HIRAM R. REVELS, D. D.
Dr. Revels is a native of North Carolina, where, at Fayetteville, Cumberland County, he was born, a freeman, on the first of September, A. D., 1822. Passing his boyhood and youth, until about twenty-one years of age, in North Carolina, he went to northern Indiana, the laws of his native state forbidding colored schools. The parents of the lad had been permitted to prepare him somewhat for an education, and he had been studying, off and on, some years previous to leaving for the North. He passed two years in Indiana, attending a Quaker school, and then removed to Dark County, Ohio, where he remained for some time, and subsequently graduated at Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois; and after that, entered the ministry as a preacher of the gospel under the auspices of the Methodist Church. At this time he was twenty-five years of age. His first charge was in Indiana. From entering the service of the church to the present time he has steadily persevered as a preacher, and is well known as a practical Christian and a zealous and eloquent expounder of the word.
After some years in Indiana, he filled important posts in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and Kansas, in the cause of the African M. E. Church. He was in Maryland in 1861, at the breaking out of the war, and materially aided in forming in that State the first Maryland colored regiment. He was also able to assist in Missouri in raising the first colored regiment in that State, and returned to Mississippi in 1864, settling in Vicksburg, where he had charge of a church congregation, and assisted in organizing other churches, and in forming and putting into operation the school system, visiting various portions of the State on his own responsibility, and among other places, preaching in Jackson. His health failing, Dr. Revels went to the North once more, after the close of hostilities, where he remained eighteen months. Returning, he located at Natchez, where he preached regularly to a large congregation, and where General Ames, then military governor, appointed him to the position of alderman. In 1869, he was duly elected to the State Senate.
In January, 1870, Dr. Revels was selected to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate, the announcement of which took the country by surprise, and as the time drew near for the colored senator to appear in his place in Congress, the interest became intense. Many who had heard reconstruction discussed in its length and breadth,—by men of prophetic power and eloquent utterance, by men of merely logical and judicial minds, by men narrow and selfish, as well as those sophistical and prejudiced,—and who had no particular interest in the debates, still came day after day, hoping to see qualified for his seat in the senate the first colored man presenting himself for so high an office, the first to be in eminent civil service in the general government.
At last, on Friday, February 25, 1870, a day never to be forgotten, at about five o’clock, in the presence of the chamber and galleries crowded with expectant and eager spectators, the oath was administered to Hiram R. Revels, by the vice-president. Senator Wilson accompanied him to the chair, and he was at once waited upon to his seat by the sergeant-at-arms.
Saulsbury had done his best to turn backward the wheels of progress; Davis fought in vain, declaring he would “resist at every step” this unconstitutional measure, giving illustrations, dissertations, execrations, and recommendations of and for the “Negro” and his Republican friends; Stockton, in the interest of law and precedent, begged that the subject should go to the judiciary committee, but the party of freedom moved on in solid phalanx of unanimity to the historic result. Mr. Sumner, who had not taken part in the debate, raised his voice with impressiveness and power, comprehending the whole question in a short speech just before the vote.
Thus was accomplished the last important step in the National Legislature for those once enslaved, and the crowning rebuke to the Rebellion, especially as the Mississippi senator took the seat made vacant by Jefferson Davis when his treason became known to the North and to the government. After the close of his senatorial course, he was appointed President of Alcorn University, with a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars per annum, which place and its emoluments he left,—at the desire of Governor Powers, and as he thought it his duty,—to serve as Secretary of State, at the longest possible time, for less than one year. He had four years still remaining of his office as President of the University; hence, financially considered, he sacrificed something in reaching the higher official honors. It is due to him to say that the appointment was bestowed unsolicited by himself, through the governor’s belief in his fitness for the position.
Dr. Revels is a mulatto, of good address, of medium size, hair curly, features somewhat prominent, with something of the ministerial air.