[2][3] Colby served as Secretary of State from February 1920[3] until 1921, at a time when President Woodrow Wilson was medically handicapped and largely out of touch.

He spoke at the Colby College commencement on June 19, 1933, at which time he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Colby was a special assistant to the United States Attorney General in an anti-trust action in 1917, and represented the U.S. at the Inter-Allied Conference at Paris the same year.

On August 26, eight days after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Colby issued the official proclamation that it had become a part of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Colby addressed the fractious 1924 Democratic National Convention as the chief spokesman for the minority of delegates that unsuccessfully sought a platform plank denouncing the then-powerful Ku Klux Klan by name.

[17] The marriage apparently was very contentious and Colby felt the need to include in his divorce decree a monthly payment of $1,500.00 to stop Nathalie from "ridiculing him in her writings".

[16] Less than a year later, he married Anne Ahlstrand Ely, who was politically engaged in many of the same issues as Colby, such as women's suffrage.

(As Secretary of State, Colby would issue the proclamation announcing that the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, had been ratified as part of the U.S.