ABSTRACT
Reconstruction and Freedom. The end of the war released high hopes that the moral issues which had plagued the entire nation had been settled. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, pro hibiting “involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” was not contested by the defeated South. It was the Fourteenth Amendment, appar ently protecting the civil rights of Negro Americans, and the Fif teenth Amendment, granting the vote to Negro males-these were the protested Amendments. Believing that they raised questions of a different order from those involving slavery, William Lloyd Garrison closed down his Liberator, considering that its mission had been ac complished.
