...attended Knox College's preparatory academy in 1856-57. It was his last year of formal education and a time of great abolitionist fervor at the College. Prior to coming to Knox, Revels had been imprisoned in Missouri for preaching to blacks. He later became the first black pastor of the Madison Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. During the Civil War, he helped organize Maryland's first two black regiments for the U. S. Army.
In 1868, Revels became an alderman in Natchez, Mississippi. In February 1870, he was elected from Mississippi to the United States Senate seat formerly held by Jefferson Davis.
It helps to know that Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, the "other side" in the American Civil War, which was fought to, among other, less distinct purposes, enforce the abolition of the peculiar institution of human slavery.
