Skip to Content

The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood

The Symbolic Generation of Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1887

Pre-Congressional Experience

“The Result of the Fifteenth Amendment,” a print from 1870, featured a parade surrounded by vignettes of the new opportunities provided by the law and individuals instrumental in the amendment’s enactment.“The Result of the Fifteenth Amendment,” a print from 1870, featured a parade surrounded by vignettes of the new opportunities provided by the law and individuals instrumental in the amendment’s enactment.Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Slavery

All 17 of the African-American Congressmen elected between 1870 and 1887 came from the new Reconstruction governments in the former Confederacy. All but two—Representatives Robert Elliott of South Carolina and James O’Hara of North Carolina—were born in the South, and just under half (eight) were born into bondage. Even the early lives of those who had not been enslaved were profoundly shaped by the institution of slavery. Laws restricting the movements and opportunities of free and enslaved blacks in the South uprooted families and lives. Before age 25, John Hyman of North Carolina was sold at least eight times. Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, though free, faced several legal obstacles while traveling to wed Susan Rainey in Philadelphia in 1859; only with the help of friends did Rainey avoid being charged as a criminal for an unauthorized visit to a free state. When the newlyweds returned to Charleston, they had to circumvent laws disallowing free blacks from returning to the South.

While navigating the antebellum South was difficult for all blacks, skin color affected postbellum African Americans’ economic and political opportunities.13 Regional differences of opinion on racial miscegenation dated back to colonial slavery. Fifteen of the Reconstruction-Era Congressmen hailed from the Lower South, a geographic region stretching southwest from South Carolina. Thirteen were of mixed-race heritage. The Lower South adopted a Caribbean plantation system of slavery from its earliest colonization that included three castes: white, “mulatto” (or mixed-race), and black.14 Often, biracial slaves were given less menial tasks, offered more educational opportunities, and treated better than darker slaves, giving them many advantages that prepared them to be leaders in their postbellum communities. Those who were the sons of their white masters or of prominent local white men especially benefited from being light-skinned, both within and outside of the bonds of slavery. Four Reconstruction-Era black Members were likely the offspring of their former slaveowners.

Relative to communities of slaves, free black communities in the antebellum Lower South were small, urban, economically independent, and overwhelmingly of mixed race. These communities developed from the private manumission of favored personal servants or a slaveowner’s offspring, as well as free black immigrants during the colonial period. The 1850 Census was the first to include statistics on the mixed race population in the United States. Eighty-six percent of mulatto Americans (350,000) lived south of Maryland. Though only 39 percent of this population lived in the Lower South, 75 percent of them were free and the bulk of them lived in Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, Louisiana, and other port cities.15 Three of the black men who served in Congress in the postbellum years descended from the free, mixed-race elite in the Lower South.

Though mullatos in the Lower South had more opportunities than their darker neighbors, their existence in a racial middle ground presented a unique set of challenges. Before and after the Civil War, mixed-race men and women were fully accepted by none. Colonial and antebellum mulatto aristocrats often looked down on darker-skinned blacks, who frequently resented these elites because of the privileges they enjoyed and the snobbery they sometimes exhibited. Southern whites made fewer distinctions between gradations of skin color, preferring a rigid boundary between black and white.16 For example, Mississippi Senator Blanche Bruce’s black constituents were skeptical about his privileged background, and their concerns intensified when Bruce made his permanent home in Washington, DC, to escape violence in Mississippi. He took his position on civil rights from a distance, regarding the African-American cause as a practical political strategy rather than as a personal issue. Yet, despite his centrist politics, Mississippi whites refused to support his re-election because of the color of his skin.17

Education
E.E. Murray&rsquo;s 1883 print, &ldquo;From the Plantation to the Senate,&rdquo; illustrated notable black leaders including <a href="/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=11">Joseph Rainey</a> of South Carolina, <a href="/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=14">Hiram Revels</a> of Mississippi, and <a href="/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=17">Josiah Walls</a> of Florida.E.E. Murray’s 1883 print, “From the Plantation to the Senate,” illustrated notable black leaders including Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, Hiram Revels of Mississippi, and Josiah Walls of Florida.Image courtesy of Library of Congress

