Declaring March 23 of Each Year Schuyler Colfax Day

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Of/Twee/4 Schuyler Colfax served as the Chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads where he was known for battling southern representatives over the slavery issue and where it was reported that "Mr. Colfax took an active part in the debate, giving and receiving hard blows with all the skill of an old gladiator"; and went on to travel widely speaking at countless Republican and anti-slavery events which helped unify the party for the 1860 Presidential election; and 60rwreek1, on January 1, 1863, Schuyler Colfax was present at the White House when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation; and Ofifereeut in December 1863, Schuyler Colfax, who had become a widower earlier that year and had no children, was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, where he earned the titled as the "most popular Speaker since Henry Clay"; and C ,erects as depicted in the movie Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax was Speaker of the House of Representatives when he broke precedent, and specifically requested that his vote in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment be recorded; which resulted in the Washington newspaper correspondence hosting a dinner to celebrate the passage of the Amendment and specifically honored Schuyler Colfax; and erea4 on April 14, 1865, Schuyler Colfax met at the White House with President Lincoln to discuss Reconstruction who invited Speaker Colfax to join him at Ford's Theater later that night, before the Speaker began a long tour of the mining regions of the western states and territories between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Colfax declined only to be awakened later that night to spend the rest of the evening and early morning hours of April 15, 1865 at the President's bedside; and Gfierea4 declining to run for either the United States Senate of Governor of Indiana, Schuyler Colfax stated that presiding over the House as Speaker was "the more important office" than presiding over the Senate as vice-president; and Offierea6, in November of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax were elected, with Schuyler Colfax becoming the 1st Speaker of the House to ever be elected Vice-President. Days after the election, the 17th Vice-President elect married Ellen Wade, the niece of the Ohio Senator whom he had earlier defeated for the vice-presidential nomination. In April of 1870, Schuyler Colfax III was born who would become Mayor of the City of South Bend in 1898; and O!'/wrea6, leaving public elected office in 1872, Schuyler Colfax began a career as a public lecturer on his wartime relationship with President Lincoln. On January 13, 1885, on his way to another speaking engagement in Iowa, Schuyler Colfax was at a train station in Mankato,Minnesota where the temperature was reported to be 30 degrees below zero, was stricken by a heart attack and died. �ereao it was written by Logan Esarey that: "...South Bend lost its most distinguished citizen, and the country not only a leading statesman and patriot, but a good and noble man as well. He was among the most eminent men of the west, whose life record forms an integral part of the history, and not alone of South Bend but of the state and nation, and who is therefore most worthy of special mention in a work of his character...