Mondav of September. It formed a pro-slavery constitution, which was submitted to the people at an election held on the 21st of December following. But the strange thing in this election was, that no one was allowed to vote against this constitution. The vote was to be taken " For the constitution, wiili slavery," or, ''For the constitution, loiih' out slavery ;" no other votes to be allowed or counted. The following return was made: For the constitution, 94 L\f^ of Schuyler Colfax, witli slavery, 6,266; for the constitution, without slavery, 567. An election, however, had been held on the first Monday in October for a Territorial Legislature, under the bogus laws. Governor Walker had given assurances to the Free State men, which caused them to attend the polls. The Free State preponderance was so decided that it carried th-e Legislature. This Legislature, whose legality was unquestioned, passed an act submitting the Lecompton constitution to the vote of the people, for or against it, on the 4th of January, 1858. At this election the Lecompton constitution was rejected by over ten thousand majority against it. But when the Thirty -fifth Congress assembled at Washington, on the 7th of De- cember, 1857, and was organized by the election of Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, as Speaker, President Buchanan, in his annual message, as well as in a special message, urged Congress to accept and ratify the Lecompton constitution. The Senate passed a bill accepting this constitution. Senator Douglas, however, took strong grounds against it. The House adopted a substitute, pre- pared by Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, and proposed in the House by Mr. Montgomery, a Douglas Democrat, from Pennsylvania. This substitute required a resub- mission of the constitution to the people of Kansas, under such provisions and precautions as would secure a fair vote. It was adopted by the House by a majority of eight. The Senate did not concur, and asked for a committee of conference. On motion of Mr. English, of Indiana, who had previously acted with the Douglas* Democrats, a committee of conference was granted by a^ majority of one, the vote being one hundred and nine yeas to one hundred and eight nays. The bill reported from the conference conmiittee proposed a submission Life of Schuyler Colfax, 95 to the people of Kansas of a proposition on the part of Congress to limit and curtail the grants of public lands and other advantages stipulated in behalf of said State in the Lecompton constitution; and in case of their voting to reject said proposition, then a new conven- tion was to be held, and a new constitution framed. This bill passed both Houses ; and under it the people of Kansas, on the third of August, voted, by an overwhelm- ing majority, to reject the proposition, which was, in effect, to reject the Lecompton constitution. Mr. Colfax was one of the acknowledged leaders in opposition to the Lecompton iniquity, as the adminis- tration measure for the admission of Kansas as a slave State was commonly designated. The following remarks are the peroration of a speech made by Mr. Colfax against the Lecompton constitution: "Imagine, sir, George Washington sitting in the White House, that noble patriot, whose whole career is a brilliant illustration of honor and purity in high places ; and who doubts that, if such a constitution as this had been submitted to him for his sanction, he would have spurned from his door, with contempt and scorn, the messenger who bore it ? Or, ask yourself, what would have been the indignant answer of Thomas Jef- ferson, who proclaimed as the battle-cry of the revolu- tion that great truth enshrined in the Declaration, which has made his name immortal, and which scattered to the winds the sophistries and technicalities of the royalists of our land, that 'all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed ;' not the im- plied consent of enforced submission, but the actual, undeniable, unquestioned consent of the freemen, who are to bear its burdens and enjoy its blessings. If a g6 Life of Schuyler Colfax, messenger had dared to enter the portals of the White House when that stern old man of iron will, Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, lived within it, and asked him to give his endorsement and approval, the sanction of his personal character and official influence, to a constitution,; reeking with fraud, which its framers were seeking to enforce on a people, who protested against it, and de- nounced, and loathed, and repudiated it ; and to go down to history as its voluntary advocate and champion ; that messenger, I will warrant, would have remembered till the latest hour of his life, the torrent of rebuke with which he would have been overwhelmed. "I turn gladly, joyfully, from the consideration of the extraordinary arguments to which I have alluded, to a brighter, happier picture, if