The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  But Colfax was not encouraged subsequently when Johnson proceeded during the summer and fall of 1865 to undertake presidential reconstruction with no regard to the congressional leadership. The Speaker later said that prior to the assassination he had tried to convince both Lincoln and Johnson of the wisdom of calling a special session of Congress to consider how best to bring the rebel states back into the Union. Before that happened, he wrote a friend, “I want to be very certain that a majority of their voters are—not merely whopped back into the Union, as they say—but heartily devoted to the Union & ready to fight with us agst. all its enemies at home or abroad, now & in the future.”7

  In November 1865 Colfax made a major speech in Washington that was among the first serious cautions about presidential reconstruction at the hands of Johnson. He warned that Southerners who only months earlier were “struggling to blast this nation from the map of the world” were proposing to enter Congress in the next session “to resume their former business of governing the country they struggled so earnestly to ruin.” He noted that the Constitution gave each house of Congress the exclusive right to judge the qualifications of elected members, adding, “And I apprehend they will exercise that right.” While commending conditions laid down by Johnson as “eminently wise and patriotic,” he called for ratification of new Southern state constitutions that would protect the personal and property rights of black freedmen. He expressed confidence that when the executive and legislative branches compared their views, they “would cordially cooperate.”8

  According to an entry in the diary of Gideon Welles, Johnson’s inherited navy secretary, the new president referred to Colfax in conversation with several cabinet members as “this little fellow … shoved in here to make a speech in advance of [Johnson’s] message, and to give out that the principle enunciated in his speech was the true policy of the country.” Radical Republicans were quick to praise Colfax for arguing that black suffrage and other rights be part of Reconstruction, but the conservative Chicago Times editorially commented that the Republicans had “conspired to defeat the work of restoration already done and happily carried forward by the president, and Schuyler Colfax was a leading conspirator among them for that purpose.”9

  When the Thirty-Eighth Congress convened that fall, the reelection of Colfax as Speaker of the House was considered a test of his Reconstruction views. If so, he passed it easily, defeating James Brooks of New York. Applauded as he took the chair, he told the members, “It is for you, Representatives, to do our work as faithfully and as well as did the fearless saviors of the Union on their more dangerous arena of duty. Then we may hope to see these vacant and once abandoned seats around us gradually filling, until this Hall shall contain Representatives from every State and district.”10

  Colfax then appointed a joint House-Senate committee to “inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate States of America” as to their eligibility to send representatives to either house, with none seated until this was done. Some aspirants who perhaps optimistically came to the chamber were sent away. Despite Colfax’s hope for harmony with the White House on Reconstruction, he eventually had to face reality with Johnson’s veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and other vetoes. He predicted that Congress would override the veto of the Civil Rights Bill passed afterward in 1866, and he was right. Soon after, he told some Indiana callers that they had to look to Congress, not to the executive, for “legalized reconstruction.” And he condensed his position thus: “Loyal men shall govern a preserved Republic.”11

  Johnson’s vetoes and the general aspect of his reconstruction policy of lenience to the South, particularly to political figures who had supported the Confederate side and sought readmission to Congress, were intolerable to Colfax and to many other Radical Republicans and moderates in the Republican Party. Along with these actions was evidence that the president was considering the creation of a new party that could be the vehicle for his election to another term in his own right. In June he invited delegates from all thirty-six states to the District of Columbia, and supporters called for a National Union convention in Philadelphia for the same purpose, the first of four such gatherings elsewhere over the summer and fall.12

  By the spring of 1866, talk of impeaching Johnson spread rapidly among the Radical Republicans. As Speaker, Colfax was sympathetic but took no leadership role. The obvious grounds for action against Johnson were his reconstruction plans, but many in Congress believed that impeachment could be sought only for specific illegal, indictable acts, which he was careful not to commit.

  The congressional elections of 1866 went badly for Johnson. He fared well in the South, but the congressional Republicans built their strength in the North and won a two-thirds majority in both houses, enabling them to override any subsequent presidential veto. When Congress returned in December 1866, the emboldened Radicals introduced a resolution creating a committee to investigate possible impeachment, but it failed the necessary two-thirds vote. In January 1867, another motion, this one charging the president with high crimes and misdemeanors, including abuse of power, corruption in making appointments and granting pardons, and election tampering, passed and was sent to the House Judiciary Committee. But it was shelved there.

  Meanwhile, Congress had passed the Tenure of Office Act, curbing the president’s power to remove postmasters and others from positions of patronage. A provision was added stipulating that cabinet officials were to hold their offices for the duration of the term of the president who had appointed them, plus one month, subject to removal by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

  Johnson quickly vetoed the act and the latest reconstruction legislation written by Congress but was overridden. He seemed to acquiesce, not wanting to give his critics legitimate grounds for impeachment, and the threat seemed to fade for a time. Then, on July 29, 1867, when Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without Senate approval, in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Colfax was convinced the president had to be impeached, an action now devoutly desired by the Radical Republicans. It fell to the genial “Smiler” Colfax to bring the moderates along as well while demonstrating fairness in the chair.

