in an effort to restore white supremacy. While helping establish new congregations of the AME Church, Pearce also joined the Republican Party and built political power through these networks. Most freedmen joined the Republicans. Pearce was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1868 of Florida. He was expelled by moderate Republicans because of his British citizenship. Later in 1868, Pearce was elected as a Republican to the Florida Senate, serving one term until 1870 when he was re-elected despite a factional Republican Party challenge from Baptist and more conservative James Page. He was elected again in 1872, and served to 1884. In this period, during the Reconstruction Era, he was considered the political boss of Leon County, Florida, where the freedmen constituted the majority of the population. Pearce was influential in his support (and, in some cases, opposition to others seeking office or in office). Pearce also helped establish educational institutions, including the predecessor to what became Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida, which was affiliated with the AME Church. He also gained state legislative support of education for all Floridians. In an act of political payback, in November 1876 Pearce was challenged and disqualified as an elector for the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and William Wheeler ticket, at the time that votes for electors were still being tallied from various counties. He had been convicted by a circuit court in 1870 of a felony for offering a bribe. Although he was pardoned on April 29, 1872, by Acting Governor Samuel T. Day and E. M. Randall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as certified in December 1876 by the Secretary of State in Florida, votes cast for him in the presidential election were not accepted. His opponents noted there was no provision under Florida law to allow a convicted felon, even though pardoned, to regain his right to vote or serve as an elector. Through the waning years of Reconstruction, white conservative Democrats made other efforts to dispute and prevent the seating of black electors, or voting by blacks for other Republican candidates, and there was considerable violence and intimidation at the elections. Pearce also had rivals within the AME church and among the leaders of the black Baptist Church in Florida. Many of the latter had quickly established independence with their congregations after the war from the white-dominated Southern Baptist Church. See also African-American officeholders during and following