Cain, Richard Harvey, 1825-1887

<p>Born into freedom, Richard Cain was a pastor, a newspaper editor, and an entrepreneur, making his mark as a writer and a land speculator before being elected to the U.S. House for two nonconsecutive terms. During the 43rd Congress (1873–1875), Cain used his considerable oratorical skills and wit to defend the education clause in the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. He displayed a rich sense of humor, mocking southern white Representatives who pronounced African Americans incapable of learning. Addressing Representative William Robbins of North Carolina, Cain retorted, “The gentleman … states that the Negro race is the world’s stage actor—the comic dancer all over the land; that he laughs and he dances…. Now he dances as an African; then he crouched as a slave.” Amid deteriorating conditions for southern blacks at the end of Reconstruction, Cain promoted African–American immigration to the West African colony of Liberia in the 45th Congress (1877–1879).</p>

<p>Richard Harvey Cain was born to free parents on April 12, 1825, in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia). His Cherokee mother and black father moved with their son to Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1831. Living in a “free state” afforded Cain an education; he learned to read and write in Sunday school classes. He also worked on steamboats along the Ohio River. In 1844, Cain entered the Methodist ministry; his first assignment was in Hannibal, Missouri. In 1848, frustrated by the Methodists’ segregated practices, he transferred to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.Cain then served as a pastor in Muscatine, Iowa, where he was elected a deacon in 1859. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he was studying at Wilberforce University in Ohio, one of the first American colleges founded by black men. Cain claimed that he and 115 other Wilberforce students attempted to enlist but were turned away by the Ohio governor.</p>

<p>Minister, abolitionist, legislator. Cain was born a free person of color in Greenbriar County, Virginia, on April 12, 1825. He grew to maturity in Ohio, where he attended Wilberforce University. Beginning in the late 1840s, Cain served as an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister. By the late 1850s he was an active abolitionist and worked with famous activists such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney. During the Civil War, Cain was pastor of a church in Brooklyn, New York. In May 1865, to his great delight, he was transferred to South Carolina as superintendent of AME missions for the state. Cain was responsible for building Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, which is considered the state’s most historic AME congregation. By 1866 its membership had grown to more than two thousand. Cain approached his responsibilities with considerable zeal, organizing churches throughout the countryside. Contemporaries credited him with much of the church’s success in the immediate post–Civil War era.</p>

<p>Cain was also motivated by a deeply held black nationalist ideology and sought every opportunity to give black Carolinians greater control over their lives. In 1866 he bought the <i>South Carolina Leader</i> newspaper, becoming perhaps the first African American newspaper editor in South Carolina. After Cain changed its name to the <i>Missionary Record</i>, the paper covered religion, literature, and politics, becoming an important voice for black Carolinians.</p>

<p>From his earliest days in South Carolina, Cain was involved in politics. He was an honorary delegate to the November 1865 Colored Peoples Convention in Charleston, which was one of the earliest forums where black Carolinians demanded equal civil and political rights. In 1867 he helped organize the state Republican Party, and he later served as party chairman for Charleston County. As a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention, Cain was an outspoken advocate of universal male suffrage. He worked hard to promote landownership among the landless. He opposed the convention’s call for a debt moratorium, instead believing that planter indebtedness would force sales to the working class. Cain was an architect of the South Carolina Land Commission, designed to help small farmers purchase land, and later served on that commission. Cain also purchased land north of Charleston, which he resold to freedmen. The settlement evolved into the black town of Lincolnville. Cain served in the S.C. Senate from 1868 to 1870 and was twice elected to Congress, serving from 1873 to 1875 and from 1877 to 1879. In state politics he was considered a reformer who frequently railed against corruption within Republican ranks. While he was in Congress, his most public efforts were on behalf of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the country’s first federal public accommodations law.</p>

<p>The demise of Reconstruction in South Carolina took Cain’s career in new directions. In 1877 he encouraged some black Carolinians to seek their fortune in Africa and supported the Liberian Exodus movement. In 1880 he was among the first three men elected bishops in the AME Church from the South, and he was given responsibility for Louisiana and Texas. In Texas he served as founder and president of Paul Quinn College in Waco. Cain moved to Washington, D.C., in 1884 and died there on January 18, 1887.</p>

CAIN, Richard Harvey, a Representative from South Carolina; born in Greenbrier County, Va., April 12, 1825; moved with his father to Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1831 and attended school; entered the ministry, and was a pastor in Brooklyn, N.Y., from 1861 to 1865; moved to South Carolina in 1865 and settled in Charleston; delegate to the constitutional convention of South Carolina in 1868; member of the State senate 1868-1872; manager of a newspaper in Charleston in 1868; elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1875); was not a candidate for renomination in 1874; elected to the Forty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1877-March 3, 1879); was not a candidate for renomination in 1878; appointed a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880 and served until his death in Washington, D.C., January 18, 1887; interment in Graceland Cemetery.

<p>Reverend Richard Harvey Cain (April 12, 1825 – January 18, 1887) was a minister, abolitionist, and United States Representative from South Carolina from 1873–1875 and 1877-1879. After the Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. He also was one of the founders of Lincolnville, South Carolina.</p>

<p>Cain was born to a black father and a Cherokee mother in Greenbrier County, Virginia, which is now in West Virginia. He was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio, a free state where he was allowed to read and write. He attended Wilberforce University and attended divinity school in Hannibal, Missouri. The American Civil War broke out while he was at Wilberforce. He later claimed that he and 115 students from the mostly black university attempted to enlist in the Union Army but were refused.</p>