  On February 24, 1868, the House voted overwhelmingly for the impeachment resolution, with every Republican in favor. Despite the subsequent Senate acquittal of Johnson, there was no possibility that the Republicans would nominate him in the next presidential election, so he pursued, hopelessly, a nomination by his old Democratic Party. The immense popularity of the Civil War hero U. S. Grant assured his Republican nomination for the presidency, and Colfax was one of several men considered as his running mate. He resisted overtures to run for governor of Indiana or for the U.S. Senate, but he was clearly interested in the Republican vice presidential nomination.

  The main prospect at the outset was Senator Benjamin F. Wade, the president pro tem of the Senate, but at the party convention in Chicago, Colfax was nominated on the sixth ballot. As a teetotaler, some delegates saw him as a ticket balancer, offsetting Grant’s notable propensity for hard liquor. The social Smiler Colfax, now a widower who taught Sunday School and spoke at temperance meetings, was a popular choice. In the Democratic Party, which bypassed the only recently acquitted Johnson of impeachment charges, Governor Horatio Seymour of New York was nominated.

  With Grant resisting speech making, Colfax pitched in against Seymour, and in defense of the Civil War he did not hesitate to “wave the bloody shirt” against unrepentant rebels, “murderous traitors with their shirts and their hands red with the blood of murdered Union men.” In Detroit, Colfax told prospective Democratic voters, “When you go to the ballot box and drop in that ballot by which you and other millions of our country rule this land and control its destinies, you are going side by side, if not in actual proximity yet in the spirit, in principle and in soul with the men on the battlefield who sought to kill you for our adherence to the flag.… they drew the bead upon you; they aimed at your heart beca
use you were faithful to the allegiance which they themselves repudiated. God’s providence turned aside that bullet, but if the men with whom you are going to vote could have led the way you would have been bleeding in your graves. Now go and vote with them if you want to.”13

  Many Democrats struggled against allegations of being on the wrong side of the war and in return played the race card by questioning black suffrage and other Reconstruction policies. But Grant and Colfax won comfortably, with Grant’s stature as the North’s hero of the war dominant. A fellow congressman, Godlove S. Orth, wrote the vice president elect: “I believe your chances to succeed Grant are at this time better than those of any living man. To keep them in this condition will require the constant action of yourself & friends.”14

  Only weeks after the election, Colfax married a second time, at age forty-five. His bride, Ellen Wade, about fifteen years his junior, was the niece of Senator Ben Wade. She presided over the Colfax home, which was open to many of her husband’s political associates, including a host of journalists he befriended as former colleagues of the press. But after ruling over the House for fourteen years as Speaker, Colfax found presiding over the Senate as vice president a letdown. In that post he had no patronage, a severe disappointment for the former Speaker who had made a career, and a host of friends, in dispensing it.

  He was in demand as a speaker around the country, however, often addressing religious and temperance meetings. Although he was known for receiving and keeping gifts in office, he insisted he did not speak for money, writing in 1871 that he had not “spoken at all” at any event where admission was charged.15 But in 1868 Colfax, always deeply interested in railroads in connection with expansion of the American West, had acquired some steeply discounted railroad stock from a colleague, Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, about which he later would have much regret.16

  During the 1870 congressional elections, he pointedly announced that at only age fifty he would not be seeking reelection to the vice presidency in 1872. The announcement immediately launched speculation as to why and what he would be doing thereafter. Railroad magnate Jay Cooke, then planning construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad, sounded him out about a job in Washington looking after interests in acquiring land grants, federal appropriations for advance construction, and protection for workers in the Indian territories. Cooke later wrote that he thought “Mr. Colfax would combine his editorial, political and oratorical talents” to help achieve the project, for which he would be paid twenty-five thousand dollars a year. The offer was attractive to Colfax, who had never made much money, but he turned it down, noting he would otherwise have to resign the vice presidency.

  Cooke then offered to hire Colfax after he was to leave office, and the vice president said nothing would please him more at that time. Cooke tried again, asking Colfax whether he might accept a temporary position with no government activities at all, but again the answer was no. He told Cooke he would be as helpful to him as he could “without any remuneration whatever,” and that was the end of the offer.17 It turned out, however, that earlier Colfax had taken advantage of a Cooke offer to buy original stock at very favorable price, separate from the stock he had acquired from Ames.18

  In August 1871, Colfax was surprised to receive a letter from Grant. The secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, was ailing and wanted to resign. “In plain English,” Grant asked, “will you give up the Vice-Presidency to be Secretary of State for the balance of my term of office?… In all my heart I hope you will say yes, though I confess the sacrifice you will be making.”19

  Nothing came of this strange request, when Fish acceded to a petition from Colfax and forty-four senators to stay in office.