The educational backgrounds of these 17 men were mixed, though collectively they far exceeded those of most African Americans of the time. From the colonial period on, southern states banned teaching both free and enslaved black children to read and write, largely as a means of social control. Restricting the slaves’ education limited their ability to survive apart from their masters. Southern cities afforded the best opportunities to circumvent anti-literacy laws. Ignoring harsh punishment, well-educated free blacks and liberal whites sometimes opened illegal schools to teach urban slaves.18

Most of the black Congressmen who were raised in urban areas attained basic skills. The more fortunate—both slave and free—obtained an education as children. Hiram Revels attended one of two schools for black children in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “Together with the other colored youths [I] was fully and successfully instructed by our able and accomplished teacher in all branches of learning,” Revels recalled. Advancement beyond the secondary school level, however, was not an option open to any black men in the antebellum South. “While I appreciated the educational advantages I enjoyed in the school and was proud of what I could show in mental culture,” Revels admitted, “I had an earnest desire for something more than a mere business education . . . I desired to study for a profession and this prompted me to leave my native state.”19 Revels went on to attend seminary and received a college education in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. Others also born in the South acquired educations in the North or in Canada.

Those who were not educated as children—predominantly former slaves—acquired reading and mathematical skills or a trade as adults during and after the Civil War. State and local governments sometimes financed public schools, or normal schools, but the Freedmen’s Bureau used federal money to fund educational institutions. By 1870, more than 4,000 schools in the South served nearly a quarter-million students.20 Having learned the photographer’s trade, future Mississippi Representative John Lynch attended a few months of night school in Natchez, Mississippi, after 1865. Lynch improved upon his brief formal education by reading northern newspapers and listening in on lessons at an all-white school adjacent to his photography shop.

Professional Background

In many respects, the professional backgrounds of the 19th-century black Representatives reflected the work experiences of black officeholders in the South generally; however, many were also ambitious entrepreneurs. Most 19th-century black Representatives were educators; seven served as teachers and five worked as school administrators. Others were clergy, farmers, barbers, tailors, hotel managers, steamboat porters, photographers, or store owners.

Many 19th-century political aspirants flocked to the newspaper industry, as these publications were primarily organs for political parties and a time-honored vehicle for advancing one’s political career.21 Black newspapers increased slowly in the 1870s due to widespread illiteracy in the black population, yet these publications increased fivefold in the next decade.22 Black Congressmen used their newspapers to aid their campaigns. Richard Cain of South Carolina bought the South Carolina Leader (renamed the Missionary Record in 1868) to express the political and theological views of his African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Emanuel Church congregation, which was, one local observer noted, “one of the strongest political organizations in the state.”23 Robert Smalls of South Carolina also started his own newspaper, the Beaufort Southern Standard, in 1872. As well, Josiah Walls of Florida bought the Gainesville New Era newspaper after losing his re-election bid in 1874, to retain a public presence and to boost his odds of recapturing his seat. Alabama Representative James Rapier worked briefly as a reporter for a northern newspaper. In 1872, after white newspapers refused to print his speeches or acknowledge his candidacy for Congress, he started his own newspaper, the Republican Sentinel, in Montgomery, Alabama, and used it to promote his campaign.

Given their relative professional success, it is no surprise that 19th-century black Congressmen were affluent relative to the rest of the population. At least seven amassed more than $5,000. The average worth of the first 16 black Members of Congress (first elected before 1876) was $5,825. Forty-one percent of state and local black officeholders, generally, were worth less than $1,000 each.24 Senator Blanche Bruce, the wealthiest individual, was worth more than $150,000 when he served in the U.S. Senate; he amassed his fortune primarily through real estate.25 Several South Carolinians participated in the speculative railroad fever that swept across the South during Reconstruction. Four black South Carolina Representatives—Joseph Rainey, Richard Cain, Alonzo Ransier, and Robert Smalls—partnered with seven others to form the Enterprise Railroad Company in 1870. The small, horse-drawn rail service shipped goods from the wharves on the Cooper River in Charleston to stations farther inland that connected to major cities. The business barely weathered the boom-and-bust economy of the early 1870s. It passed to white ownership in 1873 and lasted until the 1880s.26

Continue Reading »