you will only allow it to be painted. The President complains that he is tired of the Kansas troubles and desires peace. How easy is it to be obtained? Not by forcing, with despotic power and hireling soldiery, a constitution hated and spurned by the people upon a territory that will rise in arms against it; not by surrendering the power and authority of an infant State, into the hands of a pitiful minority of its citizens, who, by oppressive laws, and persistently fraud- ulent elections, have continued to wield the power, which a shameless usurpation originally gave them; but by simply asking the people of Kansas, under your own authority, if you insist on rejecting the vote authorized -by their Legislature, the simple, and yet essential ques- tion, 'Do you desire Congress to ratify the Lecompton constitution, or the new constitution now being framed?' How easy is the pathway to peace, when justice is the guide ! How rugged and devious the pathway of error, when wrong lights the road of her followers with her lurid torch ! Life of Schuyler Colfax, 97 " The people of Kansas, through every possible ave- nue that has not been closed by their enslavers, have remonstrated against this great wickedness. By ten vthousand majority at the polls, by the unanimous pro- test of their Legislature, by public meetings, by their newspaper press, and by the voice of their delegate on this floor, overwhelmingly elected less than six months past, they ask you to repudiate this fraud. Dragged here, bound hand and foot by a Government office-holder, who, bes-ides drawing his pay as Surveyor-General, acts also as President of the Lecompton convention, who becomes, by its insolent discarding of all your territo- rial officers, as well as the people's, the recipient of all the returns, fraudulent as well as genuine, and the can- vasser of the votes — she appeals to you to release her from the grasp of this despot and dictator, and to let her go free. In the language of an eloquent and gifted orator of my own State, I say: ' When she comes to us, let it be as a willing bride, and not as a fettered and manacled slave.'" The following letters from the editorial correspondence of Mr. Colfax, lift for us the veil of the past, and give us distinct and vivid views, both in the Senate and House of .Representatives, of the intense interest attend- ing the discussion in Congress of the Lecompton ques- tion. " Washington, March 25, 1868. "The past week has been full of excitement here, and a letter in regard to it may not be misspent time. " The galleries and floor of the Senate have been con- stantly filled during its daytime and night sessions, to listen to the debates on the subject which engrosses all 98 Life of Schuyler Colfax. minds. The Lecompton fraud has been most thoroughly discussed there from almost every possible standpoint of argument. Some of its friends have argued that it was fairly submitted to the people, others that the slavery clause alone was actually submitted, and that no other part of it needed to be, and others, like Mr. Bright, took the bold ground that submitting constitu- tions to a vote of the people who are to live under them is not in accordance with the true principles of our Government — a new kind of Democracy, as it seems to me. But all agreed that Lecompton must be fastened upon the new State of Kansas at all hazards, and all united, however variant their other arguments, in scout- ing the ten thousand majority against it, at the election ordered by the Governor and Legislature of the terri- tory. ''Last Saturday night, according to the agreement between the Republican and Democratic members, the debate closed on the part of the former. General Wilson making the final speech on their behalf. The attendance was very large, and the vigorous and telling speech of the Massachusetts Senator more than repaid them for their presence. It was a fitting conclusion of an able debate. "On Monday, Judge Douglas, who had been very sick during the past fortnight, was to speak, if able to do so. And at nine A. M., a large crowd was in attendance. The day, however, was consumed by other speeches of the Democratic party. Messrs. Stuart and Broderick, (anti-Lecompton,)and Bayard of Delaware-, (Lecompton,) and Messrs. Green and Wilson, who had charge of the, order of debate, by resolution of the Democratic and Republican caucuses, fixed on seven o'clock that even- ing as the hour when the Illinois Senator was to take Life of Schuyler Colfax, - 99 tlie floor. I went there at half-past six, (the Senate took a recess for dinner from five to seven p. M.,) and saw- such a crowd as I had never before seen there. People did not attempt to sit, except a few of the fair sex, but) were packed together as closely as it was possible for ihem to stand, on the floor, in the galleries, on the window sills, on the top of railings, and in fact wherever a foot could be planted. Crinoline was