Reconstruction Era Primary Sources | Douglass, Frederick

Excerpt from "Reconstruction" Published in Atlantic Monthly, 1866; reprinted on About.com (Web site)

A leading African American abolitionist fights for intervention from the federal government and Union military to gain equal rights for blacks

"If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.…"

In many ways, the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) raised more questions than it answered. The North won the bloody struggle to end slavery and keep the South from seceding, or forming its own country. But how would these Southern states rejoin the Union? What changes would be made to their governments and their ways of life? What rights would African Americans have? And what would be their role in shaping a new South? The answers...