Editing Schuyler Colfax (section)

===Lecturer and business executive===
After leaving office in March 1873, Colfax began to recover his reputation, embarking on a successful career as a traveling lecturer offering speeches on a variety of topics. His most requested presentation was one on the life of Abraham Lincoln, whom the nation had begun to turn into an icon. With an expanding population that desired to know more details and context about Lincoln's life and career, an oration from someone who had known him personally was an attraction audiences were willing to pay to hear, and Colfax delivered his Lincoln lecture hundreds of times to positive reviews.

In 1875, he became vice president of the Indiana Reaper and Iron Company.<ref name=NYT2141875>{{cite news| title=Washington Gossip: Social Topics at the National Capital; A Visit From Schuyler Colfax| url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1875/02/14/82420322.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1875/02/14/82420322.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live| work=The New York Times| date=February 14, 1875| via=The Times's print archive| access-date=April 7, 2019}}</ref> On February 12, 1875, having returned to Washington, D.C., to give a lecture, he advised his friends in Congress who were frustrated over the slow pace of action: "Ah! the way to get out of politics is to get out of politics."<ref name=NYT2141875/>

He had remained popular in his home area, and was often encouraged to run again for public office, but he always declined. Finally, in April 1882, when pressed to consider becoming a candidate for his old U.S. House seat in the [[1882 United States House of Representatives elections|upcoming election]], Colfax announced in a letter to the ''[[South Bend Tribune]]'' that, while he deeply appreciated how much his friends wanted him to run for public office again, he was satisfied by the 20 years of service he had given during the "stormiest years of our nation's history." He also said that he was enjoying his life as a private citizen, and would neither be a candidate nor accept any nomination for any office in the future, stating that his "only ambition now is to go in and out among my townsmen as a private citizen during what years of life may remain for me to enjoy on this earth".<ref>{{cite news| title=Schuyler Colfax Refuses| url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1882/04/07/103412788.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1882/04/07/103412788.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live| work=The New York Times| date=April 7, 1882| via=The Times's print archive| access-date=April 7, 2019}}</ref>