HIRAM REVELS
Name: Hiram Rhodes Revels
Born: 27 September 1822 Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S.
Died: 16 January 1901 Aberdeen, Mississippi, U.S.
Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1822 – January 16, 1901) was the first
African American to serve in the United States Senate. Since he preceded any
African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S.
Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during
Reconstruction. As of 2008, Revels was one of only five African Americans ever
to have served in the United States Senate.
Revels was born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, of a free father of mixed
white, black, and possibly a slave mother who was later emancipated. He was
tutored by a black woman for his early education. In 1838 he went to live with
his brother, Elias B. Revels, in Lincolnton, North Carolina, and was apprenticed
as a barber in his brother's shop. Elias Revels died in 1841, and his widow,
Mary Revels, turned over her assets to Hiram before she remarried.
He attended the Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana, and from 1856-57, Knox
College in Galesburg, Illinois. He also studied at a black seminary in Ohio.
Revels was ordained a minister in 1845. As a minister in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, Revels preached in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee,
Missouri, Kansas, and Maryland in the 1850s. "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." In
1845 he became a minister in Baltimore, Maryland and set up a private school.
As a chaplain Revels helped raise two black Union regiments during the Civil War
in Maryland and Missouri, and took part at the battle of Vicksburg in
Mississippi.!
In 1865 , Revels returned to his ministry and was assigned briefly to AME
churches in Leavenworth, Kansas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1866, he was
given a permanent pastorship in Natchez, Mississippi, where he settled with his
wife and five daughters, continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for
black children.
During Reconstruction, Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868, and he
was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Senate in 1869.
As John R. Lynch reports, "so far as known he [Revels] 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." [Lynch 1913] In January 1870, Revels presented a remarkable
opening prayer in the state legislature. As Lynch says, "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." At the time, each state senate elected the state's US
senators. Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi State
Senate to fill the last year of the unexpired term of one of the state's two
senators in the U.S. Senate; the seat had once been held by Jefferson Davis, the
former president of the Confederate States of America.
The election of Revels was met with opposition from Southern conservative
Democrats who cited the Dred Scott Decision which was considered by many to have
been a central cause of the American Civil War. They argued that no black man
was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Because election
to the Senate required nine years' prior citizenship, opponents of Revels
claimed he could not be seated, having been a citizen by law for only two years.
Supporters of Revels countered by stating that the Dred Scott decision applied
only to those blacks who were of pure African blood. Revels was of mixed black
and white ancestry, and therefore exempt, they said, and had been a citizen all
his life. This argument prevailed, and on February 25, 1870, Revels, by a vote
of 48 to 8, became the first black man to be seated in the United States Senate.
Revels spoke for compromise and moderation. A vigorous advocate of racial
equality, Revels tried to reassure Senators about the capability of blacks. In
his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, in a plea to reinstate the
black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly who had been illegally ousted
by white 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" (Ploski 18).
He served on both the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the
District of Columbia. Much of the Senate's attention focused on Reconstruction
issues. While Radical 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.
Revels (seated) replaces Jefferson Davis (left) in Senate. Harper's Weekly Feb
19, 1870
Revels's term lasted one year, February 1870 to March 3, 1871. He quietly,
persistently--although for the most part unsuccessfully--worked for equality. He
spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep
the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated. He nominated a young black man to
the United States Military Academy, although he was subsequently denied
admission. Revels was successful, however, in championing the cause of black
workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy
Yard.
Revels was praised in the newspapers for his oratorical abilities. His conduct
in the Senate, along with that of the other African Americans who had been
seated in the House of Representatives, also prompted a white contemporary,
James G. Blaine, to say, "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"
Revels resigned two months before his term expired and was appointed the first
president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State
University) located in Claiborne County, Mississippi, where he also taught
philosophy. In 1873, Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve as
Mississippi's secretary of state ad interim.
He was dismissed from Alcorn in 1874 when he campaigned against the reelection
of Governor of Mississippi Adelbert Ames. He was reappointed in 1876 by the new
Democratic administration and served until his retirement in 1882.
On Nov. 6, 1875, Revels, as a Republican, wrote a letter to Republican President
Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and the
Carpetbaggers for manipulating the Black vote for personal benefit, and for
keeping alive wartime hatreds:
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 in his ministry. For a time, he served as editor of the
Southwestern Christian Advocate and taught theology at Shaw College (now Rust
College), founded in 1866 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where Revels and his
family made their home. Hiram Revels died on January 16, 1901, while attending a
church conference in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Revel's daughter Susan edited a newspaper in Seattle, Washington. Horace Cayton,
co-author of Black Metropolis, and labor leader Revels Cayton were his grandsons.