crushed sadly, and though many kept their seats, when they had been so fortunate as to get them, from nine in the morning till the close of the debate at eleven P. M., I saw many of the oldest members of the House apparently glad to obtain seats on the carpeted floor. The officers of the Senate say that such a mass of living, breathing hu- manity was never before crowded into the chamber "A little before seven, the speaker, whose remarks such a multitude were assembled to hear, forced his way through the mass outside into the Senate chamber, and was greeted with a very unsenatorial round of applause from the galleries as he entered the room. He was pale, and looked in impaired health, but very determined, and in a few minutes commenced his speech. '' I have not time to go over its leading points, which the telegraph has doubtless given you. But his bold denunciations of Executive dictation and proscription, his scarification of the Regent Calhoun, and his fore- shadowing of the future attempts to force slavery into the free States by the men who defend and endorse the Lecompton provision, that the right of property in^ •slaves is higher and above all constitutional sanction,' and his preference of private life, with self-respect, ta public life with the advocacy of such a wicked fraud as this, were listened to by the Lecompton champions with evident displeasure and bitterness. lOO Life of Schuyler Colfax, "When he resumed his seat, thoroughly exhausted, Toombs rose, and, in a passionate harangue, which would surprise even a l^ammany Hall audience by its manner and matter, replied with the most offensive denunciation, going out of his way to brand all who opposed Lecomp- ton as hypocrites, facile instruments, etc., etc. The Senators who had been so quick in calling Douglas to order during the debates at the opening of the session, looked on with pleased complacency, and the Yice- President did not see fit to check him. But after he finished, Stuart arose, and in severe but parliamentary language, rebuked him as the occasion required. " The bill finally passed the next day by eight majority. Allen, of Ehode Island, and Jones, of Iowa, violating their instructions ; the two New Jersey Democratic Sena- tors, misrepresenting the known will of their State, and the two ' acting Senators from Indiana,' fittingly swell- ing the vote in favor of this fraud upon the people of Kansas. It will be several days before there will be a vote upon it in the House, and, without changing the opinion expressed in my last week's letter, I will let that, when it comes, speak for itself. " Last Saturday I spoke in the House in opposition to this villiany, and, at the opening, responded to a direct question propounded to me by Mr. Barksdale, of Missis- sippi, the previous speaker. But the telegraph to the Chicago papers of Monday, which I have just received, so utterly jumbles up what I did say, that I feel prompted to correct it at once. It says : " ' Mr. Colfax, in response to Mr. Barksdale, said he would vote for the admission of Kansas as a free State, if her people came here with a slave constitution. He had made that declaration when the Missouri Compro- Life of Schuyler Colfax. loi mise was repealed, but lie placed his objection on graver grounds.' '' What I did say was, that after the slave power had demanded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, I had resolved never to vote for the admission of Kansas as a slave State under any contingency ; and that I ad- hered to this position still. If the people had been dragooned by the army and the officers of the Govern- ment into submission to such a constitution, it should never be ratified by my vote. As it is now, however, with their gallant spirit and devotion to freedom un- broken, I would far rather submit this Lecompton fraud to their verdict and decision, confident that they would reject it overwhelmingly, than to risk it before this Congress, over which the slave power and the Execu- tive exercise such malign power and influence. Know- ing that the people of Kansas long for an opportunity to crush out this Lecompton swindle, I should be willing to refer it back to them for that fair and full vote upon it which its framers, from the same conviction, denied to them, on condition that, if they reject it, they should have the consent and authority of Congress given them in advance, to go on and frame the free State constitu- tion which they desire. There would be no more risk in that, if an honest election was provided for, than there would be in submitting the question of freedom or slavery to the people of Massachusetts. But if the army and office-holders of the Government there had suc- ceeded in so breaking the spirit and crushing the prin- ciples of the free State majority there, (as they have ineffectually labored to do,) that they would consent against their known convictions and expressed resolves, to