Hiram R. Revels | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Revels,c. 1860–1875 | |
| 19th Secretary of State of Mississippi | |
| In office December 30, 1872 – September 1, 1873 | |
| Governor | Ridgely C. Powers |
| Preceded by | James D. Lynch |
| Succeeded by | Hannibal C. Carter |
| United States Senator fromMississippi | |
| In office February 25, 1870 – March 3, 1871 | |
| Preceded by | Albert G. Brown |
| Succeeded by | James L. Alcorn |
| Member of theMississippi State Senate from the 4th district | |
| In office January 11, 1870 – February 25, 1870 | |
| Succeeded by | Jeremiah M. P. Williams |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-09-27)September 27, 1827 |
| Died | January 16, 1901(1901-01-16) (aged 73) Aberdeen, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Phoebe Bass |
| Children | 8, includingSusie Revels Cayton, andIda Revels Redmond |
| Education |
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| Military service | |
| Allegiance | |
| Branch/service |  Union Army |
| Years of service | 1863–1865 |
| Unit | Chaplain Corps |
| Battles/wars | American Civil War |
Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827[note 1] – January 16, 1901) was an AmericanRepublican politician, minister in theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Elected by the Mississippi legislature to theUnited States Senate as a Republican to representMississippi in 1870 and 1871 during theReconstruction era, he was the firstAfrican American to serve in either house of theU.S. Congress.
During theAmerican Civil War, Revels had helped organize two regiments of theUnited States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. After serving in the Senate, Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (nowAlcorn State University), ahistorically black college. He served from 1871 to 1873. Later in his life, he served again as a minister.
Revels was born free in 1827 inFayetteville, North Carolina, tofree people of color, with ancestors who had been free since before theAmerican Revolution.[1] His parents were ofAfrican American,European, andNative American ancestry.[2] His mother was also specifically known to be of Scots descent. His father was aBaptist preacher.[3]
Revels was a second cousin toLewis Sheridan Leary, one of the men who were killed taking part inJohn Brown'sraid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, and to North Carolina lawyer and politicianJohn S. Leary.[4]
During his childhood, Revels's education came from a local black woman. In 1838, at age 11, he went to live with his older brother, Elias B. Revels, inLincolnton, North Carolina. He was apprenticed as a barber in his brother's shop. Barbering was considered a respectable, steady trade for black Americans in this period. As men of all races used barbers, the trade provided black Americans an opportunity to establish networks with the white community. After Elias Revels died in 1841, his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram Revels before she remarried.[5]
Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary, a school inUnion County, Indiana, founded byQuakers, and theUnion Literary Institute, also known as the Darke County Seminary despite being inRandolph County, Indiana.[6]
In 1845, Revels was ordained as a minister in theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana,Illinois, Ohio,Tennessee,Missouri, andKansas.[6] "At times, I met with a great deal of opposition," he later recalled. "I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to Negroes, though I was never subjected to violence."[7] During these years, he voted in Ohio.
He studied religion from 1855 to 1857 atKnox College inGalesburg, Illinois. He became a minister in aMethodist Episcopal Church inBaltimore,Maryland, where he also served as a principal of a black high school.[8]
During theAmerican Civil War, Revels served as a chaplain in the United States Army. After the Union authorized establishment of theUnited States Colored Troops, he helped recruit and organize two blackUnion regiments in Maryland and Missouri. He took part at theBattle of Vicksburg inVicksburg,Mississippi.[9]
In 1865, Revels left theAME Church, the first independent black denomination in the US, and joined theMethodist Episcopal Church. He was assigned briefly to churches inLeavenworth, Kansas, andNew Orleans, Louisiana. In 1866, he was called as a permanent pastor at a church inNatchez, Mississippi, where he settled with his wife and five daughters. He became an elder in the Mississippi District of the Methodist Church,[8] continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for black children.
DuringReconstruction, Revels was electedalderman in Natchez in 1868.[10] In 1869 he was elected to representAdams County in theMississippi State Senate.
CongressmanJohn R. Lynch later wrote of him in his book on Reconstruction:
Revels was comparatively a new man in the community. He had recently been stationed at Natchez as pastor in charge of the A.M.E. Church, and so far as known he had never voted, had never attended a political meeting, and of course, had never made a political speech. But he was a colored man, and presumed to be a Republican, and believed to be a man of ability and considerably above the average in point of intelligence; just the man, it was thought, the Rev. Noah Buchanan would be willing to vote for.[11]
In January 1870, Revels presented the opening prayer in the state legislature. Lynch wrote of that occasion,
That prayer—one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the [Mississippi] Senate Chamber—made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments.[11]
At the time, as in every state, the Mississippi legislature elected U.S. senators; they were not elected by popular vote until after ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913.
