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On February 1, 1865, four million Black people, with tears in their eyes, gave thanks to Father Abraham for two events that occurred that day. Both events gave them confidence that they would have freedom and a future in America. In 1861, incoming President Abraham Lincoln faced monumental problems never faced by any president, except possibly George Washington. Seven Southern slave states had already seceded from the Union. Slave border states were considering secession and if successful, the Union would have ended. Although Lincoln hated slavery, his priorities were preservation of the Union and upholding the law, including our Constitution, which legalized slavery. Lincoln could not publicly state that freedom for slaves was the purpose of the Civil War, as the majority of Northerners would fight to preserve the Union but would not fight to free the slaves, as abolitionists were in the minority. To understand public opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a southern slave owner) in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case, stated that a black man, whether free or slave, “had no rights which a white man need respect.” Lincoln fought to preserve the Union, to keep his political party together, to abide public opinion, until ultimately, to end slavery as stated in his prior famous speech that a “house divided against itself cannot stand”.
By 1863, with several hundred thousand soldiers having given their lives, Lincoln directly faced the public on the issue of slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation and his Gettysburg Address – that the valiant men who gave their lives did so based upon our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Lincoln, while fighting to preserve the Union, now pledged to fight for a Constitutional Amendment to end slavery. By early 1865, with continual Northern military victories, the war was in its final stages. Led by Lincoln, on February 1, 1865, Congress approved the 13th Amendment, ending slavery in America. On the same day, attorney John S. Rock, a Black attorney, appeared before the U.S Supreme Court, now led by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Taney died several months earlier and Lincoln appointed Chase, whom he believed would best protect the interests of the Black community. With Chase’s hearty approval, Rock took the oath and became the first Black lawyer to practice before America’s highest court. It would not have happened with Taney as Chief Justice. As Harper’s Weekly observed, it “represented an extraordinary reversal of the decision in the Dred Scott Case and would be regarded by the future historians as a remarkable indication of the revolution which is going on in the sentiment of a great people.”
