On Inauguration Day 1873, Grant Ushers His Corrupt, Disgraced Vice President Out the Door

In 1868, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax had presidential aspirations, but accepted the Republican nomination for Vice President on a ticket headed by General Ulysses S. Grant. He was elected, becoming the first Speaker ever elected vice president. He consulted periodically with President Grant, but was not intimately involved with the administration. His distance from the President proved not to be a disadvantage when various scandals began to tarnish Grant and his appointees. Speculation soon arose that Colfax would replace Grant in the next election. In September 1870, at age 47, Colfax surprisingly announced that he intended to retire at the end of his term. This was a tactic for Colfax, who likely intended to be urged to run again, and hoped the announcement would further separate him from the Grant administration and open the way for a presidential nomination in 1872. But party officials and the national press called his bluff, took his announcement at face value, and began a movement to replace him on the ticket. Colfax openly changed his mind early in 1872 and acceded to the wishes of his friends that he stand for reelection on "the old ticket." President Grant may have questioned Colfax’s intentions. In 1871 the president had sent his vice president an extraordinary letter, informing him that Secretary of State Hamilton Fish wished to retire and asking him "in plain English" to give up the vice-presidency for the State Department. Grant appeared to be removing Colfax as a potential rival. "In all my heart I hope you will say yes," he wrote, "though I confess the sacrifice you will be making." Colfax declined, and a year later when Senator Henry Wilson challenged Colfax for renomination, the wary President chose to remain neutral in the contest, rather than support his sitting vice president. The Republican Convention selected Wilson in June 1872, so Colfax had effectively outmaneuvered himself.

Colfax might well have continued his political career after the vice-presidency, except for his connection to the worst scandal in nineteenth-century U.S. political history.  In September 1872, as the presidential campaign was getting underway, the New York Sun broke the four-year-old story about the Crédit Mobilier, a finance company created to underwrite construction of the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad. Since the railroad depended on federal subsidies, the company had recruited Massachusetts Representative Oakes Ames to distribute stock among the key members of Congress who could help them the most. Some members had paid for the stock at a low value, others had put no money down at all but simply let the generous dividends pay for the stock. On Oakes Ames’ list were the names of both Schuyler Colfax and Henry Wilson, along with such other Washington luminaries as Representatives James Garfield and James G. Blaine. Colfax made a public statement that completely dissociated himself from Crédit Mobilier, assuring his listeners that he never owned a dollar of stock that he had not paid for. In January 1873, the House committee investigating the scandal called the Vice President to testify. Ames claimed that, since Colfax had lacked the money to buy the stock, the stock had been paid for by its own inflated dividends. Ames’ notes indicated that Colfax had received an additional $1,200 in dividends. On the stand, Colfax swore flatly that he had never received a dividend check from Ames, but his testimony was contradicted by evidence. His story seemed so patently self-serving and far-fetched that even his strongest supporters dismissed it. Making matters worse, the committee disclosed evidence suggesting that Nesbitt, who manufactured stationery, had bribed Colfax as chairman of the House Post Office Committee in order to receive government contracts for envelopes. A resolution to impeach Colfax failed to pass by a mostly party-line vote, in part because just a few weeks remained in his term. The pious statesman had been exposed, and the public was unforgiving. Colfax left the vice-presidency in disgrace, becoming a symbol of the sordidness of Gilded Age politics.

Autograph Letter Signed, on Executive Mansion letterhead, two pages, Washington, March 4, 1873, Inauguration Day, to Colfax, expressing confidence in him even as he is shoved out the door. “Will you do me the favor and come over to dine, at four, an hour near at hand. We will have no company except our own family and some of our friends who came in to the inauguration. The dinner is early and will give you time to meet an early train for Baltimore. Allow me to say that I sympathize with you in the recent Congressional investigations; that I have watched them closely, and that I am satisfied now as I have ever been of your integrity, patriotism and freedom from the charges imputed as if I knew of my own knowledge your innocence. Our official relations have been so pleasant that I would like to keep up the personal relations engendered, through life.”?He signed it “Affectionately yours.”