Hiram R. Revels
Ridgely C. Powers | |
---|---|
Preceded by | James D. Lynch |
Succeeded by | Hannibal C. Carter |
Personal details | |
Born | Hiram Rhodes Revels September 27, 1827 Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S. |
Died | January 16, 1901 Aberdeen, Mississippi, U.S. | (aged 73)
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | Phoebe Bass |
Children | 8, including Susie Revels Cayton, and Ida Revels Redmond |
Education |
|
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
During the
Early life and education
Revels was born free in 1827 in
Revels was a second cousin to
During his childhood, Revels was taught by a local black woman for his early education. In 1838, at the age of 11, he went to live with his older brother, Elias B. Revels, in Lincolnton, 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 in
In 1845, Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas.[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 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 of a black high school.[8]
During the
Political career
In 1865, Revels left the
During
Congressman John 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]
Election to Senate
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 by Albert G. Brown, who withdrew from the U.S. Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded.[12]
When Revels arrived in Washington, D.C.,
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 "
The more fundamental argument by Revels's supporters was that the Civil War, and the Reconstruction amendments, had overturned Dred 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]
Senator Charles 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 of
Sumner's Massachusetts colleague, Henry Wilson, defended Revels's election,[17] and presented as evidence of its validity signatures from the clerks of the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi State Senate, as well as that of Adelbert Ames, the military Governor 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's Golden Rule of doing to others as one would have done to oneself.[18]
U.S. senator
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 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."[19]
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.[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 Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated and argued for their integration.[8] He nominated a young black man to the United 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 the Washington 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 the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad (41st Congress 2nd Session S. 712), and levees on the Mississippi River (41st Congress 3rd Session S. 1136).[14]
College president
Revels accepted in 1871, after his term as U.S. Senator expired, appointment as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now
On November 6, 1875, Revels wrote a letter to fellow Republican and
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 in
Legacy
Revels's daughter, Susie Revels Cayton, edited The Seattle Republican in Seattle, Washington. Among his grandsons were Horace R. Cayton Jr., co-author of Black Metropolis, and Revels Cayton, a labor leader.[22] In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.[23]
See also
Notes
- ^ Different sources list his birth year as either 1827 or 1822.
References
- ^ Paul Heinegg, Introduction, Free African Americans in Virginia and North Carolina, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1995–2005. Quote: James Revell of Cumberland County [NC] entrusted his executor with the task of making application to the legislature for his wife's freedom [WB C:21]....Another member of this family, Hiram Revels, first African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate, was born in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina in 1822 [Encyclopædia Britannica, Ready Reference & Index VIII:538]. Two books available online at this website, including supplementary material.
- ^ "Revels, Hiram Rhoades". NCpedia. January 1, 1994. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- ^ a b c d Revels, Hiram Rhodes. "History, Art & Archives," United States House of Representatives. [1]
- ^ Oates, John Alexander. The Story of Fayetteville and the Upper Cape Fear. Dowd Press, 1950. p. 714 [ISBN missing]
- ISBN 978-1-4568-5120-0.
- ^ a b
- United States Congress. "Hiram R. Revels (id: R000166)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- ^ Aaseng, Nathan. African-American Religious Leaders: A–Z of African Americans. Infobase Publishing, May 14, 2014. pp. 189–191
- ^ a b c d "Hiram Rhodes Revels"[usurped], Robinson Library, 2011, accessed October 17, 2014
- ^ U.S. Senate: Art & History Home > Photo Exhibit at senate.gov
- ^ "Hiram Rhodes Revels – Knox College History". www.knox.edu. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ a b John R. Lynch. “Chapter III”, The Facts of Reconstruction. Retrieved on 2012-11-01 at Project Gutenberg
- ^ "Brown, Albert Gallatin – Biographical Information". U.S. Congress. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
- ^ a b "The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate", New York Times, February 25, 1870, accessed October 10, 2012
- ^ a b c d "First African American Senator". U.S. Senate. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
- ^ a b c Richard Primus (2006), "The Riddle of Hiram Revels", 119 Harvard Law Review 1680
- ^ Congressional Globe, Senate, 41st Cong., 2nd sess. (February 25, 1870): 1567.
- ISBN 978-0-7618-4742-7.
- ^ a b Myers 2009, p. 129
- ^ Ploski 18.
- ^ Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress
- ^ full text in James Wilford Garner. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901) pp. 399–400.
- ISBN 0-8071-2082-0. p. 181.
- ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
Additional reading
- Libby, Jean; Geffert, Hannah; Kenyatta, Jimica Akinloye (March 3, 2007), Hiram Revels Related to Men in John Brown's Army, alliesforfreedom.org
- 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 The Facts of Reconstruction (1913), Online at Project Gutenberg – Memoir by Mississippi Congressman (a freedman) who served during Reconstruction
- 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.
- Hamilton, Brian, "The Monuments We Never Built," Edge Effects, August 22, 2017 http://edgeeffects.net/hiram-revels
- 0Harris, 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: 216–218.
- Hildebrand, Reginald F., The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation, Duke University Press, 1995
- State Library of North Carolina
- Clergy Politicians in Mississippi
- Biographical sketch at the U.S. Senatewebsite
- Portrait and biography, Harper's Weekly, February 19, 1870, p. 116
- "The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate", New York Times, February 25, 1870
- "Hiram Revels pioneered southern Black politics". African American Registry. Media Business Solutions. Archived from the original on May 6, 2003. Retrieved November 1, 2012.
External links
- United States Congress. "Hiram R. Revels (id: R000166)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.