Name: Hiram Rhodes Revels
Born: 27 September 1822 Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S.
Died: 16 January 1901 Aberdeen, Mississippi, U.S.
Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1822 – January 16, 1901) was the first
African American to serve in the United States Senate. Since he preceded any
African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S.
Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during
Reconstruction. As of 2008, Revels was one of only five African Americans ever
to have served in the United States Senate.
Revels was born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, of a free father of mixed
white, black, and possibly a slave mother who was later emancipated. He was
tutored by a black woman for his early education. In 1838 he went to live with
his brother, Elias B. Revels, in Lincolnton, North Carolina, and was apprenticed
as a barber in his brother's shop. Elias Revels died in 1841, and his widow,
Mary Revels, turned over her assets to Hiram before she remarried.
He attended the Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana, and from 1856-57, Knox
College in Galesburg, Illinois. He also studied at a black seminary in Ohio.
Revels was ordained a minister in 1845. As a minister in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, Revels preached in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee,
Missouri, Kansas, and Maryland in the 1850s. "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." In
1845 he became a minister in Baltimore, Maryland and set up a private school.
As a chaplain Revels helped raise two black Union regiments during the Civil War
in Maryland and Missouri, and took part at the battle of Vicksburg in
Mississippi.!
In 1865 , Revels returned to his ministry and was assigned briefly to AME
churches in Leavenworth, Kansas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1866, he was
given a permanent pastorship in Natchez, Mississippi, where he settled with his
wife and five daughters, continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for
black children.
During Reconstruction, Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868, and he
was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Senate in 1869.
As John R. Lynch reports, "so far as known he [Revels] 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." [Lynch 1913] In January 1870, Revels presented a remarkable
opening prayer in the state legislature. As Lynch says, "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." At the time, each state senate elected the state's US
senators. Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi State
Senate to fill the last year of the unexpired term of one of the state's two
senators in the U.S. Senate; the seat had once been held by Jefferson Davis, the
former president of the Confederate States of America.
The election of Revels was met with opposition from Southern conservative
Democrats who cited the Dred Scott Decision which was considered by many to have
been a central cause of the American Civil War. They argued that no black man
was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Because election
to the Senate required nine years' prior citizenship, opponents of Revels
claimed he could not be seated, having been a citizen by law for only two years.
Supporters of Revels countered by stating that the Dred Scott decision applied
only to those blacks who were of pure African blood. Revels was of mixed black
and white ancestry, and therefore exempt, they said, and had been a citizen all
his life. This argument prevailed, and on February 25, 1870, Revels, by a vote
of 48 to 8, became the first black man to be seated in the United States Senate.
Revels spoke for compromise and moderation. A vigorous advocate of racial
equality, Revels tried to reassure Senators about the capability of blacks. In
his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, in a plea to reinstate the
black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly who had been illegally ousted
by white 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" (Ploski 18).
He served on both the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the
District of Columbia. Much of the Senate's attention focused on Reconstruction
issues. While Radical 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.
Revels (seated) replaces Jefferson Davis (left) in Senate. Harper's Weekly Feb
19, 1870
Revels's term lasted one year, February 1870 to March 3, 1871. He quietly,
persistently--although for the most part unsuccessfully--worked for equality. He
spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep
the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated. He nominated a young black man to
the United States Military Academy, although he was subsequently denied
admission. Revels was successful, however, in championing the cause of black
workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy
Yard.
Revels was praised in the newspapers for his oratorical abilities. His conduct
in the Senate, along with that of the other African Americans who had been
seated in the House of Representatives, also prompted a white contemporary,
James G. Blaine, to say, "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"
Revels resigned two months before his term expired and was appointed the first
president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State
University) located in Claiborne County, Mississippi, where he also taught
philosophy. In 1873, Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve as
Mississippi's secretary of state ad interim.
He was dismissed from Alcorn in 1874 when he campaigned against the reelection
of Governor of Mississippi Adelbert Ames. He was reappointed in 1876 by the new
Democratic administration and served until his retirement in 1882.
On Nov. 6, 1875, Revels, as a Republican, wrote a letter to Republican President
Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and the
Carpetbaggers for manipulating the Black vote for personal benefit, and for
keeping alive wartime hatreds:
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 in his ministry. For a time, he served as editor of the
Southwestern Christian Advocate and taught theology at Shaw College (now Rust
College), founded in 1866 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where Revels and his
family made their home. Hiram Revels died on January 16, 1901, while attending a
church conference in Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Revel's daughter Susan edited a newspaper in Seattle, Washington. Horace Cayton,
co-author of Black Metropolis, and labor leader Revels Cayton were his grandsons.