accept this iniquity as their organic law, I would not even do that." G I02 Life of Schuyler Colfax. CHAPTERXI. ADMI^TISTRATION DEFEAT — THE PURE REPUBLICAN VOTE — COALITION — RINGING AYES — MR. KEITT OF SOUTH • CAROLINA — CRITTENDEN AMENDMENT — HORACE F. CLARK — VOTE OF MR. HARRIS OF ILLINOIS. The letter of this chapter delineates graphically the intense interest attending the Lecorapton struggle in the House of Kepresentatives : "Washington, April, 1858. " The administration has just met another defeat on its pet Lecompton measure in the House of Kepre- sentatives. It, too, has been the most signal reverse of all, exceeding in its importance and significance the three previous rebukes which the House had given to the President. The day for this decisive vote had been fixed by the Lecomptonites themselves. Every appli- ance had been unscrupulously used to secure a victory. Every possible appeal had been made to the members whose votes were supposed to be in any manner attain- able. The President himself had- sent for the refractory members from his own State, and besought them to save him from defeat. But every one stood firm, except Dewart, of the Schuylkill district, who could not with- stand the President's tears. The Union, which has been threatening and imploring by terms, declared this morn- ing that any Democrat who voted against Lecompton could not longer expect to be ' allowed to remain within its organization,' but * must expect both to be regarded Life of Schuyler Colfax, 103 and dealt with as its enemy.' Both sides claimed to be confident of victory, but the anti-Lecomptons knew that theirs was to be the triumph of to-day. "At noon, when the Speaker took his chair, the galleries, which will seat two thousand persons, were crowded to their utmost capacity ; and on the floor of the hall every seat seemed to be occupied — an unusual sight. Every one looked interested, and even excited ; and many of them, on each side of the House, as if they had had but little rest during the past few days or nights. ' The morning hour,' which really is an after- noon one, from twelve to one P. M., was occupied with the ordinary business of the House, which few listened to ; and exactly at one P. M., Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, the Lecompton leader, rose, and moved to take up the Lecompton bill. It was read the first time, when up rose the venerable Joshua K. Giddings, and moved that it be rejected. For that motion, ninety-two Republicans and three Democrats (Harris, of Illinois, Chapman and Hickman, of Pennsylvania) voted ; but it was, of course, voted down by a large majority. The Republican mi- nority of the House, having thus endeavored to destroy the bill utterly, and having failed, were in a condition, without even apparent inconsistency, to unite with other but less decided enemies of the Lecompton fraud in any practicable measure to thwart the President in his deter- mination to impose it upon a protesting people. " The bill was read the second time, and Mr. Mont- gomery, of Pennsylvania, who had been agreed on for that purpose, rose and moved to strike out the whole bill after the enacting clause, and insert the Crittenden proposition, as modified and improved by conferences of the three wings of the opposition in the House — the Re- 104 Life of Schuyler Colfax, publicans, Douglas Democrats and Americans. Greneral Quitman then moved to amend the amendment by inserting the Senate bill with the Pugh amendment struck out. The previous question was moved and seconded ; for every one felt that this was an hour for action, not debate. First, Quitman's amendment failed, though two-thirds of the Lecomptonites voted for it, (ninety-two out of one hundred and twelve,) showing that they did not regard the people of Kansas as being authorized, even by resolution, to change their constitution till after 1864. And then came the test vote, during the progress of which that vast audience was so hushed to silence that, for the first time during this session, I was enabled at my seat to hear every response as it was uttered, even from the farthest extremity of the hall on the other side. A close observer could have detected, in the manner of these responses, which was to be the victorious party. The Lecomptonites, since they came into the hall, had lost their hope of a tie vote, with the Speaker to untie it ; and their noes were uttered coldly, indig- nantly, and sometimes sullenly; while the ayes rang out from the anti-Lecomptonites clearly, distinctly, emphat- ically, as if they came from cheerful, hopeful hearts. Scarcely had the last name been called, when every one in the House and galleries knew, without waiting for the reading of the list of names and the annunciation by the Speaker, that the anti-Lecompton forces had tri- umphed by eight majority ; and when the Speaker arose, with evident feeling, and announced, as calmly as pos- sible, the