01-14-13 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING JANUARY 14, 2013 Whereas, Schuyler Colfax attended public schools until the age of ten (10), when he was forced to leave school and work as a retail clerk to help support his mother, his grandmother and himself; and Whereas, in 1834, Schuyler Colfax’s mother, Hannah Stryker Colfax and his step-father, George W. Matthews were married, and they moved to Indiana in 1836 where Schuyler Colfax began working in his step-father’s store and at a village post office to help support his mother; and Whereas, it is reported that Schuyler Colfax would sit on barrels while working, and would read newspapers and borrowed all books possible to educate himself. At the age of 16 years he wrote articles and sent them to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, who published his writings about the Indiana legislature and Indiana politics. This resulted in a close friendship between them which lasted the rest of their lives; and Whereas, in 1841, Schuyler and his mother and step-father moved to South Bend when his step-father was elected as the Whig candidate to be the St. Joseph County Auditor and hired young Schuyler as his deputy. At the age of 19, Schuyler was hired by the Indiana Whigs to serve as editor of The South Bend Free Press, a paper he later purchased in 1845 and renamed it The Saint Joseph Valley Reporter which Harriet Beecher Stowe later called it a “morally pure paper”; and Whereas, in 1848, Schuyler Colfax served as a delegate to the Whig Convention. In 1849, he led the opposition to a provision in the new Constitution for the State of Indiana which barred African-Americans from settling in the state or from purchasing property; and Whereas, anti-slavery Whigs like Schuyler Colfax sought to build a new party which eventually merged as the Republican Party and he worked to have a “firm anti-slavery plank in their platform” when he arrived as a new Congressman in the House of Representatives in 1855; and Whereas, 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 Whereas, on January 1, 1863, Schuyler Colfax was present at the White House when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation; and Whereas, 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 Whereas, 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 Whereas, 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 2