US Presidential Cabinet Member. He served in two cabinet positions during the term of President James Buchanan. With hostility between the politics of slave states and the rest of the nation, this became the main issue during his service. After Buchanan was elected President of the United States, he was appointed as United States Attorney General, serving from 1857 to 1860. Following Lewis Cass's resignation as United States Secretary of State on December 17, 1860, he was then appointed two days later to that office for the remainder of the term ending March 5, 1861. With his cabinet appointment ending and Buchanan's nomination on February 5, 1861, he became a candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. On February 21, 1861, a motion to proceed to consider the nomination was defeated with a vote of 25 for to 26 against, and the nomination lapsed at the end of the 36th Congress. Born the son of a long-time Pennsylvania politician, United States House of Representative Henry Black, he studied law under the respected lawyer Chauncey Forward, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. After being admitted to the Pennsylvania bar on December 3, 1830, he started a private practice, and while Forward was serving in Washington D.C., he practiced in Forward's office. Entering politics as a staunch Democrat in 1831, he was appointed Deputy Attorney General for Somerset County. In 1842, Black accepted an appointment as President Judge of the 16th Judicial District. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from 1851 to 1857, serving as Chief Justice from 1851 to 1854. During the American Civil War, he mainly devoted himself to his law practice. After the war, he supported President Andrew Johnson's effort to stop the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and served for a short time as Johnson's defense lawyer during his impeachment. He formed his law partnership with Ward Hill Lamon, and the law practice dissolved in 1879 due to the poor reception of Lamon's 1872 controversial biography, "The Life of Lincoln," which is credited to be ghostwritten by Black's son Chauncey. He practiced law in Pennsylvania until his death. In 1836, he married Mary, Chauncey Forward's oldest child, and the couple had three sons and three daughters. His formal portrait was painted by William Winner in 1872.