  One of the vice president’s last notable official duties came in 1872 when he cast a tie-breaking vote for an amendment to an amnesty bill providing equal rights for blacks on public conveyances, in railroad stations, theaters, churches, and schools, and on juries. The proposal, which later was dropped from the bill, was ahead of its time, and Colfax observed of it: “We should either acknowledge that the Constitution is a nullity or should insist on that obedience to it by all, and protection under it to all.”20

  In 1872, Grant remained popular and was assured of renomination. But a stock market crash resulting from wild gold speculation in 1869, dissatisfaction with the conduct of the administration and corruption within it, and the emergence of the new Liberal Republican faction all clouded the election outcome. In May, the Liberal Republicans called their own national convention in Cincinnati and nominated the New York publisher Horace Greeley for president. The immobilized Democrats threw in with them, holding no convention of their own.

  Meanwhile, Colfax’s original declaration that he would not run again had inspired Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and friends to jump in. But Colfax suddenly changed his mind. When Wilson was asked by the New-York Tribune how Colfax’s change of heart had affected his own position, he replied, “The revocation of the Vice President and his declination was to me a surprise. It placed me in an unpleasant position, and my first impulse was to withdraw from the contest, but by the advice of some of the best Republicans of the land—East, West and South—I leave the question to personal and political friends.” But upon the advice of leading Republicans, Wilson decided to leave the matter in the party’s hands.21 At the Republican convention in Philadelphia in June, with Grant remaining aloof and neutral, Wilson was chosen on the first ballot as his 1872 running mate.

  More than two months after the convention, Colfax was implicated in a questionable stock deal in which a finance company called Credit Mobilier, established by the directors of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1867 to underwrite its construction, was investigated on charges of lining the pockets of certain members of Congress. Representative Oakes Ames had been recruited to offer stock to them, including Speaker Colfax; Senator Wilson; Congressmen James A. Garfield, a future president; James Brooks; and James G. Blaine, a future presidential nominee. Some paid ridiculously low prices for the stock, some did not have to put any money down, and all reaped large dividends. The charges against Colfax had not been aired at the time of his defeat for renomination and hence were not a factor in that outcome.

  In January 1873, however, the House investigating committee called Colfax to testify. He had already said he had never owned any of the stock that he had not paid for, but Ames testified that because the retiring vice president lacked the money needed to buy the stock, it had been bought with its rising dividends. Notes produced by Ames indicated that Colfax had received another twelve hundred dollars in dividends, but he denied ever having received the dividend check. When it was turned up in the files of the House sergeant-at-arms and recorded on a bank deposit slip in Colfax’s handwriting, he insisted the money had come from a completely unrelated source. Further, the committee produced evidence that Colfax, as chairman of the House Post Offices and Post Roads Committee, had taken payments for post office contracts.

  A resolution to impeach him was introduced in the House but failed to pass on an essentially party-line vote, with members willing to let Colfax off with only weeks left in his term. He remained, however, a disgraced symbol of congressional and Wall Street corruption. Of all the other members of Congress involved, only Ames and Brooks were formally censured by the House. The once highly admired Colfax retired to his home in South Bend. After being asked to deliver remarks at the unveiling of a Lincoln statue in Springfield, Illinois, he embarked on a lucrative turn as a Lincoln lecturer. En route to a speech engagement in Iowa on January 13, 1885, he suffered a heart attack at a railroad station in Mankato, Minnesota, and died, identified only by the papers he carried.

  Schuyler Colfax thus left the scene as little more than an asterisk in the history books. He was a foot soldier in the ranks of Radical Republicans and toiled constructively in the cause of congressional reconstruction as Speaker of the House. As such he was widely regarded as a man of genial rectitude. But as vice president i
n the Grant administration he was a man without a serious mission. Left to the temptations of ill gain, in the end Colfax would be remembered most for the corruption to which he himself contributed. And in his hands, the second office, already held in low regard by many if not most Americans, was further diminished.

  HENRY WILSON

  OF MASSACHUSETTS

  Few men who rose to the doorstep of the American presidency had a more unlikely road to that prominence than the man who became President Grant’s vice president in his second term, Henry Wilson. Actually he was born Jeremiah Jones Colbath in the village of Farmington, New Hampshire, on February 16, 1812. For the most pecuniary of reasons, his father, Winthrop Colbath, a poor, unkempt, and hard-drinking ne’er-do-well, named his first child after a wealthy bachelor neighbor in the hope, unfulfilled, that the man would leave his namesake a substantial amount of money if he died childless. The callous act may have contributed in time to the boy’s alienation from the New England aristocracy and fierce identification with the plight of the poor and disadvantaged, a plight that he shared as a youth and an identification that he maintained through his life.

  Growing up uneducated in either scholarship or manners, he developed into a rough-hewn troublemaker with a profane tongue, which his mother, Abigail, sought to combat by urging him to read. When he was ten years old, his father placed him as a field hand with a local farmer, committing him to live, work, and obey his “master” until he reached the age of twenty-one. He was not to leave without permission, not to “play at cards, dice, or any other unlawful games … not haunt or frequent taverns, playhouses or alehouses … not commit fornication [or] contract matrimony.” At the end of this indentured servitude, he would be given “one yoke of likely working cattle” and “one good suit for everyday wear.”1