Archive Record
Images
Metadata
Object Name |
Letter |
Date |
1867/07/25 |
Catalog Number |
2002.8.5A |
Description |
Schuyler Colfax to Miss Rupell in Newport, Rhode Island. Thanking Miss Rupell for recent visit to Newport and for gift of a cigar. Includes transcription. |
Title |
Colfax Collection, Letter Schuyler Colfax to Miss Rupell in Newport, Rhode Island |
Collection |
Colfax Collection |
Credit line |
Gift of Tim Hernly |
People |
Colfax, Schuyler |
Relation |
Show Related Records... |
Transcription |
Colfax to Miss Fanny Rupell - July 25, 1867 2002.8.5A Page One Newport, R.I. July 25, 1867 Dear Miss Rupell, I cannot leave Newport for the far East without thanking you & your father for the delightful visit I enjoyed so much yesterday, and which made me feel so much at home. If ever I visit Newport again, I shall hope to repeat its pleasures. That huge cegar is yet unsmoken, & shall be kept till I return to my South Bend home; when amid the castles in the air to be built in its smoke, (as your father told me he built such things) shall be reproduced your delightful home & the brief hours in which I enjoyed its hospitality. Respy yrs, Schuyler Colfax This section was included on the previously transcribed document; although not in the handwritten letter from Schuyler Colfax. HISTORICAL NOTE: Schuyler Colfax, b. March 23, 1823, New York City, d. January 13, 1885, Mankato, Minnesota, U.S. Republican Vice President of the United States (1869-73) under President Ulysses S. Grant. After his family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana in 1836, Colfax was appointed deputy auditor of St. Joseph County (1841), and founded the St. Joseph Valley Register (1845), a Whig newspaper which became one of the most influential papers in the State during his 18 years of editorship. Before the Civil War, Colfax shifted from the Whig Party to the Know-Nothings to the Republicans, who elected him to Congress in 1854. He served until 1869, the last years as Speaker of the House. Colfax was a close friend and ally of President Abraham Lincoln and was at the White House on the evening of April 14, 1865 when President Lincoln left for Ford's Theater. He was invited by the President to accompany him to the theater but as he was not a theater enthusiast, he graciously declined. During Reconstruction (1865-77), Colfax was a leader of the Radical Republicans who favored extending suffrage to Negro Freemen and disenfranchising those who had served prominently in the Confederacy. Elected to the Vice Presidency in 1868, he failed to win renomination in 1872. Later that year, a Congressional investigation implicated him in corrupt transactions with government contractors. At the end of his term, Colfax returned to private life at his South Bend home under a cloud, but managed to make a living by delivering popular lectures. He died in route to a lecture hall in Blue Earth County, Minnesota. His remains are interred in City Cemetery, in South Bend. Proofed and edited by Linda C. Deaton from previously transcribed document 11/2022 |
Lexicon category |
8: Communication Artifact |
Lexicon sub-category |
Documentary Artifact |
Year Range from |
1867 |