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1865–1877
A Short-Lived Political Revolution
well as the freedpeople themselves. Scalawags were southern whites who had turned 341
on their fellow white southerners and tied their fortunes to the Republican Party. Such
charges were overstated. While Black Reconstruction politicians ranged from liberal
to conservative, they were more centrist than radical, more committed to reintegrating
former Confederates into the new state governments than punishing them for having
waged war against the United States, and more than competent.
During Black Reconstruction, some 2,000 blacks served as officeholders at the
30
various levels of government in the South. Although a little over half for whom infor-
mation is available had been slaves, they were now literate, and they were committed.
Among them were artisans, laborers, businessmen, carpenters, barbers, ministers,
teachers, editors, publishers, storekeepers, and merchants. They served as sheriffs,
police officers, justices of the peace, registrars, city council members, county commis-
sioners, members of boards of education, tax collectors, land office clerks, and post-
masters. Wherever they served, they sought to balance the interests of black and white
southerners. In a political era marked by graft and corruption, black politicians proved
to be more ethical than their white counterparts.
A few black Republicans achieved high state office. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and
South Carolina, blacks served as lieutenant governor. Some were superintendents of
education, a post with considerable power. More than six hundred state legislators
were black, including Robert Smalls, who served in the South Carolina House of Rep-
resentatives and Senate (Map 9.1). In 1874, Smalls was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives. Thirteen other black men served in the U.S. House during this era,
and two served in the Senate. Like their colleagues in local and state positions in the
South, these black senators and congressmen were moderate politicians who tried
hard to balance the often irreconcilable concerns of freedpeople and southern whites.
Hiram R. Revels (1870–1871) and Blanche K. Bruce (1875–1881) were both senators
from Mississippi. A minister in the AME Church, Revels was known for his oratorical
ability and his amnesty program for disfranchised former Confederates, which would
have allowed them to vote and hold office with limited penalties. Bruce, a skilled
Mississippi delta politician and planter, proved to be a far more vigorous champion
of black civil rights and an unyielding opponent of white resistance to black political
participation.
The widespread political involvement of blacks, many of whom were former
slaves who had never before had any political rights, was unprecedented in the United
States and unique among nineteenth-century post-emancipation societies, includ-
ing Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil. In the United States, blacks’ service in office, as well
as the wide range of political activities of thousands of other black men and women,
amounted to a political revolution. Black politics then and since has included innu-
merable local, grassroots, and community-based activities outside the realm of formal
politics, activities aimed at enhancing black influence and control. Still, for the black
community, political participation and the vote during Reconstruction represented
key expressions of citizenship and national belonging. (See Document Project: The

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