Colfax, SCHUYLER, American statesman, born at New York, 23d March 1823, removed in 1836 to
Indiana, where in 1845 he acquired a newspaper at South Bend, which he made the most influential Whig journal in the district. He was a delegate to the Whig conventions of 1848 and 1852; he was returned to congress in 1854 by the newly-formed Republican party, and re-elected until 1869, being thrice chosen Speaker; and in 1868 he was elected vice-president of the United States, in Grant's first term. Implicated, apparently unjustly, in the Crédit Mobilier charges of 1873, he spent the remainder of his life in political retirement, making public appearances only on the lecture platform, and died at Mankato, in Minnesota, 13th January 1885. See his Life by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886).