Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of change occurred on February 1, the day after House passage of the 13th Amendment. On that day Senator Charles Sumner presented Boston lawyer John Rock for admission to practice before the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase swore him in. There was nothing unusual in this except that Rock was a black man, the first Negro accredited to the highest Court which eight years earlier had denied U.S. citizenship to his race. The Court had been virtually reconstructed by Lincoln’s appointment of five new justices including Chase. The transition from
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