defeat of his friends, a round of irrepressible applause rung from the galleries. Instantly, Mr. Keitt, of South Carolina, who is unused to hearing that kind of applause here at Washington, demanded, in an ex- Life of Schuyler Colfax, 105 cited tone, that the gentlemen's galleries should be cleared at once. He forgot that, last week, when a New England Lecomptonite was making his speech, those same gal- leries, then occupied by refugees from Kansas and clerks of the Government, applauded three times, and until Mr. Kilgore rebuked them, desiring to know if pen- sioned officers of the administration had been placed there to cheer on the allies. But the Speaker, who must have remembered that his indignant colleague made no objection to that, declined ordering the rule to be en- forced until a second offence should render it necessary. "This episode over, Mr. Montgomery now called for a separate vote on ihQ preamble to the original bill, which, as his bill was a substitute, to come in immediately after the enacting clause, could only be reached in that way. The objectionable features in the preamble were, that it declared the people of Kansas had made this constitu- tion, and that it was republican in form. But the Speaker decided that the House could not have a separate vote on this, though they could on the title of the bill — a wrong decision, I think ; but, having thus clearly expressed the dissent of the opposition to these assump- tions of the preamble, the bill passed by one hundred and twenty to one hundred and twelve, eight majority, and the House immediately adjourned. The instant the Speaker announced the adjournment, and the hall became again ^a free hall,' untrammelled by Congres- sional rules, the pent-up feelings of the galleries broke out in a hearty, earnest round of enthusiastic applause. "And thus my predictions, against which you ex- pressed, editorially, your lack of confidence, have been verified. I do not wonder at your doubts, for we have had them here also ; and, considering the odds against io6 Life of Schuyler Colfax, us, it is wonderful that the administration has been overthrown. But for a fortnight — indeed, ever since I wrote you that it looked as if the possibility of its defeat had ripened into a prohahility — I have been confident of success ; so confident, indeed, that when I spoke on the 20th of March, I took that occasion to say that peace, which all parties professed to seek, could be best secured by submitting to the people of Kansas the plain question whether they preferred the Lecompton constitution or a new one. Of the result of that vote, no candid man in the whole land entertains a shadow of a doubt. ''The Crittenden amendment, thus passed, admits Kansas as a State, refers Lecompton back to a vote of the people of Kansas, under the supervision of a Board, composed of the Governor and Secretary of the Terri- tory and the two Free State Speakers of the Territorial Legislature, three of whom are necessary for a quorum. If Lecompton is rejected, a new convention is to be elected, a new constitution framed, and submitted to the people. Either one which is adopted by them, is to be the organic law ; and, the vote being certified to the President by a majority of the Board, he is to declare Kansas in the Union by a public proclamation. "Fair as this is, withdrawing the whole subject from Congress, 'localizing' all the trouble as the administra- tion professed to desire, in advocating Lecompton, pro- posed by a conservative Southern statesman, and which only seeks to ascertain and carry out the popular will, the administration leaders will not yield to it. They insisted to-day, in conversations with our side, that the' Senate would refuse to concur, and that the House would be forced to yield its concurrence. I make no predictions in regard to the future ; but whoever of the ^ Life of Schuyler Colfax, 107 one hundred and twenty consents to be dragooned into submission and to abandon a fair measure, which accom- plishes all that the administration has professed to desire, at the dictation of the President, the Senate, or the border-ruffians of Kansas, or yields to other appeals, deserves ' to sink so low that the hand of resurrection will never reach him.' Many Eepublicans would have preferred not to vote for any bill whereby there could be the slightest possibility, in the remotest degree, of Kansas being made a slave State; but, having performed their duty to their principles in attempting to reject the Senate's bill utterly and entirely, and it being evident that this or Lecompton would pass, they resolved to a man, from Mr. Giddings down to the least anti-slavery member of all, that, as political legislators, it was their duty to go with the other wings of the opposition for the Crittenden amendment, especially as Governor Rob- inson, Mr. Parrott, the delegate from Kansas, and every other Free State man here from that