After some years in Indiana, he filled important posts in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and Kansas, in the cause of the African M. E. Church. He was in Maryland in 1861, at the breaking out of the war, and materially aided in forming in that State the first Maryland colored regiment. He was also able to assist in Missouri in raising the first colored regiment in that State, and returned to Mississippi in 1864, settling in Vicksburg, where he had charge of a church congregation, and assisted in organizing other churches, and in forming and putting into operation the school system, visiting various portions of the State on his own responsibility, and among other places, preaching in Jackson. His health failing, Dr. Revels went to the North once more, after the close of hostilities, where he remained eighteen months. Returning, he located at Natchez, where he preached regularly to a large congregation, and where General Ames, then military governor, appointed him to the position of alderman. In 1869, he was duly elected to the State Senate.
In January, 1870, Dr. Revels was selected to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate, the announcement of which took the country by surprise, and as the time drew near for the colored senator to appear in his place in Congress, the interest became intense. Many who had heard reconstruction discussed in its length and breadth,—by men of prophetic power and eloquent utterance, by men of merely logical and judicial minds, by men narrow and selfish, as well as those sophistical and prejudiced,—and who had no particular interest in the debates, still came day after day, hoping to see qualified for his
