May it please the Court,—
I ask leave to present John S. Rock, Esq., a Counsellor at Law of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and now move that he be admitted as a Counsellor of this Court.
The Chief Justice bowed, and said:—
“Let him come forward and take the oath.”
The oath was then administered by Mr. Middleton, Clerk of the Court. At the same time, on motion of Mr. Sumner, Francis V. Balch, Esq., of Boston, his private secretary, was also admitted.
This incident, marking a stage in the battle for Equal Rights, was extensively noticed at home and abroad. It occurred on the day after the final passage in the House of Representatives of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery, and the correspondent of the Boston Journal remarked the association of the two events.
“The Slave Power, which received its constitutional death-blow yesterday in Congress, writhes this morning on account of the admission of a colored lawyer, John S. Rock, of Boston, as a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.… The rage depicted in the countenances of some of the old Hunkers present at this invasion of their citadel beggars description.”
The correspondent of the New York Tribune announced the event as “The Dred Scott Decision buried in the Supreme Court,” and then broke forth enthusiastically:—
“O augustly simple funeral cortège! O dead, wrapped in the cerements that the divine hand of Revolution folds its victims with, augustly exciting in your stormy birth, transcendently mischievous in your little life!—Senator Charles Sumner and Negro Lawyer John S. Rock the pall-bearers,—the room of the Supreme Court of the United States the Potter’s Field,—the corpse the Dred Scott decision!