territory, gave it their cordial support, and guaranteed the hoped-for result there. "The one hundred and twenty votes of which the majority was composed consisted of ninety-two Repub- licans, {every man whom the people had elected being in his seat, without a single exception,) twenty-two anti- Lecompton Democrats, and six Americans, being dele- gates from Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina. The eight Americans from Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and Louisiana, voted with the administration. Messrs. English, Foley, and J. G. Davis, of Indiana, voted anti-Lecompton. Indeed, of the fifty-odd Representa- tives from the States northwest of the Ohio, only five voted with the Lecomptonites. Mr. English had been io8 Life of Schuyler Colfax, endeavoring to reunite the party, but found lie could not do it, except on the basis of subniission ; and even if he had been, willing to accept that; as he declared that he would not, no other anti-Lecompton Democrat would have gone with him, and it would have been fruitless. He voted with the anti-Lecomptonites to-day on every decision; but it will be no injustice to him to say that his repeated efforts to bridge the gulf between the two wings of the Democracy indicate that he is less decided and unyielding than the rest of them. " The President sent, through one of the Cabinet, to Horace F. Clark, of New York, one of the anti-Lecomp- tonites, desiring to see him. The firm New Yorker, who has withstood appeals that would shake almost any one else, sent back word that he would be gratified to meet the President, but it must be after the Lecompton question was finally settled, not before. This is the cur- rent rumor here, and doubtless true. "A single sentence more before I conclude this hasty letter. Mr. Harris, of Illinois, is far gone in consump- tion, and has been bleeding from the lungs in the sick- room ever since the last encounter in the House on the outrageous conduct of the Kansas Select Committee, where he acted as the anti-Lecompton leader. When he entered the House, exactly five minutes before one o'clock, with feeble step, leaning on the arm of his col- league, Morris, a thrill ran through the House. He could have been spared, but refused, and declared that, if it cost him his life, he should be in his seat to vote his utter condemnation of this shameless iniquity. When one, who has been for years a Hebrew of the Hebrews in his devotion to his party, of which he has been an active leader, thus perils his life to record his hostility Ijife of Schuyler Colfax, 109 to this tyranny, ought not the people, who love justice and hate wrong, to imitate his example and emulate his patriotism, which rises higher than party, and is willingj to give his life as a dying protest against it." CHAPTEll XII. MR. COLFAX EE-NOMINATED IN 1858 — THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS — MR. COLFAX CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMIT- TEE ON THE POST OFFICE AND POST ROADS — SERVICE TO THE EMIGRANTS TO PIKE'S PEAK — OVERLAND MAIL — OVERLAND TELEGRAPH — REPUBLICAN SUCCESS IN 1860 A DUTY — THE FAMED MOTTO OF AUGUSTINE — • MR. LINCOLN'S NOMINATION AND ELECTION — MR. COLFAX URGED FOR POSTMASTER-GENERAL. In 1858 Mr. Colfax was again nominated to Congress by acclamation, and triumphantly elected. And this has been the method in which he has been nominated and elected from the beginning of his Congressional career, carrying his district against the most untiring and gigantic eftbrts to defeat him; efforts made not only by the members of the Democratic party resident within the district, but by the leaders and rulers of that party throughout the nation. Presidential power and patron- age have been employed with their might against him, but in vain. He was the people's candidate; a pure, honest faithful, conscientious man; an indefatigable^ worker ; always alive to the interests of his constituents; kind, genial and affable in his mingling with the people; no Life of Schuyler Colfax, a persuasive orator, kindling the enthusiasm of his hear- ers; unyielding in his adherence to his conscientious convictions ; an unsullied patriot ; a statesman with a policy that is synonymous with right; the people have always vindicated his course and returned him to his place in the national councils over all opposition. The Thirty-sixth Congress assembled at Washington, Monday, December 5th, 1859. A majority of the mem- bers of the House were opposed to the administration. A contest for the Speakership rivalling that of the Thirty-fourth Congress delayed the organization for eight weeks, when William Pennington, ex-Governor of New Jersey, was elected Speaker. Mr. Colfax was made Chairman of the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads. The mail service everywhere, on land and sea, was made to feel the vigor of his influence. He was especially solicitous that mail