Frederick Douglass

After emancipation, Frederick Douglass, the leading black abolitionist, turned his attention to the plight of the former slaves in American society. He agitated for voting rights, educational opportunities, and social and economic equality for all African Americans. In this article on Reconstruction, which originally appeared in the December 1866 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Douglass outlines the issues concerning the place of blacks in postwar society—issues to which he, other black reformers, and white civil rights activists would devote themselves during the decades following the Civil War.

The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirtyninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations...