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On the morning of January 13, 1885, he arrived in Mankato, Minnesota on a train from Milwaukee. They dumped Colfax from the ticket – only to replace him with the also-tainted Wilson.Īfter his inglorious departure from the vice presidency, Colfax traveled the country as a popular lecturer, often speaking about his interactions with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Grant was less popular in 1872 than he had been four years earlier, and many Republicans worried that having Colfax on the ticket would harm the President’s reelection chances.
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Other notable figures investigated included Senators Roscoe Conkling of New York, William Allison of Iowa, John Logan of Illinois, James Bayard of Delaware, and Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. Colfax was one of the many influential political figures suspected of accepting shares of stock and cash bribes from Credit Mobilier, a dummy construction company set up by the Union Pacific Railroad. The Credit Mobilier scandal broke in 1872, just as Grant and Colfax were gearing up for their reelection campaign.
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Their only child, son Schuyler Colfax III, was born in 1870. Grant and Colfax cruised to victory in November 1868, and just two weeks later Colfax remarried, this time to Ellen Wade (niece of Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade). Grant had no political background, and Colfax was placed on the ticket in part because of his experience. In 1868, Republicans selected General Ulysses S. Sadly, his election came soon after the death of his wife, Evelyn. Solidly anti-slavery, his colleagues elected Colfax as Speaker of the House in 1863. He was elected to Congress in 1854 and joined the Republicans after the Whig party unraveled. By the time he was twenty-two, Colfax was the editor and owner of a pro-Whig newspaper. His mother remarried when Colfax was thirteen, and the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana. He never attended any kind of secondary school or college. The young Schuyler attended school only until he was ten, then began working to support his family. His father died of tuberculosis five months before Schuyler was born his sister, Mary, died four months after his birth. was born in New York City on March 23, 1823. On January 14, 1885, the New York Times carried a headline that read “Schuyler Colfax Dead He Drops Down in a Railway Station.” While this would be a sad headline to describe anyone’s death, it was made a bit more awful by the fact that Schuyler Colfax was a former Vice President of the United States and Speaker of the House of Representatives.