facilities should be afforded to the settlers of the new territories, and to those who had gone to the new gold regions of the Rocky Mountains. Through his special efforts and ability in carrying the measure through the House ahead of the routine order of business, the many thou- sands of emigrants to Pike's Peak, as Colorado was then called, who were paying from twenty-five cents to a dollar to express agents and others, for letters to and from the post offices on the frontiers, had extended to them the great benefits of the United States mail service a year sooner than they otherwise would. To him the credit is given of the establishment, by Congress, of the Daily Overland Mail from the western boundary of Missouri to San Francisco, on the great central route through Pike's Peak and Utah. The Overland Tele- graph bill was also carried through Congress chiefly Life of Schuyler Colfax. 1 1 1 tlirougli his agency ; a measure whicli was considered a greater parliamentary achievement, as most of the mem- bers seemed absolutely opposed to it. Mr. Colfax entered with all his soul into the great political conflict of 1860. He held that success was a duty due not only to Republican principles, but to the age and the country, and that any concession short of principle, necessary to insure that success, was not only wise and expedient, but also patriotic and obligatory. *' We counsel," he wrote, "no surrender of principle, no abandonment of our organization, no overture to unite with any of the opposition, who may profess to be more pro-slavery than the Democracy themselves ; but we pro- test, if it can be avoided, against there being again, as in 1856, a division of the opposition in the States which are to decide the Presidential contest; and a renewal thereby of the lease of ill-used power, which our oppo- nents have thus obtained. Hundreds of thousands of voters, not yet enrolled in our ranks, sympathize with us in our desire to prevent the extension of slavery be- yond its present limits. Shall we foster and promote their union with us in the work of overthrowing the Democracy, or shall we repel all union, and, from an over-estimate, perhaps, of our own strength, hazard a success that, with wise counsels, is already in our grasp ? " We differ somewhat from those ardent cotemporaries who demand the nomination of their favorite 'Repre- sentative-man,' whether popular or unpopular, and who insist that this must be done ' even if we are defeated.' We do agree with them in declaring that we shall go for no man, who does not prefer free labor and its ex- tension to slave labor and its extension ; who though mindful of the impartiality- which should characterize 112 Life of Schuyler Co fax, the Executive of the whole Union, will not fail to rebuke all new plots for making the Government the propagan- dist of slavery, and compel promptly and efficiently the 'suppression of that horrible slave trade, which the whole civilized world has banned as infamous, piratical and accursed. But in a Republican national convention, if any man could be found, North, South, East or West, whose integrity, whose life and whose avowals, rendered him unquestionably safe upon these questions, and who would yet poll one, two or three hundred thousand votes more than any one else, we believe it would be both wisdom and duty, patriotism and policy, to nominate him by acclamation, and thus render the contest an assured success from its very opening. " Let us cast a single glance over the whole field. It was lost in 1856 by a division of the opposition. It is a fixed fact, that there is a decided majority of the voters of the Union to-day, who, while opposed to interference with slavery where it already exists, are adverse to its extension and to all plots to achieve that end. All these voters are not formally in the Republican ranks, but all are opposed to the Democracy. Shall an union of those who desire its overthrow for its manifold sins, be favored or shall it be repelled ? The Democracy will doubtless be playing the role of moderation, conservatism, etc., in 1860 as in 1856, nominating old-line Whigs again as in 1856, and wooing their followers to their parlors, as the spider did the fly. We should hope to see the Repub- lican ticket successful, and should earnestly labor for its triumph, even if it should, by deciding to repel all allies, provoke an union against it, for its overthrow, instead of its opponents 1 But looking at our own State of In- diana, as well as the broader arena we have been con- Life of Schuyler Colfax, 1 1 3 sidering, and seeing here an United States Senator, Gov- ernor, Legislature, State officers and Congressional dele- gation, dependent greatly on tlie wisdom of our Presi- dential action, we hope to see 1860 realize the famed motto of Augustine, 'In essentials, unity; in non-essen- tials, liberty; and in all things, charity.'" The nomination of Mr. Lincoln was accor