Before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass had been the United States’ most striking abolitionist, an African American man who defied every stereotype propagated by racists both north and south about the alleged barbarity of black-skinned men. He was also well known for calling for the end to the U.S. Constitution, to be replaced by another document that did not allow slavery to be enshrined into American life. By the end of the Civil War, however, and especially during the early years of Reconstruction, Douglass was filled with hope for that same Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery had been enacted, the Fourteenth Amendment enshrining African American citizenship under the Constitution had just passed through the country’s state legislatures in 1868, and the Fifteenth Amendment would be ratified in 1870.