In 1870, Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi legislature to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the U.S. Senate, which had been left vacant since the Civil War. Previously, it had been held byAlbert G. Brown, who withdrew from the U.S. Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded.[12]
When Revels arrived in Washington, D.C.,Southern Democrats in office opposed seating him in the Senate. For the two days of debate, the Senate galleries were packed with spectators at this historic event.[13] The Democrats based their opposition on the 1857Dred Scott Decision by theU.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that people of African ancestry were not and could not be citizens. They argued that no black man was a citizen before the14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement of the Senate for nine years' prior citizenship.[14]
Supporters of Revels made arguments ranging from relatively narrow and technical issues, to fundamental arguments about the meaning of the Civil War. Among the narrower arguments was that Revels was of primarily European ancestry (an "octoroon") and that the Dred Scott decision should be interpreted as applying only to those blacks who were of totally African ancestry. Supporters said that Revels had long been a citizen (as shown by his voting in Ohio) and that he had met the nine-year requirement before the Dred Scott decision changed the rules and held that blacks could not be citizens.[15]
The more fundamental argument by Revels's supporters was that the Civil War, and the Reconstruction amendments, had overturnedDred Scott. Because of the war and the Amendments, they argued, the subordination of the black race was no longer part of the American constitutional regime and, therefore, it would be unconstitutional to bar Revels on the basis of the pre-Civil War Constitution's citizenship rules.[15] One Republican Senator supporting Revels mocked opponents as still fighting the "last battle-field" of that war.[15]
SenatorCharles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) said, "The time has passed for argument. Nothing more need be said. For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators."[14] Sumner, a Republican, later said,
All men are created equal, says the great Declaration, and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality. ... The Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.[16]
On February 25, 1870, Revels, on a party-line vote of48 to 8, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against, became thefirst African American to be seated in theUnited States Senate.[14] Everyone in the galleries stood to see him sworn in.[13]
Sumner's Massachusetts colleague,Henry Wilson, defended Revels's election,[17] and presented as evidence of its validity signatures from the clerks of theMississippi House of Representatives andMississippi State Senate, as well as that ofAdelbert Ames, the militaryGovernor of Mississippi.[18] Wilson argued that Revels's skin color was not a bar to Senate service, and connected the role of the Senate to Christianity'sGolden Rule of doing to others as one would have done to oneself.[18]
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Revels advocated compromise and moderation. He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure his fellow senators about the capability of African Americans. In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, he argued for the reinstatement of the black legislators of theGeorgia General Assembly, who had beenillegally ousted by whiteDemocratic Party representatives. He said, "I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them. They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens."[19]
He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and theCommittee on the District of Columbia. (At the time, the Congress administered the District.) Much of the Senate's attention focused on Reconstruction issues. WhileRadical Republicans called for continued punishment of ex-Confederates, Revels argued for amnesty and a restoration of full citizenship, provided they swore an oath of loyalty to the United States.[3]
Revels's Senate term lasted a little over one year, from February 25, 1870, to March 3, 1871. He quietly and persistently, although for the most part unsuccessfully, worked for equality. He spoke against an amendment proposed by SenatorAllen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated and argued for theirintegration.[8] He nominated a young black man to theUnited States Military Academy; the youth was subsequently denied admission. Revels successfully championed the cause of black workers who had been barred by their color from working at theWashington Navy Yard.[3]
The Northern press praised Revels for his oratorical abilities. His conduct in the Senate, along with that of the other black Americans who had been seated in the House of Representatives, prompted a white Congressman,James G. Blaine (R-Maine), to write in his memoir, "The colored men who took their seats in both Senate and House were as a rule studious, earnest, ambitious men, whose public conduct would be honorable to any race."[20] Revels supported bills to invest in developing infrastructure in Mississippi: to grant lands and right of way to aid the construction of theNew Orleans and Northeastern Railroad (41st Congress 2nd Session S. 712), andlevees on the Mississippi River (41st Congress 3rd Session S. 1136).[14]
Revels accepted in 1871, after his term as U.S. Senator expired, appointment as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (nowAlcorn State University), ahistorically black college located inClaiborne County, Mississippi. He taughtphilosophy as well. In 1873, Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve asMississippi's secretary of state ad interim. He was dismissed from Alcorn in 1874 when he campaigned against the reelection ofGovernor of MississippiAdelbert Ames. He was reappointed in 1876 by the new Democratic administration and served until his retirement in 1882.[3]
On November 6, 1875, Revels wrote a letter to fellow Republican andPresidentUlysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and thecarpetbaggers for manipulating the black vote for personal benefit, and for keeping alive wartime hatreds:[21]
Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it. ... . My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. ... The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.
Revels remained active as a Methodist Episcopal minister inHolly Springs, Mississippi and became an elder in the Upper Mississippi District.[8] For a time, he served as editor of theSouthwestern Christian Advocate, the newspaper of the Methodist Church. He taughttheology at Shaw College (nowRust College), ahistorically black college founded in 1866 in Holly Springs. Hiram Revels died on January 16, 1901, while attending a church conference inAberdeen, Mississippi. He was buried at theHillcrest Cemetery in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Revels's daughter,Susie Revels Cayton, editedThe Seattle Republican inSeattle, Washington. Among his grandsons wereHorace R. Cayton Jr., co-author ofBlack Metropolis, andRevels Cayton, a labor leader.[22] In 2002, scholarMolefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of the100 Greatest African Americans.[23]
| U.S. Senate | ||
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| Preceded by | United States Senator (Class 2) from Mississippi 1870–1871 Served alongside:Adelbert Ames | Succeeded by |
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| Class 2 | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
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