“Through the door that was too narrow to freely let out the bearers that bore Charles Sumner’s inanimate form from the Senate Chamber, where he had been stricken down by the assassins of the Slave Power, Charles Sumner to-day marched back, leading a negro by the hand, and, standing upon the very spot that had been stained with his blood for demanding freedom and equality for the blacks in America, demanded of the Supreme Court of the United States to enroll among its members an African lawyer, and to license him to practise at its bar. The black man was admitted.”
Then mentioning the motion of Mr. Sumner, the same correspondent says:—
“The grave to bury the Dred Scott decision was in that one sentence dug, and it yawned there, wide open, under the very eyes of some of the judges who had participated in the juridical crime against Democracy and Humanity. The assenting nod of the great head of the Chief Justice tumbled in the corse and filled up the pit, and the black counsellor of the Supreme Court got on to it and stamped it down, and smoothed the earth for his walk to the rolls of the Court.
“… A few lawyers of the old régime looked on, stunned somewhat, but rapidly growing in wisdom, and mixing deference to destiny with their instinctive reluctance to this revolutionary intrusion.”
Mr. Cobden, writing from England, also associated this event with the Constitutional Amendment. In a letter shortly before his much lamented death, he said:—
“I feel it a pleasant duty to give you my best congratulations on the recent proceedings within and without your Halls of Congress. The vote on the Amendment of the Constitution was a memorable and glorious event in your history. Another incident—that of your introduction of a colored man to the Supreme Court—was hardly less interesting. In all these proceedings at Washington you ought to be allowed to indulge the feelings of a triumphant general. You served as a volunteer in the forlorn hope, when the battle of Emancipation seemed a hopeless struggle. Your position within the Halls of Congress was very different from that of the agitators out of doors, meritorious as were their labors. I have served in both capacities, and know the difference between addressing an audience of partisans at a public meeting and a hostile parliamentary assembly.… I heartily congratulate you.”
Doubtless the admission of a colored lawyer to the Supreme Court helped prepare the way for admission of his race to the rights of citizenship, and especially the right to vote.