Hiram Rhodes Revels
1
Hiram Rhodes Revels
Hiram Rhodes Revels
United States Senator
from Mississippi
In office
February 23, 1870 – March 3, 1871
Preceded by
Albert G. Brown
Succeeded by
James L. Alcorn
Personal details
Born
[1]
September 27, 1827
Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S.
Died
January 16, 1901 (aged 73)
Aberdeen, Mississippi, U.S.
Political party
Republican (before 1874), Democratic (1874 on)
Spouse(s)
Phoebe A. Bass Revels
Alma mater
Knox College
Profession
Politician, Barber, Minister, College President
Religion
African Methodist Episcopal Church
[2]
Military service
Service/branch
Union Army
Years of service 1863 - 1865
Unit
Chaplain Corps
Battles/wars
American Civil War
Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827[1] – January 16, 1901) was a minister in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church (AME), and a politician. He was the first person of color to serve in the United States Senate, and
in the U.S. Congress overall. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction.
Hiram Rhodes Revels
During the American Civil War, he helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served
as a chaplain.
Early career
Revels was born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to free parents of mixed African and European ancestry. He
was tutored by a black woman for his early education. In 1838 he went to live with his older brother, Elias B. Revels,
in Lincolnton, North Carolina, and was apprenticed as a barber in his brother's shop. At a time when many people
went to barbers for shaves as well as haircuts, it was a trade that could provide a good living and a wide network of
connections. After Elias Revels died in 1841, his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram before she remarried.
Revels attended the Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana, and studied at a black seminary in Ohio.
In 1845 Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent
black denomination in the United States; it was established in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century. He served
as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, and
Kansas. "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."
He did additional religious studies from 1856 to 1857 at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He became a minister
in a Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, where he also served as a principal for a black high
school.[3]
As a chaplain in the United States Army, Revels helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments during the
Civil War in Maryland and Missouri. He took part at the battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi.[4]
Political career
In 1865, Revels left the AME Church and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was assigned briefly to
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, became an elder in the Mississippi
District[3], continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for black children.
During Reconstruction, Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868. In 1869 he was elected to represent Adams
County in the Mississippi State Senate. As the Congressman John R. Lynch later wrote in his book on
Reconstruction, "[S]o 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.
Lynch said,
"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."
2
Hiram Rhodes Revels
3
Election to Senate
At the time, the state legislature elected US
senators from Mississippi. In 1870 Revels was
elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi
State Senate to finish the term of one of the
state's two seats in the US Senate, which had
been left vacant since the Civil War.
Previously, it had been held by Albert G.
Brown, who withdrew from the US Senate in
1861 when Mississippi seceded.[5]
When Revels arrived in Washington, DC,
Southern Democrats opposed seating him in the
Senate. For the two days of debate, the Senate
galleries were packed with spectators at this
historic event.[6] The Democrats based their
opposition on the 1854 Dred Scott Decision by
the US Supreme Court, which ruled that people
of African ancestry were not citizens. They
argued that no black man was a citizen before
the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and
thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement
for nine years' prior citizenship. [7]
Supporters of Revels noted that he had been
born free and was a citizen all his life. They
countered the Democrats by saying that the
Dred Scott decision applied only to those
blacks who were totally of African ancestry. As Revels was of mixed black and white ancestry, he was exempt.
Supporters also noted that he had already voted in Ohio many years earlier, so had been accepted as a citizen. 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.[7] Everyone in the galleries stood to see him sworn in.[6]
Letter dated January 25, 1870 from the Governor of the State of Mississippi
and the Secretary of State of Mississippi that certified the election of Hiram
Revels to the United States Senate.
U.S. Senator
Revels advocated compromise and moderation. He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure
senators about the capability of blacks. In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, he argued for the
reinstatement of the black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly, who had been illegally ousted by white
Democratic 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." (Ploski 18).
He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia. (At the
time, the Congress administered the District.) 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.
Hiram Rhodes Revels
4
Revels' 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; the youth was
subsequently denied admission. Revels successfully in
championed the cause of black workers who had been
barred by their color from working at the Washington
Navy Yard.
The northern press praised Revels 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, prompted a white
Congressman, James G. Blaine, 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."[8] Revels supported bills to invest in developing
infrastructure in Mississippi: to grant lands and right of
way to aid the construction of the New Orleans and
Northeastern Railroad (41st Congress 2nd Session S.
712), and levees on the Mississippi river (41st Congress
3rd Session S. 1136).[7] He argued for integration of
schools in the District of Columbia.[3]
Political cartoon: Revels (seated) replaces Jefferson Davis (left;
dressed as Iago from Shakespeare's Othello) in US Senate. Harper's
Weekly Feb. 19, 1870. Davis had been a senator from Mississippi
until 1861.
College president
Revels resigned two months before his term expired to accept appointment as the first president of Alcorn
Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college located in Claiborne
County, Mississippi. He taught philosophy as well. 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 November 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
Hiram Rhodes Revels
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.[9]
Revels remained active as a Methodist Episcopal minister in Holly Springs, Mississippi and became an elder in the
Upper Mississippi District.[3] For a time, he served as editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, the newspaper
of the Methodist Church. He taught theology at Shaw College (now Rust College), a historically black college
founded in 1866 in Holly Springs. Hiram Revels died on January 16, 1901, while attending a church conference in
Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Legacy
• His daughter Susan Revels edited a newspaper in Seattle, Washington. Among his grandsons were Horace R.
