At this very chilling time of year, it’s useful to recall our state’s first vice presidential death. That, of course, is the demise of the nation’s 17th VP, non-Minnesotan Schuyler Colfax, caused by walking in sub-zero cold in Mankato on Jan. 13, 1885. But more on that heart-stopping event later. Instead, first consider Minnesota and the vice presidency.
Though we are only tied for sixth among the states for number of vice presidents — New York and Indiana lead by far — Minnesotans tend to see our state as fertile grounds for building skills for the nation’s Number Two job. Of course, some past holders of the position say it doesn’t require much. For example, Thomas Marshall, vice president for eight years under President Woodrow Wilson, remarked, “A mother had two sons. One ran away to sea and the other became vice president. Neither were ever heard from again.”
Our only elected vice presidents are DFLers Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. After serving in the U.S. Senate, they were elected as veeps, little more than a decade apart, to serve respectively under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Interestingly, each only served one term and then went on to lose the presidency on their own. More recently, while he and running mate Kamala Harris were unsuccessful in their short campaign, 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz was a very credible contestant for the position.
In 1964, when Humphrey was selected by Johnson to be his running mate, his colleague Sen. Gene McCarthy was also evaluated for the post, but not chosen. Four years later, McCarthy ran as an anti-Vietnam War candidate, first against Johnson and then unsuccessfully against Humphrey, his party’s eventual 1968 nominee.
Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was seriously considered in 2008 as a running mate by GOP nominee John McCain, only to be passed over for the talentless Sarah Palin. Pawlenty went on to have his own campaign for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination but quit after three months.
Harold Stassen was another Minnesotan rejected for the vice presidency. He was seriously considered in 1952 for the job by Republican presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower. But he ultimately lost out to the more conservative Richard Nixon. After Ike’s rejection, Stassen, for no good reason, unsuccessfully sought his party’s presidential nomination seven more times.
Excepting the very much alive Walz and Pawlenty, these Gopher State worthies died conventionally — Humphrey of bladder cancer, McCarthy of Parkinson’s disease and nonagenarians Stassen and Mondale of “natural causes.” Colfax, of course, died in more appropriate Minnesota fashion — but first let’s discuss a bit of his life.
He was vice president in Ulysses S. Grant’s first term, 1869-73. His first Minnesota visit was as an Indiana congressman in 1859 campaigning for fellow Republican Alexander Ramsey’s successful gubernatorial run. From 1863-69, Colfax served as U.S. House Speaker where he was a firm Abraham Lincoln supporter and of pro-black measures for the Reconstruction South.
Grant and Colfax won easily in 1868. The next 18 months marked the height of the latter’s popularity. But in 1870, wrongly assuming Grant wouldn’t seek a second term, Colfax announced he wouldn’t run again for vice president, making himself available for the presidency in 1872.
It was one of those puzzling, self-serving and completely wrong calculations politicians often make — think Joe Biden seeking reelection at age 81. Grant did run and was reelected. Ultimately, Colfax changed his mind and tried to get the GOP’s VP nomination but lost in the fifth ballot at the party’s Baltimore convention.
That loss, coupled with what looked like taking a bribe from Credit Mobilier, the Union Pacific Railroad’s construction arm, effectively ended Colfax’s political life. So, he began a successful career as a lecturer, specializing in speeches on temperance and Lincoln, whom he knew while House Speaker. He received what was then a good fee, $150 per talk, which would be around $4,900 in today’s dollars, and got great coverage from local newspapers.
Colfax was also active in the Odd Fellows, then one of the nation’s largest fraternal organizations. In fact, as a young member in 1851 he nationally spearheaded organizing the women’s Odd Fellows branch, the Degree of Rebekha.
The mix of professional lecturing and fraternal membership led Colfax to Mankato on that freezing January morning. He had traveled by rail from his South Bend, Indiana, home to speak to the Odd Fellows Lodge in Rock Rapids, Iowa. However, Colfax had to switch trains in Mankato, which meant walking in the minus-30 degree cold from the Front Street Depot to the Omaha Line’s depot, three quarters of a mile away. After finishing that bone-chilling hike, Colfax sat down on a bench inside the Omaha depot and five minutes later collapsed and died. In those days of few photos, Colfax wasn’t even recognized and identified only by the name on his Omaha Line ticket.
Though he wasn’t one of us, Minnesota does have a few reminders of our first dead vice president. There’s a plaque in his memory in Mankato’s Washington Park, where the Omaha Line depot once stood. Also, Colfax Township is located in Kandiyohi County. Most well-known is Minneapolis’ Colfax Avenue, a mostly residential street — which though often interrupted by freeways, parks, cemeteries and bodies of water — stretches from north of Interstate 694 in Brooklyn Center south to a few blocks short of the Minnesota River in Bloomington. It’s a lively remembrance of a vice president and his fateful walk in Minnesota’s cold.
Ken Peterson, a lifelong Minnesotan, is a retired attorney and amateur historian. He appreciates the cold but lives in a warm house in St. Paul.