Footnotes

  1. Several historians discuss the impact of skin color on the stratification of free and enslaved black communities in different regions of the South from the colonial to the postbellum periods. Winthrop D. Jordan discusses the colonial period in “American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies,” in Edward Countryman ed., How Did American Slavery Begin? (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999). Both Eugene D. Genovese and Paul D. Escott discuss stratification within slave communities in the antebellum period: Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974) and Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). For a discussion of the racial tensions within the free black communities in the antebellum period, see Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: The New Press, 1974). Joel Williamson provides a thorough history of racial miscegenation in the United States in New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York: The Free Press, 1980). Willard Gatewood examines the effects of skin color on the postbellum elite communities in Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000).
  2. The word “mulatto” first came into English use around 1666 to define those of mixed race. The Oxford English Dictionary and most major American dictionaries do not classify “mulatto” as offensive; however, the word’s etymology is controversial. See The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Vol. X., comp. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), s.v. “mulatto”; Jordan, “American Chiaroscuro”: 102, 107.
  3. Williamson, New People: 25; Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: 179.
  4. Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: 57, 277, 161–164, 280–281; Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: 160. In popular press accounts, skin tone was a prominent descriptor of Reconstruction-Era black Congressmen. Observers uniformly described Representative Joseph Rainey as having an “olive” or “bright” complexion upon nearly every mention when he was first elected in 1870. In contrast, Representative Robert Elliott, the first non-mulatto elected to Congress, was often described as a “full negro,” “purest African,” or the “darkest” or “blackest” yet elected. See, for example, “Black Enough,” 7 March 1871, Atlanta Constitution: 1; “Colored Congressmen,” 16 April 1874, National Republican (Washington, DC): 6; “Washington,” 2 April 1871, Chicago Tribune: 2; “How The Colored Members of Congress Look,” 16 May 1872, Volume 49, Zion’s Herald: 235; “South Carolina Congressmen,” 14 November 1870, New York Times: 2.
  5. William C. Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist,” in Howard Rabinowitz, ed., Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982): 27, 33.
  6. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: 561–564; Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820–1860 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964): 173–176; see, for example, the Virginia law cited in Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: 304–305.
  7. “Autobiography of Hiram Revels,” Carter G. Woodson Collection, Library of Congress.
  8. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 8th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000): 257.
  9. In 1860, 74 percent of American newspapers reported a partisan affiliation; this figure jumped to 83 percent in the South. See Richard H. Abbot, For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004): 2.
  10. Newspaper ownership generally skyrocketed in the Reconstruction period—the number of people identifying themselves as “editors,” “newsmen,” or “reporters,” doubled between 1870 and 1880 and doubled again in the next decade. See Alan Bussel, Bohemians and Professionals: Essays on Nineteenth-Century American Journalism (Atlanta: Emory University Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, 1981): 7, 22.
  11. Quoted in Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1965): 206.
  12. Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: xxii (see Table 13). This is perhaps a low statistic given that 37 percent had unreported wealth. Also, black Congressmen on average were less wealthy than their white counterparts, who were typically worth between $11,000 and $15,000. See Terry L. Seip, The South Returns to Congress (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983): 28 (see Table 4). According to a standard method of calculating the 21st-century value of 19th-century fortunes (taking 1870 as the basis year), the average black Member from the Reconstruction Era would have amassed roughly $92,000 in wealth in 2007 dollars. Senator Bruce’s fortune would translate into more than $2.3 million in 2007 dollars. The typical white Member of Congress in that time period had amassed a fortune of between $180,000 and $250,000 in 2007 dollars. These figures are drawn from calculations using the historical Consumer Price Index data. Other methods for making such calculations, including extrapolations based on the Gross Domestic Product, produce sometimes drastically different valuations. For an explanation of the difficulty in accounting for inflation conversion factors and determining the relative value of dollars over long periods of time see Oregon State University’s “Inflation Conversion Factors for Dollars, 1774 to Estimated 2018,” at http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/faculty-research/sahr?sahr.htm (accessed 14 May 2008).
  13. Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York: HarperCollins, 2006): 5–7.
  14. Edward A. Miller, Jr., Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839–1915 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995): 58; Bernard E. Powers, Jr., Black Charlestonians, 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1994): 169–170; Thomas C. Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977): 164–165; Foner, Reconstruction: 361.