Richard Harvey Cain (April 12, 1825 – January 18, 1887) was an American minister, abolitionist, and United States Representative from South Carolina from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 to 1879.

After the American Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

[1] After the Civil War, Cain moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865 as superintendent of AME missions and presided over the Emmanuel Church in that city.

[1] He was elected as a Republican to the Forty-third United States Congress in a newly created at-large district.

He was on the Committee on Agriculture, but focused more on the civil rights bill which eventually passed in diluted form in 1875.

[1] In 1877, while advocating in Congress for mail service to West African Colonies, Cain became a member of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company.