Cayton, Jr., co-author of Black Metropolis, and Revels Cayton, a labor leader.[10]
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of 100 Greatest African Americans.[11]
Footnotes
[1] Different sources list his birth year as either 1827 or 1822.
[2] Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine and Stanley Harrold "The African American Odyssey."
[3] "Hiram Rhodes Revels" (http:/ / www. robinsonlibrary. com/ america/ unitedstates/ 1865/ biography/ revels. htm), Robinson Library, 2011,
accessed 10 October 2012
[4] U.S. Senate: Art & History Home > Photo Exhibit (http:/ / www. senate. gov/ pagelayout/ history/ h_multi_sections_and_teasers/
Photo_Exhibit_African_American_Senators. htm) at www.senate.gov
[5] "BROWN, Albert Gallatin - Biographical Information" (http:/ / bioguide. congress. gov/ scripts/ biodisplay. pl?index=b000900). U.S.
Congress. . Retrieved July 25, 2012.
[6] "The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate" (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ learning/ general/ onthisday/ big/ 0225. html), New
York Times, 25 February 1870, accessed 10 October 2012
[7] "First African American Senator" (http:/ / www. senate. gov/ artandhistory/ history/ minute/ First_African_American_Senator. htm). U.S.
Senate. . Retrieved July 25, 2012.
[8] Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress
[9] full text in James Wilford Garner. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901) pp. 399-400.
[10] Foner, Eric. Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction. 1996. Revised. ISBN 0-8071-2082-0. p. 181.
[11] Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN
1-57392-963-8.
Primary source
• Borome, Joseph A. "The Autobiography of Hiram Rhodes Revels Together with Some Letters by and about
Him," Midwest Journal, 5 (Winter 1952-1953), pp. 79-92.
• [[John R. Lynch|Lynch, John R. (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16158/16158-h/16158-h.
htm#CHAPTER_XI)] The Facts of Reconstruction (1913)], Online at Project Gutenberg - Memoir by Mississippi
Congressman (a freedman) who served during Reconstruction
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Hiram Rhodes Revels
References
• Foner, Eric. Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction. 1996. Revised.
ISBN 0-8071-2082-0.
• Gravely, William B., "Hiram Revels Protests Racial Separation in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1876),"
Methodist History, 8 (1970), pp. 13-20.
• Harris, William C., The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi Louisiana State
University Press, 1979
• Haskins, James, Distinguished African American Political and Governmental Leaders, Oryx Press. 1999. pp:
216-8.
• Hildebrand, Reginald F., The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of
Emancipation, Duke University Press, 1995
• Thompson, Julius E., Hiram Revels: A Biography (1973) (unpublished dissertation, Princeton University)
• State Library of North Carolina (http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/revels.htm)
• Short biographical sketch at United States Senate site. (http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/
h_multi_sections_and_teasers/Photo_Exhibit_African_American_Senators.htm)
• Portrait and biography in Harper's Weekly (http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Reconstruction/
HRRevels.htm), 19 February 1870, p. 116
• "The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate" (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/
onthisday/big/0225.html), New York Times, 25 February 1870
• Cartoon featuring Hiram Revels and Jefferson Davis (http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/
Reconstruction/TimeWorksWonders.htm), Harper's Weekly, 9 April 1870
• "Hiram Revels pioneered southern Black politics" (http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/
1871/Hiram_Revels_pioneered_southern_Black_politics), African American Registry (http://www.unc.edu/
depts/uaffairs/diversitydialogues/profile.html)
External links
• Hiram Rhodes Revels (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000166) at the
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• "Hiram Rhodes Revels" (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6125891). Find a
Grave. Retrieved 2008-11-05.
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Article Sources and Contributors
Article Sources and Contributors
Hiram Rhodes Revels Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=518405212 Contributors: 42bens, 4327g, 777sms, Adambondy, Agathman, Alansohn, Alex.muller, Allens,
AnakngAraw, Anglius, Antandrus, Asarelah, Barticus88, Bbsrock, Bearcat, Bencope, Brandt870, Canuckian89, Cazador, Cbustapeck, Chris the speller, Citroënist, Coemgenus, D6, Darwinek,
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Icantpitythefool2, Instinct, J Di, J.delanoy, Jacknicholson123, Jarvishunt, Jespinos, Jewbacca, Jj137, Johnbod, Johnpacklambert, Juliancolton, JustDerek, Kaltenmeyer, Kateshortforbob,
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anonymous edits
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
file:Hiram_Rhodes_Revels_-_Brady-Handy-(restored).png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Hiram_Rhodes_Revels_-_Brady-Handy-(restored).png License: Public
Domain Contributors: Hiram_Rhodes_Revels_-_Brady-Handy.jpg: derivative work: JustDerek (talk)
File:Credentials for Senator Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi, the first African American to serve in the Senate, January 25, 2870..png Source:
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License: Public Domain Contributors: Lwalt
File:Revels1870.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Revels1870.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: AnonMoos, Rjensen
License
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