On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the unprecedented Thirteenth Amendment. Unlike the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which abolished slavery only in those states at war with the Union, the new amendment outlawed slavery everywhere in the United States. The next day, February 1, Senator Charles Sumner sponsored a Black Boston lawyer named John Rock for the right to practice law before the Supreme Court. He was the first man of the race to be afforded such a distinction. Eight years earlier, in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanders, the Court had denied that Blacks were
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