ongress, a better education than rudimentary instruction. The members
of this group were twelve in number, including Long[1] of Georgia; De
Large,[2] Rainey,[3] Ransier,[4] and Smalls[5] of South Carolina;
Lynch[6] and Bruce[7] of Mississippi; Haralson[8] and Turner[9] of
Alabama; Hyman[10] of North Carolina; Nash[11] of Louisiana; and
Walls[12] of Florida.

As many as ten of the twenty-two Negro congressmen were men of college
education. This training, however, varied widely in scope and purpose.
Two men of this group became ministers of the gospel. One of them,
Richard H. Cain[13] of South Carolina, was trained at Wilberforce
University, Xenia, Ohio, whence he left in 1861, at the age of
thirty-six years, to begin a career in his chosen field; the other,
Hiram E. Revels[14] of Mississippi, was educated at the Quaker
Seminary in Union County, Indiana. Prior to their election to
Congress, both of these men attracted wide attention as churchmen.
Cain was for four years the pastor of a church in Brooklyn, N. Y.,
after which his congregation sent him as a missionary to the freedmen
of South Carolina. Senator Revels, on the other hand, was widely known
as a lecturer in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri.
For some time he preached in Baltimore, taught school in St. Louis,
and among other things, organized churches and lectured in
Mississippi. The wide experiences of both gentlemen offered to them
unusual opportunities to develop the power, keenness of insight, and
knowledge of human nature so essential to the leadership of men.

To some of these future Congressmen, the profession of teaching seemed
more attractive than the ministry. Three of the number were destined
to become educators. One of them, Henry P. Cheatham[15] of North
Carolina, attended the public and private schools near the town of
Henderson, and was later graduated with honor from the college
department of Shaw University. Immediately thereafter, in 1882, he was
elected to the principalship of the Plymouth State Normal School,
where he served until 1895. The second member of this group, George W.
Murray[16] of South Carolina, won by competitive examination a
scholarship at the reconstructed University of South Carolina. There
he remained until 1876, his junior year, when by the accession to
power of an administration unfriendly to the coeducation of the races,
he was forced to withdraw. For many years thereafter, Murray was
engaged as a teac