Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1890 — COLFAX AND THE NEGRO. [ARTICLE]

COLFAX AND THE NEGRO.

A Most Interesting JfemiuisceitCD The Vice President said He Wo’d Walk From Washington to I idian<i to Vote Against Negro Suffrage—How He Changed His Mind. f Indianapolis Sentinel. ] “Yes,” said I. M. Staekliouse to a reporter a few daye ago in answer to an inquiry, “ have been in active politics since i was nineteen years old, when 1 engaged in the canvass for John P. Hale and George W. Julian, free-soil candidates for presi lent and vicepresident. My first vote was cast for John 0. Fremont, .and I voted twice for Abraham Lincoln, but never cast a vote that 1 am ashamed of, or that history will not ap> prove.” “Well, yes! Of course in thirtyeight years of activity in politics many things have occurred of interest, and some of importance, but the incident which most forcibly impressed me and drove me from tLe republican party occurs red in 1866. In that campaign was elected the congress that passed the Fifteenth amendment. I was living at that time in Rensselaer, in the old Ninth districfc—Oolfax’s district. I was chairman, for the second time, of the republican county committee of Jasper county. David Turpie, our present U. 8. senator, was the democratic candidate for congress, and Colfax was the republican c mdidate.— Turpie challenged Colfax to a joint discussion in every one of the thirteen county seats in the district. For that r ral and at that time sparsely settled county it is no exaggeration to say that there was an immense crowd at Rensselaer. Mr. Turpie opened the de; bate, and in the course of his speech made this prediction: “The republican party has the president and the senate now; if it carries a majoiity of the next congress the negroes will vote in every state in the Union inside of two years. How they will do it Ido not know, but that they will do it Ido know. It is on the slife as a part of the program by which they expect to keep themselves in power.” Mr Colfax, in reply, with all the indignation possible upon his smiling face, said: “Youall know that the constitution of the state of Indiana prohibits negroes from voting, and before they can vote the constitution of the state will ha /e to be changed, and any such amendment will have to be submitted to you at the ballot-box, and if I were injWashington, and could get to Indiana no o her way, I would walk all the way to vote against it!’ * A few months afterward he left his seat as speaker of the house to vote to force negro suffrage on the state without the consent of h»s constituents. But that simply leads up to the episode.

After the speaking was over Mr. Colfax, sandwiched between myself and Dr. Sam Ritchey, who once ran for congress on the abolition ticket in the Johnson county district, started to the hotel. On the way Dr. Ritchey said to the candidate for congress :| “Mr. Colfax, I thought the*Republican party was in favor of negro suffrage. If I had not tho’t so I would not have been acting with it’ Colfax replied: ‘Well, it is, and wt propose to do just what Turpie charged; ‘but it won’t do to talk it out to the people.” I let the arm of Mr. Colfax drop with the remark: ‘lf the'republican party is in favor of anything that it dare not advocate and :iscuss before the people, then I am not a republican,’ and I turned and left the future vice-president standing on the sidewalk. ‘This double-dealing and tergiversation on the part of the ChriSo tian statesman, disgusted me with politics, and I did not vote tor

president in 1868 or in 1872. * ‘Honest? Yes! Colfax, you know, posed and was known as ‘The Christian Statesman,* and of course was honest. He used to spend his days, when not engaged in congress, or in trying to get there, m lecturing before Sundayschools, telling little boys and girls to be virtuous and they would be happy, but he failed to tell them how much fun they would miss. But in regard to his honesty I want to tell you a fact which illustrates it. About the ‘ime ho was first elected to congress his printing office, thr- South Bend Register, burned out, and he sold his house, all he had in the world, for $4,000 and started Lis paper again. He served in congress four years at $2,000 —$8,000; then he served four years at $5,000;—520 000; then four years as vice-president at sß,ooo This makes an aggregate of $60,000 as his receipts in official life. Alfred Thompson, a banker in Rensselaer, and a lifelong republican, who, with his wife, visited him in Washington, told me he was living—and he was then speaker—at an expense of SIO,OOO a year. But to be safe, we will average his expenses at half that, and for the twelve years of official life, it will make $60,000, just equalling his official salary. Then it must oe taken into account that when his salary was $2,000 a year, he gave, each year, SI,OOO to the sanitary commission, and sl,000 each year to the Christian commission. Yet he came out with an estate valued at $200,000, among the assets of which was $50,000 in the Studebaker wagon works. Honest? Yes; as republican politicians are gauged. If he had not been honest he would have been worth a million!”