In an 1886 newspaper interview, however, Bruce says that he gained his freedom by moving to Kansas as soon as hostilities broke out in the Civil War.

[5] He later was elected to other county positions, including tax collector and supervisor of education, while he also edited a local newspaper.

[2] In 1880, James Z. George, a Confederate Army veteran and member of the Democratic Party, was elected to succeed Bruce.

The presidential nominee that year was Ohio's James A. Garfield, who narrowly won election over the Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock.

[7] In early 1889, politically connected blacks lobbied for Bruce to receive a Cabinet appointment in the Harrison Administration.

[10] He was a participant in the March 5, 1897 meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass and the American Negro Academy led by Alexander Crummell.

[11] He was appointed as Register of the Treasury a second time in 1897 by President William McKinley and served until his death from diabetes complications in 1898.

[12] On June 24, 1878, Bruce married Josephine Beall Willson (1853–1923), a fair-skinned socialite of Cleveland, Ohio, amid great publicity; the couple traveled to Europe for a four-month honeymoon.

[17] Lawrence Otis Graham authored a historical book about Bruce titled The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty: The Senator and the Socialite in June 2006.