Historians have debated the extent to which the abolitionists advanced the post–Civil War struggle for citizenship rights for the freed slaves. Some Reconstruction historians argue that abolitionists abandoned the effort for civil rights for African Americans after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. McPherson disagrees, asserting that "abolitionists led the campaign for equal rights after emancipation and launched the movement for education of the freedmen." Certainly that is the case with the black abolitionists, who saw the end of slavery as only a single step in a movement whose goal was to make African Americans full participants in the American democracy. Douglass, the great African American abolitionist leader, emerged as the principal spokesman for full citizenship rights for African Americans during the post–Civil War era.

But Douglass's ideas clashed with those of other Reconstruction-era...