The two Negro United States Senators, Hiram R. Revels[40] and B. K. Bruce,[41] both of Mississippi, and Representative John R. Lynch[42] of the same State, had all served in public office before they were sent to Congress. Senator Revels had held several local offices in Vicksburg, while Senator Bruce, before he came to the Senate, had been sheriff, a member of the Mississippi levee board, and for three years the tax collector of Bolivar County. John R. Lynch, on the other hand, had served not only as justice of the peace, but also two terms in the lower house of the legislature, during the latter one of which he was the Speaker of that body. Unlike the Congressmen from Mississippi, Nash[43] of Louisiana held office for the first time when his state elected him a representative to Congress.
Accessible records and impartial and unbiased historians support the contention that with a few exceptions the record of these Negro functionaries was honorable. Corrupt government was not always the work of the Negro. In the chapter on reconstruction in his The Negro in Our History, C. G. Woodson states that local, state, and federal administrative offices, which offered the most frequent opportunity for corruption, were seldom held by Negroes, but rather by the local white men and by those from the North who had come South to seek their fortunes. In many respects selfish and sometimes lacking in principle, these men became corrupt in several States, administering the government for their own personal ends. "Most Negroes who have served in the South," says he, "came out of office with honorable records. Such service these Negroes rendered in spite of the fact that this was not the rule in that day." New York, according to the same authority, was dominated by the Tweed ring, and the same white men who complained of Negro domination robbed the governments of the Southern States of thousands of dollars after the rule of the master class was reestablished.
Negro Congressmen in Action
With the facts concerning the earlier experiences of these Congressmen in public life a matter of record, attention may now be centered upon the second aspect of the question of their capacity for public service—namely, that of their reactions to the great public questions of their day. Perhaps this topic may be most properly treated first by determining what were the problems of greatest public moment during the period in which these men were in Congress. From the year 1871—the period of service of the first Negro in Congress—throughout the first year of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, there were brought prominently before the public mind the questions of reconstruction, economic, social, and political, in the North and West as well as in the South. The exploitation of the public domain in the West, the development of transcontinental railroads and other means of communication, the plea for sound money, the economic regeneration of the South, the proper adjustment of the social relations between the two races living in that section, and the readjustment of political control in the former Confederate States were the great issues upon which, during this period, the attention of the nation was focused.
In the solution of some of these problems the Negro was intimately involved. What was to be his place in the scheme of social adjustment in the South? What part was he to play in the economic regeneration of that section? How and to what extent should he maintain the political power delegated to him by the war amendments? Indeed, of utmost importance to the Negro was the proper solution of three perplexing problems: first, to secure to themselves the civil rights so freely exercised by other groups in the nation; second, to obtain national funds to aid education; third, to determine whether their former masters should be relieved of their political disabilities. It was to the solution of these problems, therefore, that the Negro Congressmen of that period especially addressed themselves.
The problem of civil rights, however, did not immediately take precedence. With the passage by Congress, in 1875, of a measure known as the Civil Rights Bill, which was supplementary to measures of the same sort previously enacted, the Negroes of the country were accorded the rights granted by the Constitution to all other citizens of the United States. The subsequent approval of this bill by the president, and the well-known policy toward the Southern States then adopted, served to remove from the fore of American politics the various issues arising from the larger problems of the social and political reconstruction of the South.
Economic questions then had more opportunity for consideration. A new era in the nation's development was ushered in, and with it came new issues and new policies. The question of the exploitation of the public domain in the West and that of transcontinental railway construction had long been before the nation and still remained, but in lieu of the others of the earlier period, there arose also such questions as the free coinage of silver, the bimetallic monetary standard, tariff for protection or for revenue only, and the Chinese immigration. Despite the new character of the great problems before the public forum, and of the consequent relegation to a minor position of national importance the problems of reconstruction in the South, the issues of peculiar interest to the Negro were not so aptly settled. Indeed, it is to the discredit of the Supreme Court of the United States that in all cases coming before that body in which there was at issue a right granted by the Constitution to the freedmen, efforts were made to evade the real issue, or to interpret the laws so as to contravene the intent of the framers of the Constitution.[44] To urge the protection of the Negro in his exercise of the rights and privileges granted by the Constitution, to secure the enactment of laws with the purpose to secure to him a greater measure of opportunity for social advancement, to oppose the enactment of laws proposing to retard such progress, to stimulate a healthy public opinion favorable to the Negro's cause, to protest against every injustice, great or small, meted out to him, became, as never before, the imperative duties of the Negro members of Congress. Whatever other time and energy remained might be directed towards the solution of the other important issues before the public, but for the most part, the Negro Congressmen were of necessity compelled to defend those interests peculiar to the freedmen. The petitions which these Congressmen presented, the resolutions which they offered, the amendments which they proposed, the bills which they introduced or supported, and the issues which they discussed or debated, will enable one to ascertain to what extent these men viewed aright the needs of their constituents and of the nation. Because of the constitutional right of all citizens to petition Congress for a redress of grievances, however, Congressmen have, in general, considered it a duty to present to Congress the petitions of their constituents, whatever their nature may be. An examination of these, therefore, does not always assist in the effort to determine the interests of a statesman. The sole justification for their consideration in this case is the fact that they have formed, in many instances, the basis of the resolutions, motions and bills which were subsequently introduced.
While petitions of varying natures were presented by all of these legislators, three classes, particularly, claimed the attention of practically every one of them. These petitions sought the relief either of an individual or of an institution suffering from some misfortune of the war, made application for a pension, or requested the adjustment of a claim. Of greater significance, however, were the petitions which, while not so generally popular, led often to the introduction of legislative measures. Conspicuous among these were those seeking to remove the political disabilities of former secessionists, those praying that undesirable laws or privileges be abrogated, those advocating the passage of bills, those praying an investigation of the political methods used in certain States, those directing attention to conditions which merited legislative enactment, those praying an appropriation by Congress for the construction of public buildings, the promotion of public works, and the making of local improvements, and those endorsing movements for the good of the body politic.
One of the first problems of reconstruction that claimed the attention of the Negro Congressmen arose from the measures proposing to grant amnesty to the former Confederates who, by a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, had been declared ineligible to vote and to hold office. In reference to this matter, Jefferson F. Long, a representative from Georgia to the Forty-first Congress, spoke in a manner reflecting the attitude of many of the Negro Congressmen who were to follow him. His forceful protest maintained that any modification of the test oath as then administered, having the purpose to bring about a general removal of political disabilities, would effect the subjugation of the loyal men of the South to the disloyal. It would, moreover, appear to the Ku Klux Klan to be an indorsement of their campaign of lawlessness, depredation, and crime, fostered and abetted by the men whose political disabilities it was then being sought to remove.[45]