Schuyler Colfax, the Smiler from South Bend
Near South Bend, Indiana
Schuyler Colfax moved to South Bend in eighteen forty-one at the age of eighteen, got a job as deputy auditor of Saint Joseph County, and spent the rest of his political life being called Smiler Colfax by people who meant it as a compliment.
He became a newspaper editor and then a congressman, representing Indiana's ninth congressional district from eighteen fifty-five to eighteen sixty-nine, fourteen years in the House. He rose to Speaker, a position he held from eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-nine. In eighteen sixty-eight, he was elected Vice President of the United States on the ticket with Ulysses S. Grant. As Speaker, Colfax had led the push to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery; he was so committed to the vote that he broke with House tradition and cast his own vote on the amendment to make his support explicit.
Then came the Credit Mobilier scandal. The railroad industry, building the transcontinental line with federal support, had distributed stock in the Credit Mobilier construction company to friendly congressmen as a form of quiet payment. Colfax was among those who had received shares. A congressional investigation in eighteen seventy-two and eighteen seventy-three found evidence against him. He was not impeached; the evidence was sufficient to end his political career but not quite sufficient for removal. He served out his term as Vice President, then returned to a lecture circuit.
He died on January thirteenth, eighteen eighty-five, from a heart attack at a train depot in Mankato, Minnesota, while traveling to give a speech. He was sixty-one years old.
South Bend's most prominent national politician before the twenty-first century, and the answer to a trivia question most people from Indiana cannot answer: which Vice President of the United States came from South Bend?
